28/11/2024 - The Buenos Aires-based Brazilian director discusses the desires and motivations of his enigmatic 20-year-old protagonist

(© Gijón Film Festival)

Antonio (Max Suen) is 20 years old and is driven by wants: money, sex and intimacy pull him in all sorts of unpredictable directions out on the streets of Buenos Aires. He is the unruly protagonist of Brazilian filmmaker Sacha Amaral’s debut feature, The Pleasure Is Mine [+see also:
film review
interview: Sacha Amaral
film profile]. During the Gijón Film Festival, the director spoke to Cineuropa about what it means to have pleasure as a principal drive for a character.

Cineuropa: For your first feature, you decided to split Antonio’s story with cuts to black screen and voice recordings. What prompted this texture and enigma?
Sacha Amaral: Even though The Pleasure Is Mine is my first film, I was lucky enough to be able to indulge in some pleasures, to stick to what I wanted. In post-production, I got feedback questioning the cuts to black, but those had always been part of the film since the script stage. They actually helped me as I was writing the story because it felt wonderful to cut [to black] instead of giving away information. That also helped me with the structure of time: we [as viewers] understand that stuff has happened, but not what, exactly.

We spend all our time with Antonio, and we get to know him as a protagonist, but there are so many parts of him that remain hidden, both to himself and to the audience. Do you see these gaps in the narrative relating to his unknowability?
That’s absolutely right: they provide a way of knowing Antonio through the eyes of others. He’s the kind of character who doesn’t think of the consequences of his actions, but we can get to know him based on them.

How did you approach writing a character whose drive is so abstract? Is it like pure desire that doesn’t have a target yet?
This film is about exploring the idea of pleasure in multiple ways, but for example, there are little pleasures that can put you in danger or in a liminal situation. Not necessarily, but it can be pleasurable. I’ve always had in mind an ambiguous character who doesn’t know the meaning of his path yet but wants something. This [act of] wanting something is also enigmatic. But honestly, I don’t think that he doesn’t know what he wants; it’s just not very clear. He actually thinks of himself as someone who is incapable of falling in love.

Also, there is this constellation of characters that circle around him; how did you conceive of them?
They are another way for us to get to know Antonio, and I like this idea of a constellation because it was important to prompt a dialogue with how we are relating to each other nowadays. How are we giving and receiving affection? Antonio’s idea of pleasure is deeply associated with egoism: to receive pleasure, you need to be selfish. I think this character is part of what’s happening now, especially in Argentina, but in this sentimental way, it touches on larger themes of intimacy.

I love that you use the word “sentimental”, which is how I would describe your filmmaking: libidinous and sentimental. Why do you like starting scenes in the middle of the action?
It’s really my fear, as a scriptwriter, of giving away [too much] information. I conceive of stories with different layers that imply a lot, so I believe that’s why. To be fair, I’d say that the characters maybe talk too much [laughs], but it was necessary for what we were doing here. On the other hand, sometimes, the characters are trying to say something that they can’t express, so part of that is the impossibility of communication.

How did you work with your lead actor to get a visceral performance out of him despite him being unreliable in his words? He has to embody the theme of the whole film.
It was a big challenge! I’d been working with actors who are friends of mine, but I didn’t know anyone who was 19 or 20 for the role. Max was starring in a lot of plays, and this is his first feature film. We rehearsed a lot, for almost a year, developing a strong bond: I needed an actor who could complete this [written] character. I hope this is the beginning of a lovely career for him.