Rudy Mancuso And Camila Mendes Explore People-Pleasing While Chasing Your Dreams In Prime Video’s ‘Música’

A new film made from the musical mind of Rudy Mancuso and also starring and executive produced by his real-life girlfriend Camila Mendes, unveils the healing properties of music.

Prime Video’s Música is a coming-of-age love story based around an aspiring creator, Rudy, as he navigates his love life, family dynamics, and culture while living with synesthesia, a condition that, according to the Cleveland Clinic, occurs when a person’s brain “routes sensory information through multiple unrelated senses,” in turn causing them to experience more than one sense simultaneously.

“For me, music has protected me in a lot of situations my entire life,” Mancuso, who also serves as the star of the film, told Blavity’s Shadow and Act. “It’s protected me from, not only situations, but emotions and sentiments that I couldn’t understand. And in make the film, I was, in a way, reliving those experiences. And it’s a very interesting psychological experiment, to relearn something as an adult that you were experiencing as a child or teenager. Iit reminded me just how important music is but also how therapeutic it is to be able to talk about it, let alone transforming it into a story.”

The main character, who is also named Rudy, moves throughout the world with an approach to life that makes him appear to be different than others — it is also important to note that he, like many others, also grapples with being a people pleaser.

These issues consume Rudy’s life — that is until he meets Isabella (Mendes), someone who not only meets him where he is but encourages him to take his dreams higher.

“Something that I found again, when watching this movie last night at the screening … I was reminded of this aspect that, you know, I myself can be a people pleaser, and you know, Rudy’s running around trying to appease everyone and make everyone happy,” Mendes told Blavity. “And that ultimately just actually hurts them and hurts himself in the process. We talk a lot about synesthesia in this movie, we talk a lot about the Brazilian American aspect. But there’s also this really beautiful coming-of-age story about, you know, staying true to yourself and being honest with yourself in order to actually forge your own path.”

Mendes continued: “It’s really powerful that Rudy has Isabella in his life in this movie to kind of instill that message. When you have these sort of pipe dreams, and especially with Rudy, I think what’s so funny about it is it’s like puppetry, which I think people have a tendency to make fun of people who do things like that. But Isabella looks at that and is like, ‘No, that’s actually really cool and different, and you should keep taking it to the next level.’ I think no matter how unique your dream is, that you should just keep going at it and see what you can do next that can take you to the next level.”

Mancuso hopes that after watching this story of Isabella and Rudy, others with big dreams won’t be afraid of taking their visions all the way to the top. 

“I hope that dreamers can be encouraged when hearing that line and when watching the film to just double down on their passion and double down on the vision and the dream — or you will, figuratively speaking, be stuck in the subway your whole life,” Mancuso concluded. 

Música is now streaming on Prime Video.