Since Tá e Fala Comigo, Felipe Sholl has been honing his own perspective on desire and affection. In Streets of Glory, this growing focus is confirmed—the director seems more relaxed, more courageous, and finally comfortable filming what many still avoid: the body, the taboo, the void. It’s a film that breathes the chaos of Rio at night, amidst sweat, light, and the lack thereof.
Gabriel (Caio Macedo) arrives in the city after his grandmother’s death, trying to find life where before there was only routine. A history professor, he becomes an observer and participant in what he researches: the men who sell pleasure and survive on the desires of others. Until he meets Adriano (Alejandro Claveaux), a Uruguayan male prostitute who becomes his escape—and downfall. What begins as curiosity becomes dependence; love, here, is a risky experience.
Felipe Sholl films the city as an emotional extension of the characters. The streets of Glória, Lapa, and Cinelândia are not just settings, they are states of mind. There’s always something pulsing—a siren, party music, a passing body. The use of handheld camera and anamorphic lens zooms in, compresses, and creates a sense of urgency. The exception is the mirror scene—the turning point, when the lens closes and Gabriel’s world closes in.
The relationship between Gabriel and Adriano is intense and restless, made of presence and absence. Caio Macedo delivers a delicate performance, built on gaze, hesitation, and restrained surrender. Alejandro Claveaux balances vulnerability and mystery, avoiding the caricature of either the “savior” or the “lost.” The chemistry between the two is raw, unpredictable, almost dangerous.
With a score that ranges from Letrux to silence, the film moves between documentary and delirium. Sex work, grief, and addiction appear not as a shock, but as a consequence of a body that yearns to feel—and of an affection that sometimes hurts more than it heals.
Ruas da Glória is a portrait of love and its disasters. Of the loneliness that not even the other’s body can resolve. Of the city that continues to live while we fall apart inside. Felipe Sholl films with courage and intimacy, transforming Rio’s nocturnal chaos into a mirror of what we still try to understand within ourselves.
You can find Ruas da Glória at Festival do Rio.
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