For a movie that deals with the care of cattle, Neon Bull (Boi neon) strives to set itself apart from the pack. This steamy, atmospheric travelogue takes you on a meandering tour of Brazil's Northeast Region through the eyes of a traveling wranglers whose itinerary is shaped by an endless succession of rodeos. This lively crew, feisty yet harmonious, likes to limit the bull they're willing to take to the animals they handle, and this Brazilian/Uruguayan/Dutch co-production, which premiered at last year's Venice Film Festival and has finally found its way to these shores, revels in their nomadic spirit.
LEFT: Juliano Cazarré. RIGHT: Maeve Jinkings.
The events Iremar (Juliano Cazarré) and Zé (Carlos Pessoa) work may be called the Vaquejadas, but from where I was sitting, it looks more like cow tipping as a spectator sport. Two cowboys flank a bull, aiming to tackle it by grabbing its tail. The animal falls; the crowd cheers. Rinse. Repeat. But the men aren't the ones saddling up. They're the working stiffs guarding the gates and dusting the bulls' tails to ensure there are no mishaps.
Zé, a pudgy jokester, might be content to do his job and jerk off to porno mags on his downtime, but not Iremar. In the midst of this high-testosterone setting, he stands out for what he really wants to do: design clothes for women. And, as Neon Bull, begins, the aspiring couturier is working on a skimpy number that showcases his iconic influences. (Movie buffs will be delighted to spot Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra among the cutouts of famous figures he draws upon for inspiration.) This costume, like all his previous creations to date, will be modeled by his colleague Galega (Maeve Jinkings), who drives the bull handlers' truck and occasionally puts on a show for the other men at night, all while wearing a horse mask and hoof-shaped platforms also designed by Iremar.
LEFT: Alyne Santana. RIGHT: Juliano Cazarré.
Watching the grown-ups and their rituals from the sidelines is the unfortunately named Cacá (Alyne Santana), Galega's young daughter. Poor Cacá, who pines to own her own horse, but won't even get the leather boots she asked her mom to buy. Poor Cacá, who's ridiculed mercilessly when she slips and falls into a pile of animal dung, thus living up to her name. Poor Cacá, who keeps pestering Iremar with inquiries about her MIA dad and, in one scene, finally gets a hug from him, but only after she asks him.
The fraternal banter between the characters is the closest writer/director Gabriel Mascaro comes to writing conventional dialogue. Otherwise, he lets the expansive, often desolate vistas, vividly captured by cinematographer Diego García (Cemetery of Splendor), do the heavy lifting. The setting is half the battle in a film like Neon Bull, and Mascaro, for the most part, uses the film's loose, episodic structure to his advantage, the better to drink in those arid landscapes that capture a tug of war between the rural and the industrial. The languid pace feels just right, and I welcomed the absence of a more rigidly defined narrative. The film's central trio (Iremar, Galega and Cacá) often behave like a family unit, and even though the two adults' relationship remains steadfastly, refreshingly platonic, the characters and the locations are eerily reminiscent of Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven, but without the forbidden love aspect or the equivalent of the authority figure Sam Shepard played in that film.
What does linger throughout Neon Bull like a musky smell that won't go away is the promise of sex, but what's surprising about Mascaro's anthropological curiosity is that he refrains from actually showing the act itself until much later in the film. An early scene toys with the audience's expectations when it shows Iremar starting to take off Galega's panties. But the viewer's mind goes to the gutter for all of a second until it becomes clear that he's just interested in taking her measurements. Similarly, a scene where the men are washing up naked doesn't lead to any same-sex coupling, even as the full-frontal glimpse gives off a powerful homoerotic charge that dovetails provocatively with the recurring shots of white bulls on top of one another. If Claire Denis ever makes a western, one senses, this is what it would look like.
Even though Mascaro might skimp on the hanky panky at first, Neon Bull becomes increasingly more confrontational over its no-holds-barred imagery. In perhaps the most eye-opening moment, Iremar and Zé talk their way into crashing a stud auction. It becomes clear what the two men are after when Iremar approaches a horse and begins doing to it what Zé does when he's looking at porn. (You are warned: Mascaro leaves very little to the imagination.)
LEFT: Juliano Cazarré. RIGHT: (from left): Alyne Santana, Juliano Cazarré.
But even at its most sensational, there's a no-frills naturalism that makes Neon Bull easy to take in. If there's something I would have liked to see fleshed out more, it would be a sense of growth for the film's central characters. Santana's performance, for instance, seamlessly conveys Cacá's frustration, but even though she's a near-constant presence throughout the first half of the film, Mascaro seems to abandon her just when the possibility of finding answers might lead her to learn some valuable life lessons. Iremar, on the other hand, is granted quite the personal breakthrough, in the shape of an extended sex scene that yields the kind of fulfillment that goes beyond the physical.
What ultimately makes Neon Bull so consistently engaging is that it sidesteps self-importance to achieve a quiet, contemplative grace. Its rough-hewn poetry is forged in quotidian strife.
Neon Bull is now showing at the Tower Theater. For showtimes, go to towertheatermiami.com.
