Interview: Karim Aïnouz on Motel Destino, filming in Brazil, and independent filmmaking
Set in the northeastern coast of Brazil, Motel Destino focuses on the titular motel, a roadside sex hotel run by Elias (Fábio Assunção), its hot-headed owner, and Dayana (Nataly Rocha), his hot-headed wife. One day, Heraldo (Iago Xavier), a 21-year-old man on the run after he was involved in his brother’s death, arrives at the motel and will disrupt its equilibrium and the lives of all the characters involved in the motel’s running and upkeep.
We sat down with Karim Aïnouz, the director of Motel Destino, to talk about his latest movie, why he decided to film in his hometown in Brazil and what shooting on film was like for him.
How did you first get the idea for Motel Destino?
Karim Aïnouz: My very first idea was not for the film actually. I have been developing a production company in Brazil and I really wanted to sort of take a bit more control of what I’m doing, the stories I’m telling, and the choices I’m making. I really wanted to tell a story which was very much drenched in genre but also that was somehow in conversation with themes that were interesting to me. That’s how it all started and I’ve always been obsessed somehow with noir because it was this genre that really emerged just after the First World War, about fractured characters that were kind of broken. I thought it was an interesting lens to look at Brazilian youth. So that’s the first thing that came to my mind.
There are so many iterations of noir and I thought it would be an interesting way to talk about the issues that were relevant to me. And then it all came together as a coincidence. I have always wanted to explore the motel as a place to set stories, but I never really found the right story to do it. It came from looking at the noir references – not only the classic ones, but also neo-noir and in particular American neo-noir from the early 80s.
And then I focused on the characters, I really love more kind of character driven and plot driven films. And so, I was thinking, who are these characters and what is the element that I can bring? I really wanted to make this movie with actors that were from the place that I come from, because I felt there was a lack of representation for those people. I was also interested in making something which was queer, but not frontally queer. And I thought that that was another element that Wislan Esmeraldo and Mauricio Zacharias (the co-writers) brought to the script, which I really enjoyed.
What was your stylistic inspiration for this movie, or a specific film that you looked up to in of references?
Karim Aïnouz: A lot! In particular, I was very inspired by The Postman Always Rings Twice, the novel more than the movie. The 1974 German film Ali: Fear Eats the Soul was another big inspiration as it featured a relationship between an older woman and a younger guy who was an immigrant. I always thought that was such an unlikely scenario and a really beautiful film. I think I was really inspired by a generation of filmmakers who were making films in the late 70s early 80s from different perspectives. A lot of sexploitation films were interesting to me in how they brought a sense of reverence and risk to cinema.
I was also very interested in the different possibilities of storytelling happening in Western cinema as well as Japanese cinema or Italian cinema before AIDS. I think there was a lot of stuff being done that was very experimental and it was very free. It was not classic, but there was a sense of inventing something, you can see it when you watch Heat, Body Double, Funeral Parade of Roses or the films by Dario Argento.
These are my inspirations. It is not only the films, but a moment in cinema where there were a lot of things that were being tried out and they’re not necessarily mastered, but there was an energy that I thought was something that I was searching for myself for many reasons. there was something for me that I needed to do it for many reasons. I needed to do it because I had just done period drama in English and it was just the time post-COVID, so thinking of those references was very inspiring to me.
The film is set in your hometown in Brazil. With your previous film set in the UK, why did you choose Brazil this time and why was this relevant to you?
Karim Aïnouz: I think it was a longing for home. After doing Firebrand, which was my first English language film. It was a deep dive into English history and also into a specific moment of English culture, which was not only far away from me, but also far away in time. Doing Firebrand was fantastic because then I was able to bridge these gaps. Catherine, for me, was a woman I could meet today and Henry is a man that we see a lot o fin our present time. But after Firebrand I really wanted to do something different. That was a candlelit wintery film and I wanted to do something with an abundance of light. As a filmmaker, this was really important to me.
I also really wanted to shoot in Portuguese. English is my second language, and it is great working with it, but cinema goes through language so much and I wanted to do something in my native language. I wanted to do a film which was really close to home, literally speaking, that was close to the way I speak, to the places I know, and that I was familiar with the kind of light that people live under. It is funny because this movie was thought of and financed in 2017 at first and then it changed a lot since then. It was cancelled back then due to the political detour that Brazil took at the time. It was an iteration of the story and a project I never thought I would do again. And then I had the opportunity to access the financing that we had originally been assigned again and it seemed like a great chance not only to make a film in Portuguese but also to make a film after these four years that were horrible in my country.
