First, ewwwwww!

That was my first thought when I saw the trailer last year for From

Beginning to End, a new Brazilian film about a love affair between two

biological brothers. Was such a film really necessary?

But I’ll admit: when the lights are out and the curtains are drawn, the

storyline does hold sort of a perversely intriguing premise. If nothing else,

it’s certainly something I’ve never seen before.

Sadly, the finished film, which is currently playing NewFest: The New York

LGBT Film Festival, is an almost completely wasted opportunity.

The first half of the film, which is by far the most successful, tells the

story of two young brothers who are … unusually “intimate.” Everyone close to

them senses how close they are.

Is

this a bad thing? The father worries it might eventually turn sexual, but the

mother (well-played Júlia Lemmertz and easily the most interesting character in

the film) accepts it for whatever it is, openly telling the older son that she

will accept him no matter what.

Some

of the scenes and dialogue here are very effective with some interesting

subtext: one brother is born with his eyes closed while the other is born with

his eyes open. And everything in life has two sides, the mother tells her

children: a good side and a bad side.

Still,

we quickly get what’s going on here, and soon the movie soon starts to feel

like it’s simply spinning its wheels.

Halfway through, the movie flashes forward fifteen years. With the death of their

mother and step-father, the two brothers (now played by two extremely handsome

actors, Rafael Cardoso and João Gabriel Vasconcellos who also closely resemble

their younger acting counterparts) suddenly decide to have sex.

João Gabriel Vasconcellos

(left) and Rafael Cardoso

Have they had sex before? It seems like their first time, but that seems

hard to believe given their earlier closeness – an intimacy that surely

persisted all through puberty. In any event, it’s not exactly clear.

Soon they’re full-fledged lovers, living together and engaged in lots of

passionate, soft-core-type sex scenes. Suffice to say: I wouldn’t kick either

of them out of bed.

Where does the story go from here? To the film’s great credit, it doesn’t

take the obvious route, with the two of them having to keep their “forbidden

love” a secret, only to have it eventually be exposed by a prying neighbor, and

then their having to take a stand, teaching those with the heart to see that

true love knows no boundaries, blah, blah, blah.

But unfortunately, while it doesn’t take this obvious storyline, it doesn’t

offer much in the way of a different story either. What drama exists is a very

slight storyline about a long-distance love affair. 

In short, this could literally be a story about any two lovers. The

filmmaker, Aluisio Abranches, is, of course, free to tell any story he wants,

but it frankly seems bizarre that what may be the world’s first love story

between two brothers (and which is set-up in the first half as being about just

such an incestuous relationship) suddenly decides not to “go into” the

complicated feelings and circumstances that might surround such a relationship.

Look, a love story between two brothers simply isn’t a “universal” story:

most of us don’t feel this kind of attraction for our siblings (on the

contrary). So it’s particularly important for the filmmaker to let us inside

the heads and hearts of these particular characters, for us to get to know what

they’re feeling, to relate to it, or at least understand it.

But apart from blissful, unquestioning love, I had no idea what these two

men were feeling: they never experience even fleeting remorse or conflict or

doubt. Maybe that’s the point, but once they’re adults, what they’re doing and

feeling also never puts them in any real conflict with anyone else. Why was one

character born with his eyes open and the other closed? The movie doesn’t say.

It also doesn’t say anything about sex or love that hasn’t been said a thousand

times before.

It’s like someone had a provocative idea and set-up for a movie, but they

didn’t bother to write the second and third acts. Instead, they figured they

could get by with the “shocking” premise and lots of well-lit sex scenes (and,

it must be said, an effective musical score).

Hey, maybe that IS all the filmmakers need. The movie has been selling out

theaters in Brazil and has already made headlines all over the world.

I never thought I’d be saying this, but I watched a movie about two

incredibly hot brothers who have a passionate sexual affair … and I was mostly

bored.