Naked Men Talking: Filipe Matzembacher and Marcio Reolon
Their latest film is Night Stage - a psychosexual exploration of an exhibitionist kink.
Written and directed by filmmakers Filipe Matzembacher and Marcio Reolon, Night Stage (Ato noturno) is a psychosexual melodrama set in the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre.
The story centres around Matias and Rafael. Matias (Gabriel Faryas) is an actor on the cusp of his big breakthrough, Rafael (Cirillo Luna) is an ambitious politician. A one-off hook-up app encounter sparks an explosive connection between the two men - irresistibly drawn to each other at the risk of damaging their careers. Matias and Rafael realise that they share a kink for public sex - an extra element of danger that further intensifies their desire for each other.
Night Stage is distributed in the UK by Peccadillo Pictures - screening in cinemas from 3 April.
For our podcast, Naked Men Talking, I spoke with Filipe Matzembacher and Marcio Reolon about the film.
In the conversation, we talk cruising, compromises, and why we love bad gays.
The story of Night Stage centres around Matias and Rafael. Matias is an actor on the cusp of his big breakthrough. Rafael is an ambitious politician. A hookup app encounter sparks an explosive connection between the two men, they're irresistibly drawn to each other at the risk of damaging their careers.
You said that your initial inspiration was the idea of people leading double lives, of having a private versus a public persona. It's also a theme you explored in your earlier film, Hard Paint. Why is this something that continues to interest you?
Marcio: We were actors before becoming directors. Performance is something that to us is very appealing. As queer people, we perform when we are out in public.
Filipe: There's something that for us is very interesting to explore in the idea of success and integration. We have to compromise our desires and our performances to have a possibility of this idea of success. We have to suppress our desires, our passions, our stories - we have to change to try to fit into a society that doesn't want to have a diversity of people, it wants to shape everybody to have one similar goal. Also, as filmmakers, we spend all our days thinking about performance - how people are seeing us.
The connection that draws Matias and Rafael together is that they share a kink for public sex - the risk of being seen or caught is a turn-on for both of them. What drew you to this kink as the double-life element for these characters?
Filipe: When we were developing this project, we were interested in these characters having to suppress their desires - to have a desire that could not be suppressed, that it always came back. Desire is a big part of who we are. We needed their desire to be expressed in a radical way so that it was in confrontation with their ambitions. Also, because we're talking about cruising, we're talking about public spaces.
You’ve set the story in your hometown of Porto Alegre - is Porto Alegre known for its cruising culture and public sex opportunities?
Marcio: It exists there as it exists in most places in the world, you know. The park where we filmed the cruising scenes is a park that is known for having cruising areas. But I wouldn't say that Porto Alegre is specifically known for that, unlike Berlin, for example, where we are right now.
It could be argued that you're showcasing characters that are effectively "bad gays" - they're giving into their desires. They're giving a bad name to the "normal" people who just want to lead professional lives and have families or whatever. Was that something that you were considering in the development of this story?
Filipe: I love bad gays - they're way more interesting. Our society is sick - the idea of being a good person, the backbone of this society, is so corrupted. We really love characters that are flawed. They try to be better better people, sometimes they do bad things but they try to do better next time.
It feels like you're asking a lot of these performers to bring these characters and their motivations to life. Was that a challenge in your casting process?
Marcio: It wasn't a big challenge, but it was definitely something that came up during the casting process. We had over 1,000 actors apply - we went through them all. During the audition stage, we had an open conversation with them - we were very honest and transparent with our actors from the very start. Some actors were more interested in doing these kind of scenes and addressing these sort of topics - the film also talks about being an actor and being in or out of the closet - these are things that maybe some actors might not be comfortable with. The ones that are in the film, they were super-enthusiastic about it.
Could you talk a little bit about that final scene? Is that a dream sequence or is that them fully embracing the final form of their desire?
Marcio: We really wanted this film to be a triumph of desire - we didn't want desire to be punished in our film. The characters tried to repress their desires throughout most of their journey in order to achieve these neo-liberal aspirations that they have. But desire is always there - pushing and pushing and pushing. We felt that at some point desire should become an uncontrollable force and just take over.
Filipe: The characters don't necessarily got what they want, but they got what they need.
What do you hope that people feel when they watch Night Stage?
Marcio: We hope that they feel an urge to disobey, to confront a little bit of the norms that are imposed on them, and also that they feel horny. When the film ends, maybe they want to just call someone and go to a park and have fun or whatever - just to go out and dance, to celebrate. That's the reason why we made this film.
Filipe: We want people to feel alive. That's most important thing. Even though we are surrounded by violence, by repression, we want people to leave the cinema feeling alive.
Gareth Johnson