Primos (2019) – When Love Is Simpler Than the World Around It

Title: Primos / en. Cousins / sr. Rođaci
Year: 2019
Directors: Mauro Carvalho and Thiago Cazado
Cast: Thiago Cazado, Paulo Sousa
Genre: Drama / Romance
Running time: 83 min
Country of origin: Brazil

There are films I watch, enjoy, and then almost forget within a few days. There are also those that make me think, question my own views, or wonder what I'd do in the main character's place. And then, quite unexpectedly, along comes a film that makes me think: "Now this is the kind of life I'd like to live!"

Primos (Cousins) from 2019 is exactly that kind of film for me. And let me be honest straight away — maybe that's why my rating isn't entirely objective. But who ever said a review has to be free of personal desires, experiences, and the occasional fantasy?

Let me try to be a bit more serious, then. Though, on reflection, I wasn't joking either.

Two Men, One House, and a Story That Doesn't Rush to Complicate Itself

The plot of this Brazilian film is set in a quiet, almost sleepy environment where young Lucas lives with his highly religious aunt. His everyday life is fairly simple, predictable, and ordered according to the rules of the environment he lives in.

And then Mario arrives at their home — a distant cousin who has recently been released from prison. Two young men, with different characters and different life experiences, suddenly find themselves under the same roof.

It's clear from the start that something will happen between them. You don't need to be a particularly experienced viewer to sense which direction the story is heading. In fact, the beginning of the film is somewhat formulaic. We have a reserved young man, another who brings restlessness into his ordered world, and circumstances that practically force them to spend time together.

Nothing we haven't seen before.

However, what surprised me was the speed with which the film gets to the essence of their relationship. There's no endless beating around the bush, no dozens of misunderstandings, no artificial postponement of what is fairly obvious to everyone, including the two of them.

The attraction develops, boundaries shift, and the relationship takes on a shape that begins to mean much more to both of them than a passing fling.

And that's precisely where the film becomes interesting.

A Love Story That's Perhaps Too Ideal. And That's Exactly Why I Like It.

If you're expecting a film full of major conflicts, dramatic breakups, jealous scenes, and emotional collapses, Primos might surprise you. Here, at least as far as the main characters are concerned, things unfold almost unrealistically smoothly.

At one point I even wondered whether it was all a little too ideal.

Two men meet, are drawn to each other, grow close, and develop a relationship without as many complications as we're used to seeing in gay films.

And isn't it interesting that such a relationship seems almost unreal to us on screen?

We're so used to stories in which gay love has to be a problem, forbidden territory, a source of suffering, or the prelude to someone's tragedy, that perfectly ordinary happiness sometimes seems like science fiction.

It was precisely that simplicity that won me over.

I'm not claiming their relationship is perfect, nor that everything would look like that in real life. But while I was watching the film, I felt no need to look for a problem where there wasn't one.

Sometimes it's quite enough to watch two men who are happy together.

Without anyone constantly having to explain to them why it shouldn't be that way.

When Almost the Entire Film Is Carried by Just Two Actors

A large part of the film belongs, in practice, to just the two leads, Paulo Sousa as Lucas and Thiago Cazado as Mario.

And that is at once its greatest strength and its potential weakness.

On one hand, there aren't many subplots to distract attention. The camera, the dialogue, and the atmosphere remain focused on the two of them. Their closeness, small gestures, glances, and the way they behave towards each other become the central part of the film.

On the other hand, there are moments when almost nothing concrete happens. There's no big event driving the plot, no dramatic revelation, no reason for the viewer to sit on the edge of their seat.

But I didn't feel the film became boring because of that.

Quite the opposite — I caught myself following them more than the plot itself. How they look at each other, how they talk, how they behave when they're alone, and how they behave when a third person appears around them.

The actors did their job very well. Their characters are different enough for the relationship to be interesting, and at the same time there's a convincing chemistry between them.

