Abram Cerda | Somebody Else / 2019

we don’t talk

by Douglas Messerli

 

Abram Cerda (screenwriter and director) Somebody Else / 2019 [7 minutes]

 

Like the central figure of this short film, directed by Abram Cerda, I have grown rather tired of watching gay couples, one of whom is still so closeted that he dates girls, while the other impatiently waits in the shadows for his lover to come out. Pacheco turns away from his friend at the end, with every good reason.

     In quick flashes that reveal the situation, Cerda presents us with the gay relationship of Abel (Ulysses Morazan) and Pacheco (Luis Lexander Mejia) who love their sex under covers, but one of whom, Pacheco, can simply no longer endure his lover’s attentions to the other sex.

     There’s nothing deep here, and Cerda’s film repeats what dozens of films before him have reiterated: it’s hard to maintain a queer relationship with a man who is still in the closet, who pretends to be, as the title suggests, “somebody else” from who he really is.

      The only question remains, do we need to see, yet again, another version of this endlessly repeated gay trope, particularly in 2019?

       The two cute boys might have wonderful “chemistry for each other” as the film tag argues, but since one wants a relationship which the other simply isn’t ready for, we know it will go nowhere, and yet another film will end in the screen growing dark if nothing else but from the director’s own frustration.

       Frankly, I’d rather visit their neighbors, even if they are a straight couple who in the dark of night wear Maga hats. Gay people need new subjects and new territory for their stories to be fully told. The first line of the film perhaps expresses my feelings: “It’s bullshit.” We need to move on.

 

Los Angeles, February 12, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (February 2024).