In a world alarmingly reminiscent of our pandemic, touch has been made taboo, leading people to commit thoughtless acts because the temptation and desire are sometimes stronger. To respond to this impulse, there is Matta and Matto’s hotel, where everything you want is at the touch of a fingertip, but nothing is offered without a hard price to pay.
In Daniel Filipe’s famous poem, A Invenção do Amor (marvellously brought to the screen by António Campos), he invents a dystopian society where love has been forbidden: “A man, a woman (…)/ You have to find them before it’s too late/ Before the example bears fruit/ Before the urgent invention of love runs riot”. Directors Bianca Caderas and Kerstin Zemp probably didn’t read Daniel Filipe, but in the aftermath of their lockdowns they invented a society where touch is forbidden. Reduced to their spheres of circulation, the inhabitants discover the services of a hotel where their various sensory fantasies can be satisfied. However, the innkeepers’ business model is quite perverse: in order to feel touch, customers have to sacrifice their tactility. Put in another way, by creating a desire out of frustration, the capitalist system finds a mechanism for transitive touch, where the consumer receives the service but loses the power of “sensory self-determination”. An enigmatic parable open to multiple readings. (Ricardo Vieira Lisboa)
