Short Takes: ‘Only Good Things’ (2025) ★★★

Is it enigmatic, or just pretentious? More
importantly, does either matter when you
get to see Liev Carlos and Lucas
Drummond naked?

It’s difficult to praise the work of Brazilian writer-director Daniel Nolasco without getting defensive. I liked his 2020 feature Dry Wind (a.k.a. Vento Seco), digging Nolasco’s 1970s-Joe Gage-meets-1980s-neon-noir aesthetic and how he presents gay desire like a 1980s queer teen-ager who just got his hands on a copy of Honcho. However, the explicitness of the movie—and I’m talking about the uncut version I wished I’d purchased when the DVD was still in print, not the edited version streaming on Prime and Dekkoo—makes it easy for cinema snobs (not The Cinema Snob) to dismiss Nolasco as just a high class pornographer, as if that’s a bad thing.

Nolasco’s 2025 film Only Good Things (a.k.a. Apenas Coisas Boas) has many of the elements of Dry Wind: vivid photography, attractive actors with an exhibitionist streak, and trans actress Renata Cavalho, albeit in a significantly smaller role. However, Nolasco’s narrative is less direct this time out, which makes it harder to embrace. I liked it upon reflection, but I can see it pissing off many viewers.

Only Good Things opens in 1984, when Marcelo (curly-haired and very cute Liev Carlos) crashes his motorcycle while riding through the Brazilian countryside, the cause of the accident as odd as it is startling. He’s discovered by a passing rancher, Antônio (Lucas Drummond, really selling that ’stache), who takes the unconscious biker back to his rustic farmhouse to tend to his injuries, as well as admire his cock and taste his blood (how Saltburn!). Later, when Marcelo is still impaired enough to require assistance undressing for a shower but healed enough to get horny, it’s Antônio cock that gets admired. And tasted (no money shot, though).

A romance develops, though Antônio is wary, certain Marcelo will leave him at any moment. “There’s nothing here for you,” he reminds Marcelo repeatedly, almost daring him to leave. But what threatens this relationship isn’t Marcelo possibly growing bored with farm life but by Antônio’s homophobic father stepping up his intimidation tactics in an attempt to force his son to sell his land.

Though the first half of the movie moves slowly, with a little too much time devoted to capturing Antônio’s routine (milking cows, herding cattle, cheese making), I was very much invested in his story. Then there’s a time jump to present day. Antônio, now played by Fernando Libonati, is in his sixties, living in a São Paulo high rise and seemingly inhabiting a completely different film. The switch is jarring, and it turned me against the movie, never mind that the second half also features some full-frontal nudity from Igor Leoni, as Antônio’s assistant Eduardo. But the more I thought about it the more I realized that Antônio is an unreliable narrator. That realization led to a kinder view of the movie. Still, I prefer the movie’s first half, even if it is belied by the second.