Eros
Rachel Daisy Ellis / Brazil / 2024 / International Premiere / 108 min
Brazil's love motels are a sexual haven where fantasy becomes reality. When the filmmaker's own date never shows up, she gets a fresh idea for a film instead. The result is a kaleidoscopic insight into a parallel world of human desire.
Rachel has agreed to meet her date at a motel. But he never shows up, and since the room is already paid for, she starts filming herself via the mirror until the moaning sounds from the rooms next door give her an idea: She invites strangers to share their private footage of a hot night at their favourite motel and compiles the contributions into a film about the romantic and sexual haven that motels are for Brazilians. The result is ‘Eros’. A gay couple searches in vain for gay porn in the jacuzzi, two nuns and a priest have a threesome, and a bed has a built-in cag. Each motel has its own style. We are with the guests in bed, as they eat burgers afterwards, and as they debate whether it was Jesus who gave mankind the motel. But there are also dark moments, as when a trans woman talks about having to leave the country and when a man who has been divorced six times confesses his drug and sex addiction to a sex worker.