Gabriel Mascaro Neon Bull Analysis

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Gabriel Mascaro’s unadorned sophomore feature, “Neon Bull”, brings to the big screen the lives of a few individuals connected to the Vaquejada, the typical rodeo of the Northeast Brazil.

Iremar (Juliano Cazarré) is an experienced bull handler who prepares the opulent white animals before being released in an arena where two men on horseback will persecute and throw them on the ground with a violent tail tug. This is what he does to make a living, but his real dream is to become a fashion designer. In his spare time, he goes to swampy fields where he collects pieces of broken mannequins and other discarded props that he uses to feed his fashion fantasy.
Usually, he has the company of Cacá (Alyne Santana), a sharp-tongued adolescent girl who love horses and whose mother, a dancer named Galega (Maeve Jinkings), is also the …show more content…

Many of these verbal tensions come from Cacá’s stubbornness and wry commentaries that leave her mother and the men frequently out of their minds.

Even occasionally infusing a spontaneous humor, “Neon Bull” is a tough watch due to the constant violence that takes both the physical and emotional forms. This factor is counterpointed by explicit images of intense sexual pleasure, when Galega accepts a newly arrived attractive cowboy named Junior (Vinícius de Oliveira, the kid from “Central Station”) as her sexual partner, and when Iremar becomes physically attracted to a pregnant woman, Geise (Samya De Lavor), a perfume seller during the day and a security guard at a knitting factory during the night.

All these dualisms - violence and pleasure, ugly and beautiful, hostile and respectful, reality and dream - make “Neon Bull” such a powerful drama, enhanced by a confident structure and fabulous acting from the cast of professional and non-professional

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