Inferninho

Film program, BR 2018, 82 min., port. OV + engl. UT

By: Guto Parente and Pedro Diogenes

With: Yuri Yamamoto, Demick Lopes, Samya De Lavor, Rafael Martins

INFERNINHO is a partnership between a cinema collective and a theater group, which guarantees performances’ quality and the overall kitsch atmosphere. It tells the love story between transwoman Deusimar (played by cis actor Yuri Yamamoto), the owner of a dive bar dreaming of leaving the city where she was born, and Jarbas (Démick Lopes), a supposed Sean Penn look-alike sailor that arrives mysteriously and sees the chance of finally putting down anchor somewhere. An oneiric melodrama develops within the dirty old bar, one which looks like a place where Hollywood Boulevard characters gather to drink and drown their sorrows, and the film echoes classic queer cinema like Fassbinder (especially QUERELLE) and Almodóvar’s early years, but is a queer aesthetic enough for a film to be considered queer? It’s questionable, but theatricality and passionate characters guarantee the film’s charm, in this story that does not revolutionize but cherishes hearts ‑ especially those desperate to leave.