Because you are from there, right? The film is set and shot in your hometown.
Karim Aïnouz: I am from there, yes. Not only I’m from there, but I was raised by my mom there and then we lived in Fortaleza. And then that’s where we went for some holidays because that’s where she had her best friend who had a house there. So that was a place that for me smelled very familiar. And I really just wanted to be there again.
And I think you can see that in the film. It feels like all the places are almost like characters.
Karim Aïnouz: Yes, it’s true.
And did you filmed entirely there, in northeastern Brazil? How was that experience like for you?
Karim Aïnouz: Yes, I shot there. It was very strange because I hadn’t really been there for many years, and it changed a lot. We made a deliberate decision to find a motel which was there, and which would be appropriate for the film. And we looked 68 places in the meantime. really wanted to make a film by the sea. It was very interesting when I was making Firebrand. I had this fantasy at one moment that Instead of shooting in Hampton Court or a place which was reminiscent of Hampton Court, I could shoot the film by the sea because of England and because of the island aspect of it.
But no, I quickly realized there was a limit in what you can reinterpret. I was researching and realised that there were almost no castles by the sea because it was dangerous. But that impulse stayed with me. And then when I started to think of Motel Destino, I was not shocked to be called to the sea and I thought it would be really important for these reasons I just told you, but also because I think it gives a sense of possibility for the character.
I know you and Hélène Louvart, the cinematographer, have worked together before, how is your collaboration and how did you collaborate to create such a unique look for the film?
Karim Aïnouz: We started working together for The Invisible Life of Eurídice Gusmão, which was 2019. Back then, it was clear to me that I needed a female cinematographer because it was two actors that had never done a movie before and it was a very delicate story and also a story that’s very much triggered by trauma. I thought I need to have a female DoP, that’s how I met Hélène and it was a really great collaboration. We both love people, more than cinema, more than anything.
And so we worked together on how to capture and portray characters and capture their energy on a set that sometimes is lit and designed for the frame and for a specific mood. That is where we really connected. I also think we connected with my idea of not having a coherent path as a filmmaker. I think it’s a very straight, western way of looking at one’s life. But for me, it’s really important that I’m surprised at every moment. Me and Hélène are not trying to perfect our collaboration, we act in service of the stories and of the character, and I think every character has its own language. I’m trying to impose the way I look at them. I’m more open to capture what they provide as characters, so that’s what’s been really great.
And you also shot on film Motel Destino, right? How was that experience?
Karim Aïnouz: We did! It was really important to me. We were supposed to shoot on 35mm and then four weeks before the shoot we had the usual issues about the budget and how expensive it is. But I love shooting in film, I always do. I only did one film, The Invisible Life of Eurídice Gusmão, which was not in film and I really missed it. I think with shooting on film there is a sense of rigor and discipline Beyond all this, I think what I really understood is I think digital is really developed for northern and southern attitudes because of the contrast. There’s very little contrast and the light is very soft.
But when you’re shooting around the equator, the light is very harsh, it’s 90 degrees, and it’s bright. I the first film I shot in Fortaleza was a Super 8 film in Kodachrome. It was overexposed because the light is so bright. For Motel Destino, I wanted to do it on Super 16 because it is centred on the body and on the landscape. I wanted to show the colour of the sky, I have only seen it reproduced in film before not in digital. It was a very rational decision because it wasn’t cheap, and it was super complicated to get the negatives to the location and get them out. It feels like they really made it impossible for us to shoot in film. For me it was also an act of resistance and transgression but also beyond anything I think it was the best format to capture that context.
What was the biggest challenge of shooting this way for you?
Karim Aïnouz: None, just money! I’ve done this so many times in my life: it was expensive, it was hard to get the film there because the it is not a global medium, it is very local. Transporting film is very hard, we had to think about what the closest airport was to fly the film with as little custom as possible. We bought the film in the UK and then it went from there to Sao Paulo to make it less dangerous. We found out that there is a flight twice a week from Fortaleza to Paris and we figured out that we could get twice a week shipping. But we still could not get the dailies until the second week of shooting.
