Night Stage BFI Flare

Actor and politician begin affair, develop public sex fetish. As fame beckons, they crave riskier encounters.

Night Stage, Filipe Matzembacher, Marcio Reolon

Walking into the BFI Southbank home of BFI Flare, the BFI’s LGBTQIA+ film festival for my screening I suddenly felt like I was underdressed and totally uncool. This festival has become a staple of the London film calendar and has become an amazing celebration of queer cinema from across the globe, with big names and exciting new voices in equal measure. This year’s festival set the tone withThe Wedding Banquet (2025), a remake of Ang Lee’s 1993 film of the same name starring Bowen Yang and Lily Gladstone. I was there to see the festival’s closing film Night Stage (2025), pitched as a psychosexual thriller from Brazilian writer-directors Marcio Reolon and Filipe Matzembacher. As a lover of erotic thrillers and queer cinema in general, I was excited for this film, unfortunately I found myself checking my watch and leaving disappointed. 

The film centres on Matias (Gabriel Faryas), an actor from a small town who has come to the city for a new show by an experimental theatre company. He meets Rafael (Cirillo Luna), a ‘businessman’ who ‘doesn’t do second dates’, their carnal desires conflict with their ambition and threaten to destroy everything. First the things I enjoyed. The visuals in some scenes were interesting, the use of color and dynamic lighting stood out especially in the theatre and club scenes and the world of these characters is at once dark and neon lit and stark and exposing. Matias is lit very well and the Black body is represented beautifully. In the first scene they have sex there’s a really beautiful tone contrast. All the actors make the best out of a script which felt simultaneously under and overwritten. Henrique Barreira as Fabio, Matias’s roommate and theatrical rival stood out to me and he brings some much needed grounding to the film. 

“I was excited for this film, unfortunately I found myself checking my watch and leaving disappointed. ”

Night Stage is very much described as a story about two men who have a ‘public sex fetish’, and they do establish that they enjoy exhibitionism but it only really veers into “fetish” territory at certain points, I feel like this has been hammed up in the marketing for heterosexual audiences who are less familiar with the history of cruising and sex outdoors within gay culture. As a woman I do not feel as if I can comment fully on the way sex is depicted in the film but I feel as though there was an effort made to depict realism with a cinematic gloss, that renders the sex scenes sensual and sexy without seeming exploitative. There is a lot of sex in this film so you are glad it’s rendered well. While sex plays a part in the plot, what is really the driving force of the conflict within the narrative is the relentless ambition of the two protagonists, Matias wants the role of the straight lead in a national TV show and Rafael wants to be elected Mayor, both unwilling to compromise on these goals. The way the collision of their sexual desires and career ambitions plays out is intriguing at first and then goes to a place that I think is unbelievable and overwrought. 

I think rather than being an erotic thriller as a genre, the director has the ‘erotic’  elements working well but the ‘thriller’ part exists separately as  overly dramatic and contrived. This expression of cinema is definitely applaudable for what it is trying to do and it hopefully signals an exciting trend and we will see many more well made queer psychosexual thrillers with diverse casts. As a queer person, BFI Flare showing films like Night Stage and seeing them sell-out, demonstrates a real hunger for this type of movie magic and it was validating to be in a space that puts queer cinema in the place it deserves.

★ ★ ★

Release Date: March 29th, 2025 (BFI Flare)
Directed by Filipe Matzembacher, Marcio Reolon
Written by Filipe Matzembacher, Marcio Reolon
Produced by Jéssica Luz, Filipe Matzembacher, Marcio Reolon, Paola Wink
Starring Gabriel Faryas, Cirillo Luna, Henrique Barreira, Ivo Müller, Kaya Rodrigues, Larissa Sanguiné Cinematography by Luciana Baseggio
Distributor: m-appeal
Runtime: 119 minutes.