Karim Aïnouz on Motel Destino

Motels – the scuzzier, sleazier siblings of the more opulent hotels – have long provided rich backdrops for cinema. They’ve served as ephemeral hideouts for various characters on the lam throughout film history, from Marion Crane in Psycho to Thelma and Louise. They’re also dens of lust, locations for torrid affairs, dirty weekends, and general sexual mischief. Fresh from making his English-language debut with the period drama Firebrand, Brazilian director Karim Aïnouz returns to his homeland to explore the many possibilities of these liminal spaces in Motel Destino, an erotic thriller set in the claustrophobic confines of a roadside sex motel.

“I love those places,” Aïnouz tells me enthusiastically over Zoom. “I’ve always loved going there, I’ve always appreciated the fact that these places exist.” He explains that he finds these inexpensive, roadside hotels rented by the hour to be both exciting locales for sexual wonder, and quite problematic. “Countries that need those places are countries that are critical about sexuality and sexual freedom,” he explains. “Obviously, being Brazilian, it’s a very common space, and I thought, How come this hasn’t been done before? This is such an incredible space to talk about sexuality, to talk about freedom, to talk about danger.”

He also viewed Motel Destino as a chance to make a genre film after being pigeonholed as an arthouse filmmaker in Europe. “Coming from the South, you’re normally expected to do drama,” he says. “And I think working within the codes of genre has always been a dream of mine… so I thought the motel had a lot of elements that could be amazing food for a sexual thriller.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, the film is unabashed in its depictions of carnality. “Why not?” he asks when I ask about his film's abundance of sex scenes. “Like, we shoot people having breakfast, we shoot people fucking, we shoot people walking by the sea. It's life, you know what I mean?” It seems like Motel Destino was particularly freeing following Firebrand, his buttoned-up Tudor court drama starring Alicia Vikander and Jude Law. “I was just coming out of an experience where I was doing a film where everybody was covered,” he says. “Doing a period film like that, I was just thirsty for a filmic experience that was more visceral, that was less constrained within the clothes and the codes of the time.”

A relatively new phenomenon in the world of film is the intimacy coordinator, the person who ensures the filming of sex scenes is consensual and respectful for all those involved. Aïnouz took time to adjust to this new person on set, who in the case of Motel Destino was Roberta Serrado. “I think the first time I had an intimacy coordinator was in Firebrand," he recalls. “And I was surprised. It felt very threatening to me because I would never in my entire life think of abusing a human being, let alone an actor who is in a vulnerable position. So for me, I took it as like, are people not trusting me?" He also struggled with the go-between nature of the role. "It's like having a threesome without wanting to have a threesome. You have this person in the middle that you don't know what to do with because what you want is the person on the other side.”

He’s clearly sceptical, but understands their importance, particularly post #MeToo. “It is 2025, and there has been so much abuse done within the film industry, in the past and the present, so I felt like, why not? If this is a figure that's going to create a safe space for the actors, more the better.” It sounds like he found a way to compromise on Motel Destino. “It was great," he says of working with Serrado. "It was fantastic working with her because she did all the choreography for the sex scenes. And it’s not only doing sex scenes, they need to have a meaning in the story.”

And what a juicy story it is. On the run after a botched hit, young gangster Heraldo hides out in the titular motel, only to find himself drawn into the tempestuous relationship between the married couple, Dayana and Elias, who own the establishment. Though the film begins with Heraldo threatening Dayana, their relationship later becomes more tender, despite the swaggering, overbearing presence of Elias, played with an easy malevolence by Fábio Assunção.

“They [Heraldo and Dayana] seem like they're enemies,” Aïnouz explains. “What I was interested in is how that relationship starts with violence, but it becomes a relationship of solidarity. I mean, any love or sexual relationship involves solidarity.” Given that Motel Destino is heavily inspired by film noir, Dayana is very much a femme fatale figure whose motivations are complex. "Slowly, and this is very ambiguous, [Heraldo] becomes an ally for [Dayana's] plan. In a way, she's using him, but at the same time, I think there is a second level of that relationship, which is that they are in love. And I think they feel stronger together than they would feel separately. So I was very interested in how this initial contact, which is branded in the world of violence, could actually become love… it becomes the raison d’être of the movie.”

---

Motel Destino is released 9 May by Curzon