But, you know, it was like that when I began making films: there was no video tab, no digital, and I have never shot in big cities but instead in the periphery. Normally, we would shoot the film and the next day you go to the lab and see the dailies and have to wait until they are developed. There is a sense of danger and surprise. One of the things I hate the most about digital is how easy it is, I like shooting and not knowing what will come out. That was probably the biggest problem for producers, but for me it was the most exciting part.
I know the film is out in the UK; what do you hope that audiences sort of take away from this film?
Karim Aïnouz: First of all, I hope they discover this part of the world, because I think there’s very few films that have been made there. I hope that it provides people with the experience of fun, I think it’s super important post-COVID to have fun together in a film theatre. And I do hope that at the end of the day as well, it brings some oxygen to English cinema, because I think that there is great stuff out there – there are great filmmakers, like Jonathan Glazier, Rose Glass, Andrea Arnold, Alex Garland, Lynne Ramsay – but there is still a sense of a conservative cinematography. I hope it brings a breath of fresh air. I also know there is a huge Brazilian diaspora living here and I would love it if the film could speak to them as well.
I also think this has been a very good year for Brazilian cinema, it has been present in the festival circuit as well.
Karim Aïnouz: Completely, yes with the Oscars!
Exactly, and the Oscars as well! What do you hope to see for the future of Brazilian cinema?
Karim Aïnouz: There are two things here, right? On one hand, there is never a sense of continuity in Latin America. I could be sitting here with you in two years and the Brazilian film industry might have collapsed because a lot of the films are produced with public money, so it’s politically very unstable. Yet, I’m a pathological optimist, so I hope this is not going to happen. On the other hand, there was a lot of stuff happening in the last year or so, which is a direct result of like political life of the country. Before, like four years ago, there was nothing to shoot.
I once had a conversation with a German distributor when we were distributing The Invisible Life of Eurídice Gusmão and at the premiere he told me that this was going to be tricky because it was like food. You know, if you say Italian food or Chinese food, people say what it is. It’s the same with cinema: when you say American cinema or Italian cinema, they know what it is. But not with Brazilian cinema, it is very diverse and there are so little titles that get international distribution. It is hard to get an audience that is loyal because they never know what they will get. I think the biggest challenge right now is this effort of existing and also challenging so mainstream English-language cinema
I also wanted to ask about the casting process because the main actors work really well together, how that was like for you?
Karim Aïnouz: My rule was that I need to only work with local actors, especially after working in English language cinema where there is such a huge star system in place and is dictated by publicists and talent. But it is not like that where I come from, there are loads of starts that can’t exist because there is no system to them. I think the first thing was to work with local talent only, with the only exception of Elias who I did not want to be local, I wanted him to be a stranger, a sort of toxic foreigner and I am a huge fan of Fábio Assunção. He’s sort of a local rabbit, you know, like he’s very famous, he’s very popular, and a really great actor. And I thought he was underutilized in cinema, so I really was always eager to work with him.
I did a lot of casting for Iago Xavier, I wanted to have somebody who would embody that character. We did a lot of research, I think we did about 600 auditions or something like that. I have been following Nataly Rocha for a few years, and she is a great theatre actor but has also been in a couple of movies. I have always wondered why she did not work more. We did a lot of auditioning too but it was not an open audition.
And you presented the film at Cannes for the first time last year. How was that experience? Because I know you presented films before at Cannes as well, what is it about Cannes that draws you in, in general?
Karim Aïnouz: I think there’s something about the celebration of cinema that you have in Cannes, which is extraordinary to think about. Martel Destino was in the same selection as the great David Cronenberg and also of more mainstream films like English language films that were there. I think there is a sense that you feel respected, you don’t feel like you are the peripheral filmmaker, or you the international category, like they call it at the Oscars. You feel like we are all international. The first thing that I love about Cannes is that we are all treated the same, we all do the red carpet.
There is a sense of justice and diversity in what cinema does and champions, which I really ire. The other thing is that Motel Destino is a film that was intentionally made to look rough. I didn’t want to be the master anything, I wanted to sort of be in the moment. I think it was really exciting to be in a festival where a lot of the films are very polished but have something which was as rough as this film. It gives you hope, it gives you energy. It is also great to bring a sense of joy to a place where sometimes it’s all very serious, particularly for the professionals and for press. So for me, that was the most exciting part of being there.
