To enjoy Daniel Nolasco’s Dry Wind let’s summarize the Queerguru People Ranking System or P.Rank. It pretty much captures how the main characters fit together.
1-Is the level of serial killer cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer. We promise you’re not Jeffrey Dahmer. You barely even touch carbs
2-3-Nobody is a 2-3. Unless they are jealous, mean or damaged. Which you aren’t, are you? #thoughts&prayers
4-If you look like an 8 and act like a 2 you’re a 4. It’s mathematics
5 -is average. You’re a 5. I am a 5.That’s what an average is. #MakaAverageGreatAgain
6-7 -What everyone thinks they are. Because special
8 -You stand out in the crowd. The crowd stands around you. Every 6-7 hopes you might choose them. Because special.
9-The most attractive a person can be. Don’t move, grow or change. The spell can be broken.
10 -The Instagram filtered version of a 6
Sandro (Leandro Faria Lelo), is a 5. An ordinary middle aged bear with extra pounds on his belly and extra hairs on his back. Pretty average for a bear who knows the summer heat of youth is gone and winter is coming. Though engaged in a passionate affair with co-worker Ricardo, played by Allan Jacinto Santana, easily an 8, he has an obsessive unfulfilled fantasy for Maicon (Rafael Theophilo). Maicon is a hard 10. Unable to commit, Sandro fatefully drives Ricardo into the arms of Maicon. The ensuing mess downgrades sad Sandro from a suburban 5 to a vengeful vandalising 2.
Set in a factory in Brazil the film throws up a contrast between the melancholy monotony of a hopeless work life and a fantasy world of illicit sex celebrating submission. The melodrama suggests one is a coping mechanism for the other.
Shot with a flair that gives the hi-viz work uniforms a fizzy vibrancy it also has a pore plunging realism. The NSFW pornographic sticky bearded sex will make you check you did not accidentally swipe screens to one of those websites that you have heard of but not yet subscribed to, beyond the first free 30 days.
While Sandro is hard to like he does inspire sympathy. Especially as director Nolasco reveals his harrowing back story. Actor Lelo makes you compellingly unsure whether Sandro is beaten down, enjoys being beaten up or is just out to beat off. It depends on which of those you prefer how much you end up liking this slow moving, occasionally hardcore but inexorable tale of men working out how they fit together.
P.S. DRY WIND is screening as part of Wicked Queer’s Virtual Film Festival https://www.wickedqueer.org/events/dry-wind
Review by Andrew HebdenQueerguru Contributing Editor ANDREW HEBDEN is a MEDIA & CULTURAL STUDIES graduate spending his career between London, Beijing and NYC as an expert in media and social trends. As part of the expanding minimalist FIRE movement he recently returned to the UK and lives in Soho. He devotes as much time as possible to the movies, theatre and the gym. His favorite thing is to try something (anything) new every day.
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Labels: 2020, brazilian, Daniel Nolasco, drama
