Gabriel Mascaro's Neon Bull is a beguiling experience, a film which unfolds among the back drop of vaquejada, a traditional exhibition sport in which cowboys try to pull bulls down to the ground by their tales. Told through the eyes of Iremar, a handsome cowboy, who works for the events, Neon Bull is a sensual exploration of masculinity and the relationship between humanity and beast, which keeps the viewer at a distance from its characters, as if to force the viewer to come to their own conclusions about what exactly the filmmakers are trying to say. Neon Bull's languid pacing is sure to frustrate some viewers but what Gabriel Mascaro has created is an intimate study of rodeo life, one that feels much more like a documentary than any constructed narrative. There is no narrative drive to Neon Bull, instead this is a film that simply wishes to examine the lifestyle of these characters, observing them on a day to day basis much like a fly-on-the-wall documentary. Iremar is a character who works in the dirt, performing backbreaking work as he tends to the bulls, feeding and prepping them for the competitions. Home for him is the back of the truck that they use to transport the animals from show to show, and while Iremar is good at his job, his real dream is to become a clothing designer. Neon Bull is enigmatic yet transporting, with Marsano seemingly having something to say about societies preconceived strict constructs of masculinity and femininity. While tending to the bulls, Neon Bull displays a barnyard earthiness brought to life with a somewhat muted earthy color pallet of browns and yellows which effectively transport the viewer into Iremar's masculine world. As the audience learns of Iremar's true passion for fashion design, Mascaro slowly inserts flashes of bright, vivid neon colors into this earthy color palette, visually capturing the conflict inside Iremar between to what we as a society view as very different worlds. Neon Bull presents things that shouldn't make sense together, challenging our preconceived notions and desire to classify everything independently. Even some of the dialogue supports this idea, with Iremar explaining to Caca, the closest thing he has to a daughter, that "Ice Cream comes from cow fat", with Caca simply unable to accept that two things so different couldn't go together to create something special. Neon Bull's beautifully rendered cinematography effectively wanders throughout these characters environment, defining it for the audience while using expressionistic lighting that evokes a sense of wonder about simply life. Gabriel Mascaro's Neon Bull's thematic elements are ambiguous yet endlessly fascinating, offering a transfixing experience that is well worth your time.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorLove of all things cinema brought me here. Archives
June 2023
|