What animal are you? Many would argue that the only real differences between humans and beasts are our opposable thumbs and our sense of shame, and Gabriel Mascaro's alternately dusty and lurid Neon Bull falls into that camp. It looks at a makeshift family who work for a traveling rodeo in northeastern Brazil, including Iremar (Juliano Cazarré), an expert bull-handler whose true passion is fashion design; Zé (Carlos Pessoa), a portly fellow bull-handler who's very protective of his wank mags; comely truck driver Galega (Maeve Jinkings), who often does sexy dances wearing Iremar's designs as well as a horsehead mask and hooves; and Galega's young daughter Cacá (Alyne Santana), who feels neglected by her mother and suffers an unconscionable amount of casual abuse. Neon Bull is David Cronenberg's Crash set in the world of Brazilian rodeo — not just in the way that both the bipeds and the cattle live in cramped conditions, but also the sheer amount of sex and nudity that occur in very close proximity to the animals. Granted, it's less bestial than zoophilic; nobody fucks a bull any more than they fucked a car in Crash, and the camera pans away from the horse's erect penis before it ejaculates during the semen-stealing caper, so your precious humanity is protected.
Comments are closed.
