"I'll drink myself to death because of you," two different characters in "Neon Bull" sing to themselves at different points in director Gabriel Mascaro's sleek, intriguing account of rural northeastern Brazilian rodeo life. The desperation of those lyrics is kept mostly under wraps in the story itself, though the movie's full of sexual desire, fulfilled one way or the other, both animal and human.
"Neon Bull" sets up a deliberate contrast between its grubby fairgrounds, dusty bullpens and earthy textures _ the movie's literally full of dung, along with smattering of other bodily substances _ and the gliding elegance of the camerawork. The Brazilian version of rodeo is the vaquejada, and Mascaro's characters travel from one to the next as an ad hoc family. Juliano Cazarre is Iremar, the roustabout with a difference: He dreams of a life working in a clothing factory, and he's saving up for a sewing machine in the meantime. Maeve Jinkings plays the truck driver and mechanic, who makes a little money on the side as an exotic dancer, with clothes designed by Iremar.
The mechanic's preteen daughter (Alyne Santana) yearns for a horse, a symbol of elegance among the bulls rarely out of frame in Mascaro's film. She's a mistreated but hardy soul, in a movie full of them.
The beauty of the film is undeniable, as is the cruelty of the bull's lives. (This is not a picture for animal-sensitive viewers.) After a while that beauty grows a little arch, and it ends up glamorizing the lives on screen in ways some will find striking. I couldn't quite trust it. It's a deliberate approach. But it serves to distance us from the very real, very tactile locales and lives of "Neon Bull."
