“Anitta’s Revealing Shower Scene with Director in Netflix Documentary ‘Larissa: The Other Side of Anitta”

Anitta, the Brazilian pop sensation, takes a very personal approach with the director of her upcoming Netflix documentary, “Larissa: The Other Side of Anitta,” set to debut on March 6. In a truly bold move, she bares it all by showering alongside her childhood friend and film director, Pedro Cantelmo. This unconventional tactic certainly generates curiosity and interest in the documentary.

Cantelmo, who collaborated with João Wainer as co-director, reveals in the film that Anitta, also known as Larissa de Macedo Machado, personally requested him to produce a new documentary about her. Surprisingly, this isn’t Anitta’s first Netflix documentary, as she previously starred in “Vai Anitta” in 2018. Cantelmo admits to being perplexed initially, stating in a voice-over, “She’s Anitta. She could have had anyone assist with this project.”

Further into the documentary, Cantelmo discloses that Anitta specifically sought out someone who had known her long before her rise to stardom, aiming to capture the contrast between her on-stage persona as Anitta and her off-stage identity as Larissa. Both Cantelmo and Anitta hail from the same humble neighborhood of Honório Gurgel in Rio de Janeiro and shared a history of growing up together.

But it quickly becomes clear that she—or perhaps screenplay writer Maria Ribeiro—had another reason they wanted Cantelmo around. It’s because Cantelmo had a crush on Larissa as a kid, and she knows it. Both Anitta and the filmmakers clearly wanted to exploit that sexual tension for all it was worth.

No where is that more clear than in the shocking scene in which Anitta, who is 31, instructs her director to strip down naked in the shower so that she can wash him.

First, Anitta demurely asks Cantelmo if he’s coming to bed, during one of the many scenes where he films her various states of undress in a hotel room.

“Yes, I’m taking a shower and then I’ll sleep,” Cantelmo responds.

“Then I’ll wash you.”

“What?”

“I’ll wash you,” Anitta explains. “So you won’t smell like—what is it? Come here. See, just a little to get rid of this gross cigarette smell.”

So, Cantelmo carefully sets up a camera in the bathroom, aimed at the hotel bathroom’s glass shower door. He and Anitta, both naked, step into the shower together, where Anitta begins to run her hands all over his body to “wash” him. The glass door is pretty foggy, and at one point Anitta wipes away the fog with her arm to reveal that, yes, her breasts are fully out.

This is more than flirting: This is full-on foreplay, being filmed for Netflix audiences worldwide.

Yet when Cantelmo tries to wash Anitta back, she pushes his hands away. “No, I know how to shower,” she tells him in Portuguese. “It’s you who doesn’t know.”

Call me an American prude if you want, but I was shocked by this scene. It’s one thing to flirt with your director and childhood friend a little bit here and there, it’s another to film you both naked in the shower together.

You can’t help but feel for Cantelmo, especially when Anitta eventually seems to grow tired of basking in his attention, and instead starts ignoring him completely. (Cantelmo later says in a voiceover that he “messed up,” but doesn’t elaborate beyond that.)

Maybe it wasn’t all for the cameras, but it certainly was at least a little bit of a put-upon performance. Why else would they turn the cameras on? Sex sells, and it seems Anitta knows that all too well.

Larissa: The Other Side of Anitta will begin streaming on Netflix on Thursday, March 6.