The whores and the fights of Rua Guaicurus

I got married at the Second Civil Registry Office in Belo Horizonte, on Rua dos Guaranis, in the hyper-center of the capital of Minas Gerais. In the same area, on Rua Guaicurus, also named in the Tupi language, other (supposedly) more ephemeral contracts of economic-affective relationships are celebrated. Here, not even the metropolitan geography separates the new wives from the old whores. Marriage and prostitution, after all, have always been laying down together in history's bed. But no one is scared by long-term conjugal consents – I received gifts, look at that – while crowds of well-intentioned people are outraged and upset with women who honor ten-minute agreements.

João Borges offers us, with his cinema, an opportunity to rethink the seemingly insurmountable differences that displace sex workers to imaginary zones of unimportance. To elaborate approchements, Rua Guaicurus (2018) seeks to manifest what is common and ordinary in the territory whose name, in its original sense, evokes dirt and villainy, predicates easily (and falsely) associated with the activities that occur there.

Preliminaries: real stories, persistently collected by the director, gave rise to a script staged by a professional actress – Ariadina Paulino, who plays a newcomer to the industry – and two “non-actresses” – veterans Shirley Dias and Elizabeth dos Santos. Rua Guaicurus approaches the contemporary bacchanal between documentary and fiction, brushing up against other filmic bodies classified as “hybrid”. Neither here nor there, we are talking about a vigorous trend, swelled by works such as Branco Sai, Preto Fica (2014) and Mato Seco Em Chamas (2022), by Adirley Queirós (the latter, co-directed by Joana Pimenta), or, in the panorama of regional production, the intriguing Baronesa (2017), by Juliana Antunes. By breaking down cinematic barriers, Rua Guaicurus shakes up spectator transactions. In this one-hour-and-fifteen-minute affective-economic contract, the program parameters are never fully on the table.

In fact, hybridity seems to be, first and foremost, a necessary strategy for the investigations proposed by the film, revealing potentially humanizing connections and knowledge. João Borges erects an enunciative structure capable of recovering (or recreating) experiences normally prohibited by justifiable suspicions: prostitutes have always been aimed by cameras, and almost never in a flattering way. Often, “being filmed” comes up against the limits of consent. The reenactment, therefore, is the result of a careful negotiation between desire, fear and the responsibility of elevating subjects who have been, over time, eliminated from the public arena for undermining socially instituted rules and feminine positions. I want to say that the depreciation of prostitutes is not fortuitous; stigmatizing discourses are continually mobilized so that other women are content with their own prisons. The fear of being targeted as a whore is one of the ideological tools that has historically guaranteed our peaceful and good behavior. In the allegorical protagonism of Ariadina, Shirley and Beth, an attempt is made to overcome silences without ratifying victimizations.

In a second way, the flirtation between fiction and documentary provokes and suggests, yes, our ambiguous treatment of the film. Rua Guaicurus shakes indexicality and belief in the face of the image. This approach is capable of awakening more cautious understandings of that which is not only put in evidence, but in doubt. Fiction invades the documentary in the stitching of well-defined narrative arcs and in alternate shots that are impossible in a spontaneous take. On the other hand, the documentary invades fiction when we hear a voice, in the motel's hallways, that announces: “It's a film, a real film. It will be shown in the cinema later”, but only to return us to uncertainty, since the man who is astonished by the filming apparatus is Carlos Francisco – from Bacurau (2019) and Mars One (2022) –, who acts as a client. Another example: if at the beginning of the film Ariadina’s character, the “fiery Michelle from Montes Claros”, says she resorts to prostitution because of the pain heightened by family neglect, a loving phone call from her mother, from whom she hides nothing, seems to relativize these justifications. Everything that is seen and said is under suspicion. In any case, we know, at least since Eduardo Coutinho, that the real authorship of good prose matters little: the value of truth lies elsewhere.

Furthermore, the fictional content of Rua Guaicurus highlights the performative dimension of prostitution itself, nothing more than a representation of femininity aimed at generating pleasure – certainly poorly paid and performed in precarious conditions, there is no arguing about that (in fact, there is, let’s listen to the demands of Brazilian sex workers). The issue is that no one sells themselves – although everyone rents themselves out – for the exploitation of capital. What is offered, at least there, are hyperbolic performances of heterosexuality – “Black Friday pussy, it’s on sale!” – to appease the intermittent cycles of excitement and frustration typical of consumer society. As Beth, already carved by practice, advises, “you have to have a face”, practice the high-pitched voice of pleasure and rehearse possible fetishes with plastic dicks. No one is born a call girl. They become one.

In the critical fortunes of Rua Guaicurus , commercially released only in 2022 due to the Covid-19 pandemic, one thing or another is mentioned about the sex scenes, the unavoidable act of the brothel spectacle. Some accuse Borges of exaggeration, as if his film aimed to arouse voyeurism. The depiction of sex has always been a tension for cinema – or almost an ethical impediment, if we consider that a theorist like André Bazin placed it on the same level as the obscene depiction of death. Borges, however, seems committed to breaking taboos.

This sex is not just sex: it is a profession. In a square meter of a brothel, Rua Guaicurus expands universes of creativity and irreverence. It penetrates intimacies to value autonomy, highlight skills and add prostitutes to the horde of proletarians from all over the world. On screen and in the fight, we can unite.

Text originally published on the Cine Humberto Mauro Mais platform.