READ OUR REVIEW OF MOTEL DESTINO HERE
I wanted to ask you about the colours as well. It is exciting to see a film that’s not afraid of being so bold visually. How did you decide on this colour palette?
Karim Aïnouz: I think what you said is right, not afraid to be bold is the definition of Motel Destino. I am obsessed with colour, I think that is how I experience the world, in high and saturated colours. I think there is an electricity in those colours that I think is really exciting and I have been touching on in different movies. But in this one, I wanted to go all the way and colour is a narrative element. I always think about how colour can help me tell this story and, in this case, it was about creating tension. There was a lot of tension. I said there is one colour in this film we are not going to have, and it is white but we can have all the rest. In the noir genre, the element of shadow is so important and contrasting that I wanted to keep this contrast but not in black and white. Colour was the immediate sort of response to this because it is one of the most important elements of story for me and I am attracted to it. I’m very interested in abstraction and abstract painting and I think colour somehow can unlock things from reality.
When it comes to the end of the film, which I think was very powerful, was that always going to be how Motel Destino ended or how did you get to that?
Karim Aïnouz: It’s funny you mention this because I’ve been questioning myself about the ending a bit. For me, there was a very important moment in the film which is when they are not killed and Elias is executed by destiny, that was always going to be there. It was very important to me that a character like Heraldo can only be saved by destiny, but not by his own will. There was always that political team but the fact that he leaves and sends this letter to her in the epilogue was not there initially. I thought that was important because you don’t want to leave that character in a crime scene. There is something very violent about the way that he escapes and he’s questioned and then there is a sense of continuity. For me, it was really important to bring back an energy that you have in his eyes when he’s talking to that policeman, a sense of rage and a sense of energy. For me, it was negotiating these three possible energies.
And Iago is fantastic at creating these emotional moments. How did you work with him to create it? Is this his first film as well?
Karim Aïnouz: It’s his first ever movie set! It is incredible, I think it is magic, but we did work a lot. We worked on discussing the character and rehearsing the scenes. We didn’t rehearse in the classical sense of like repetition and doing the scene again and again, it was more unearthing the scenes and unearthing the sort of emotional path of the character. I think it was always very important for us that Heraldo is not Iago. It was very important to separate the two because it was his first movie and we needed to create a distance between his performance and who he was.
How did your previous experience in films like The Incredible Life of Euridice Gusmão and Firebrand influence this one?
Karim Aïnouz: They all influence each other. I think that it’s funny, when I made my first film, it was a film about a queer, criminal character who was a great artist in the 1930s, a lot of his life was at night, because he was a performer and worked in a bar. And then when I finished it, I felt like I needed to do something a little closer to what Motel Destino turned out to be. I really miss shooting where I come from and I really wanted to do a movie with a female character protagonist because there was not many at that time. It is always a bit informed by where I am in the world, what is mobilizing my existence in the world, and also what I’ve done before, and never trying to have a sense of continuity, but a sense of discovery as a filmmaker, and a sense of exploration. For example, Motel Destino is the only film I could make after Firebrand. I think I needed to make a film in Portuguese, I needed to make a film where that not about privilege, that was about the unseen, the invisible. It was also a film that was not in the North, but in the equator and it’s always very much about finding rather than being about perfection. It’s about surprise and I need to be surprised as an artist, you know, with what I’m going to do and what I’m going to tell. So that’s how this one came about.
And if you can talk about it, do you have any future projects or things you want to work on?
Karim Aïnouz: I’m finishing a new movie now that I shot in December. It’s the story of a family who gets drowned in their own privilege and in their own isolation from the world, so it is satire about a family who is falling apart because it is almost literally like they eat themselves due to the privilege and isolation. That will be in English and it should be done sometime in the fall.
My friend Bethany always asks this and I think it would be interesting to hear your opinion. If you had to do a double bill and pick another film to show with Motel Destino, what would it be?
Karim Aïnouz: There are three possibilities. I think I would show Lost Highway or maybe Body Double. No, I think I would show Dress to Kill. Or maybe even Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, the German film I missed before. Yes, probably that one! It’s a great question, I had to think about that.
Motel Destino is in UK cinemas now.
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