I wouldn't say their roles are an acting spectacle, but this film doesn't need that. The two of them seem natural, relaxed, and convincing enough that I had no difficulty believing in the relationship developing in front of the camera.

And for this kind of film, that may be the most important thing of all.

Religion, Other People's Noses, and a Little Magic

Of course, it wouldn't be particularly interesting if the whole story stayed closed between four walls.

The outside world exists, after all.

Religion runs through the film, and not just as an incidental feature of the setting, but as part of everyday life, expectations, and rules of behaviour.

There's also the environment that has its own opinion about who should be with whom, how one should behave, and what is considered acceptable.

In other words, the classic small-town setting in which certain people would find it much easier to solve other people's love problems than their own.

And just when I expected someone's nose, stuck where it doesn't belong, to seriously complicate the plot, the film surprised me.

Without revealing details, I can say the resolution isn't quite what I expected. Where I anticipated conflict and more serious drama, the story takes a somewhat different path.

It's all seasoned with a few comic scenes, slightly absurd situations, and attempts to influence the course of events even with the help of magic.

Yes, there's a bit of voodoo in there too.

It seems that for some people it isn't enough to meddle in other people's relationships — they'd like to enlist supernatural forces as well.

These moments bring the necessary dose of humour and prevent the film from turning into a completely linear love story. At the same time, they carry an interesting message about the human need to control what we don't like or don't understand.

Does the Film Have Flaws? Of Course.

It would be unfair of me to ignore, out of personal fondness, what didn't quite work.

First of all, the script is fairly simple in places. Some situations seem to exist only to take us to the next step in the two main characters' relationship.

The beginning is predictable, and some parts of the film could have been more dynamic.

Also, the relatively rapid establishment of their relationship means that some of the potential tension disappears early in the story. Instead of wondering whether something will happen between them, we mostly follow how their relationship will develop further.

Some will see that as a shortcoming.

For me, it wasn't decisive.

Maybe because I'd grown attached enough to the characters that I didn't need something big to happen every ten minutes.

Or maybe simply because I wanted to watch them together.

A Happy Ending Isn't Always a Cinematic Sin

I won't reveal much about the ending itself, but I can say that Primos belongs to that group of films I walk out of satisfied.

And yes, it has that so-often-mocked "and they lived happily ever after" feel.

In other circumstances I might have considered such an ending too simple, even a little naive. Here, however, it suited me perfectly.

Why?

Because not every gay love story has to end in loss, renunciation, or tragedy to have value.

Not every character has to pay a high price for what they feel. Not every relationship has to go through hell to prove to us that it's real.

Sometimes the most provocative thing a gay film can do is simply to allow its characters to be happy.

I also took one simple thought away from the film: often, the people standing outside a relationship are far more burdened by it than those actually living in it.

Two people can find something that suits them, understand each other, and be content, while the whole world around them keeps asking whether it's right.

Maybe it would be easier for everyone if we managed other people's lives a little less.

My Final Impression

Primos isn't a film that will change the history of cinema. It doesn't have a complex script, major twists at every turn, or a particularly ambitious cinematic structure.

But it has what sometimes means much more to me — a relationship I can believe in, characters I root for, and an atmosphere I want to stay in a little longer.

It has tenderness, attraction, humour, closeness, and that lovely feeling that some things simply happen because two people want them to happen.

That's why I'm giving it a high rating, fully aware that there's a fair amount of personal bias in it.

Someone else might see only a charming, slightly naive Brazilian gay romance.

I saw something more.

I saw a story that reminds me that love doesn't always have to be complicated, that happiness doesn't have to be earned through suffering, and that sometimes the life we long for doesn't have to look spectacular.

Maybe it's enough that there's someone with whom we want to share a perfectly ordinary day.

And if you ask me whether I'd like to live in the world of this film, the answer is simple: yes. Without much hesitation.

I'd just check, just in case, whether any of the neighbours own a voodoo doll.

I first watched it on Dekkoo; check current availability.