On the lunar path Inspiration for any artist is matter so subtle that it is hardly possible to explain its appearance in terms familiar to the eye and ear. Someone's muse visits almost every day, someone - on big holidays, and someone, perhaps, for a lifetime and will not wait for its appearance, perfectly managing a set of acquired professional skills. It seemed that the Brazilian Jean Garrett, who missed the stars from the sky, belonged to the latter category of artists: he worked slowly in the possessions of the Tenth Musa, filmed criminal thrillers, erotic dramas, flirted with horror a little... Not to say that the film was bad – average. All his works quite safely fit into the blossoming movie exploitation in the mid-70s, well, and later in the pornochanchadu that sprouted from the mother tree on the fertile Brazilian soil. But once the capricious hostess decided to inquire about the workdays of one of her adepts - and gave the untalented, as it turned out, the director her look. As a result, the godless came to light a luxurious mystical drama “The Power of Senses”, in which the Lovecraftian plot, the atmosphericity of Latin American magical realism and the sensual romance of erotic cinema were magically intertwined, in which Senor Garrett definitely knew a lot.
If we talk about today, the tape can be compared to the work of Night Shyamalan, who revised Tim Burton mixed with adult films. But in the era when the Brazilian director shot his picture, it is somehow so overtly difficult to find analogues. Moreover, if you retell the plot to a person who is well acquainted with the history of cinema, he will immediately say that he has probably already seen it somewhere. Well, in fact, what can be squeezed out of the story of a writer who, in search of a quiet place for creativity, comes to a coastal village and very quickly finds out that people inhabit it, to put it mildly, with strangeness. Some of them don’t seem to be human. Soon the family curse intervenes, which led the hero to this enchanted place, followed by an unsuccessful attempt to escape from the rock with all the ensuing and, finally, a distance acquaintance with Dagon ... (that is, sorry, with a charming sexual monster). In general, the viewer saw all this before Garrett (although not to say that Lovecraft was actively filmed in the 70s), all this he saw after and will see for as long as, probably, there is a movie.
However, “The Power of Senses” did not care about the originality of the plot, as well as any accusations of plagiarism, since the main thing here is not what, but how it is served. Garrett is like a waiter in an expensive restaurant so masterfully arranges the appliances, so politely winds around the client, so beautifully serves the dish that it becomes absolutely irrelevant what is hidden behind the elegant leaves of the salad, and in general - is there anything in the middle.
The director simply "does it beautifully." Instead of a suspense thriller, which seems to escalate the dark soundtrack of symphonic works of classics, he draws an endlessly sad sketch in which the passing of a person from life is perceived not as a tragedy, but as a sensual romance with Death, in which numerous erotic episodes become a prelude to the last final intercourse. By the way, contrary to the usual for Brazilian cinema (and Garrett himself) naturalistic, the love scenes in the film are shot emphatically picture, staged, as far as possible from naturalness - but very beautiful. And for the apotheosis, in which naked bodies merge together in the lunar path against the background of the absolute blackness of the ocean, you can forgive the author all his previous work, covered with gray patina of boredom. “The Power of Feelings” is filmed as if another person has nothing to do with the ordinary Garrett.
This other Garrett, like the Pied Piper from an ancient legend, carries with him a magical atmosphere of another world, painted by the ghostly light of the full moon. In this world, people at night are transformed into other, free and dangerous beings, living only by the senses, leaving the mind on the day side of the planet. In the morning they do not remember what happened at night. In the morning, they again turn into boring gray residents of a modest fishing village. They stop being in the morning. And only Flavio, a writer, a person with imagination and the ability to look from the outside, can see both of these hypostases and choose between a boring life or a free Death. Perhaps, to some extent, the director himself was afraid of his revelation, which made his career very modest. But who knows how it was actually there. After all, Jean Garrett left his life, barely crossing the threshold of the 50th anniversary - suddenly he too was called by the lunar path of the beautiful Death? .