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JUSTIN TANNER REVIEWS PRIVATE DESERT
Director Aly Muritiba’s “Private Desert” (Brazil’s entry for last year’s International film Oscar) is an emotionally potent mystery about loneliness and obsession starring Antonio (”Bacurau”) Saboia as Daniel, a troubled cop living in a small, drab apartment (in Curitiba, Brazil) with his father, a former military man in the throes of dementia. With his sad smile and the over-ripe muscularity of an ex-boxer, Saboia is like cinematic catnip, exuding a rare mixture of confidence and uncertainty that pulls us in close: The scenes of Daniel lovingly showering, dressing and tucking his ailing father into bed, which play out in long meticulous takes, are endearing: Daniel’s loyalty and commitment are beautiful to behold. Also beautiful to behold is Daniel’s naked body which he somewhat shyly reveals while taking a selfie to send to his online girlfriend, Sara, who he’s never met. Though Sara lives in a small town nineteen hours away, they’ve forged a connection that has completely overtaken Daniel’s life. A life that starts to spin out of control when she inexplicably ghosts him and he feels compelled to drive across country in an overheating truck to find out why. Though totally different in tone (and subject matter) from George Sluizer’s 1993 horror masterpiece “The Vanishing”, “Private Desert” hits some of the same warning notes about stubbornly following your “need to know” — the answer might not be what you were hoping for. Sure enough, when Daniel arrives in the small, religiously conservative community of Sobradinho, no one recognizes Sara from her picture: It’s only later when he makes the dubious decision to post “missing” signs on every building in town that Daniel starts to get clues about her ultimate fate.
Among the talented supporting cast — most who are making their film debuts — are Laila Garin, lovely and game, as a friendly local who gets involved in a “Vertigo” moment with Daniel, agreeing to wear a dress of Sara’s so that he can make mournful love to her. And Thomas Aquino makes a strong impression as Fernando, a sassy hair-dresser who may or may not know about Sara’s whereabouts. And then there’s the enigmatic and volatile Pedro Fasanaro who plays Robson, a young conflicted laborer who eventually develops a profound connection with Daniel, sharing a beautiful moment late in the film where the two men discuss their complicated relationships with their fathers. It’s this conversation about the bruising legacy of machismo that starts to open Daniel’s heart to realizations he had heretofore been too afraid to look at, and leads to a heartbreaking scene where Daniel calls home to share a wordless conversation with his father made up of only each other’s breath coming through the phone. It’s difficult to say much more: there is a significant plot development which can easily lead to spoilage. In fact, many of the reviews simply give it all away, pointing to the film’s trailer which, admittedly, seems to rather blatantly hint at the solution to the mystery.
Yet, I think the film’s impact would’ve been stronger had I not known what was coming, and so I’ll leave off here and simply urge you to take this compelling journey without foreknowledge. Yes, there are some familiar developments in the film that work against its freshness: a few critics have even referred to “Private Desert” as dated. And perhaps, if looked at in an overly simplistic and literal fashion, the story (when finally revealed) could seem mundane.
But the performances, the direction, the immersive locations, the lovely photography and the universality of watching someone movingly discover who they are in front of our eyes, makes up for any potentially passé elements, proving that love and truth and redemption, when told simply and straight from the heart, never go out of style. STREAMING ON KANOPY, APPLE TV, AMAZON PRIME, VUDU, GOOGLE PLAY
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