Review: “From Beginning to End” Tells the Story of Two Brothers (Who Are Also Lovers)

First, ewwwwww!

That was my first thought when I saw the trailer last year for From Beginning to End, a new Brazilian film about a love affair between two biological brothers. Was such a film really necessary?

But I’ll admit: when the lights are out and the curtains are drawn, the storyline does hold sort of a perversely intriguing premise. If nothing else, it’s certainly something I’ve never seen before.

Sadly, the finished film, which is currently playing NewFest: The New York LGBT Film Festival, is an almost completely wasted opportunity.

The first half of the film, which is by far the most successful, tells the story of two young brothers who are … unusually “intimate.” Everyone close to them senses how close they are.

Is this a bad thing? The father worries it might eventually turn sexual, but the mother (well-played Júlia Lemmertz and easily the most interesting character in the film) accepts it for whatever it is, openly telling the older son that she will accept him no matter what.

Some of the scenes and dialogue here are very effective with some interesting subtext: one brother is born with his eyes closed while the other is born with his eyes open. And everything in life has two sides, the mother tells her children: a good side and a bad side.

Still, we quickly get what’s going on here, and soon the movie soon starts to feel like it’s simply spinning its wheels.

Halfway through, the movie flashes forward fifteen years. With the death of their mother and step-father, the two brothers (now played by two extremely handsome actors, Rafael Cardoso and João Gabriel Vasconcellos who also closely resemble their younger acting counterparts) suddenly decide to have sex.

João Gabriel Vasconcellos (left) and Rafael Cardoso

Have they had sex before? It seems like their first time, but that seems hard to believe given their earlier closeness – an intimacy that surely persisted all through puberty. In any event, it’s not exactly clear.

Soon they’re full-fledged lovers, living together and engaged in lots of passionate, soft-core-type sex scenes. Suffice to say: I wouldn’t kick either of them out of bed.

Where does the story go from here? To the film’s great credit, it doesn’t take the obvious route, with the two of them having to keep their “forbidden love” a secret, only to have it eventually be exposed by a prying neighbor, and then their having to take a stand, teaching those with the heart to see that true love knows no boundaries, blah, blah, blah.

But unfortunately, while it doesn’t take this obvious storyline, it doesn’t offer much in the way of a different story either. What drama exists is a very slight storyline about a long-distance love affair. 

In short, this could literally be a story about any two lovers. The filmmaker, Aluisio Abranches, is, of course, free to tell any story he wants, but it frankly seems bizarre that what may be the world’s first love story between two brothers (and which is set-up in the first half as being about just such an incestuous relationship) suddenly decides not to “go into” the complicated feelings and circumstances that might surround such a relationship.