Boi Neon (Gabriel Mascaro, 2015): glitter in the void

Aquarium, photograph by A/Z available with other photographs and drawings at Fine Art America; 

some images of Gabriel Mascaro's films; 

"We are superficial... profoundly so..."
James St. James

Before directing this film, Gabriel Mascaro directed documentaries—a "genre" that has an outstanding tradition in Brazil, with innovative directors such as Eduardo Coutinho and João Moreira Salles.

The way Mascaro handled his interviewees in movies such as Um lugar ao sol (2009) doesn't seen, however, very convincing. What he got from most of the Brazilian squillionaires he then interviewed were mostly rationalizations, so shallow as to make even the spectator feel pathetic. The only exception was perhaps a French woman. If these people were really so shallow, why to interview them? And there isn't any irony there, or at least it is not perceptible (but this might be on purpose).

On the other hand, Mascaro's documentaries displayed already the same kind of visual and audio sensibility that makes Boi Neon so interesting. This is the case, for instance, of The Beetle KFZ-1348—the first movie Mascaro directed (together with Marcelo Pedroso), in 2008 (the soundtrack is by Tomaz Alves de Souza): 

See also: 

- The House that Jack Built's simple equation;

- du Coen Brothers (plus Tarantino) à française;

- Mommy-Momo (Dolan); 

- Amat Escalante (& Werner Herzog): Basilisk's Cinema;

- desubicarse (Lucrecia Martel — La Niña Santa, 2007);

- Rogério Sganzerla; 

- Julio Bressane;

- Cinema Novo's Judgment Day &/or why it came to last;

- Sonatine (Takeshi Kitano, 1993), Masahiro Shinoda & the tyranny of evil men;

- Cinema of Uruguay (Pablo Stoll); 

- Heitor Dhalia;
- El Estudiante, political movie (learning from Argentina);

And also:
- Sobre o fio de José Padilha;
- "ERRATA list" for Narrative Outbreak in Contemporary Conflict Cinema;
- Narrative Self-Deconstruction in Contemporary Cinema;
- Bases histórico-conceituais para a crítica cinematográfica não representacional;

- Woody Allen as Impossible Cassandra; 

- Non-Realism and Ontology in Gus van Sant's Paranoid Park; 

- Nature's Horror and Grand Style and Lars von Trier's Antichrist;