‘Private Desert’ Review: Into the Valley of Repression

Set in Brazil, where the crime rates against transgender and queer people are among the highest in the world, the L.G.B.T.Q. drama “Private Desert” follows a brawny police academy instructor, Daniel (Antonio Saboia), during a period of intense vulnerability — and, ultimately, transformation.

In an extended opening sequence, we see Daniel tending to his aging father, an ex-military commander, and dealing with the shame of suspension and public notoriety in the wake of a confrontation that lands a rookie cop in a coma. Emotionally, Daniel relies entirely on his internet girlfriend, Sara, a blonde bombshell whom he has never met in person.

Then, suddenly, Sara stops replying to his texts.

The director Aly Muritiba keeps the mood ambiguous as Daniel, desperate to connect with his virtual lover in the flesh, skips town and heads 2,000 miles north to Sara’s rural stomping grounds. There, he slaps missing person posters with her selfie on every street corner. Is Daniel a huge romantic or are his actions motivated by something more sinister?

Unsurprisingly, Sara (Pedro Fasanaro) is not entirely who she claims to be. Muritiba delves into her stifling home life and religious upbringing, giving the online catfish a human face.

With all its narrative twists, the film loses momentum as it settles into Sara’s point of view, which takes the air out of Daniel’s fastidiously built-up crisis even as Sara’s perspective (and Fasanaro’s performance) compels in its own right.

Still, Muritiba understands that any portrait of masculinity that fixates too intensely on the cruelties and self-denials of machista culture is futile. Instead, he finds grace in stolen moments of tenderness — an embrace between longtime pals beneath cherry-red lights, a dance-floor kiss as Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart” swells in the background. These moments are rife with complications, but amid a landscape of violence and repression, they shine like beacons of what could be.

Private Desert
Not rated. In Portuguese, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 1 minute. In theaters.