Jared Palomares and Andrew Perez | Hit Astray / 2023

the ghost of a possible lover

by Douglas Messerli

 

Jared Palomares (screenplay), Jared Palomares and Andrew Perez (directors) Hit Astray / 2023 [22 minutes]

 

Jared Palomares’ and Andrew Perez’ Hit Astray is a truly moving ghost story that has more relationship with The Ghost and Mrs. Muir than with any of the “haunting” tales that are released today.

     The film begins with four energetic and intelligent teens, Santi (Adrian Rodriguez-DiBella), Dylan (Aaron Guerrero), Natalie (Alondra Gonzalez), and Marco (Diego Garza) meeting up at a local small-town Texas skate-board park.   

      The group takes a long walk together, Natalie and Marco pairing up as do Dylan and Santi, good friends. Dylan moreover has just purchased tickets to a concert for a performance that Santi is absolutely jubilant about. In a moment alone with Dylan, Natalie questions her friend about when he plans to tell Santi how much he truly likes him, clearly suggesting, particularly given the cost of the expensive tickets, that she recognizes the love between them which both boys are obviously afraid to talk about—obfuscating instead with the existence of imaginary “other” girlfriends.

       Yet it is absolutely clear to the viewer that these two boys, perhaps not even comfortable with their own sexuality, are absolutely in love with each other.

        At different times in the day, in fact, they seem about to express their feelings, but each time interruptions get in their way, a call our from Marco that they are walking too slowly, a telephone message on one of their cellphones. And Santi returns home to his empty house—his mother is away on business in Tennessee—and only a few days later, it appears, finally hears again from his Dylan again, who calls to express his worry that he hasn’t heard from Natalie and Marco since their special day.

       Santi, busy cooking up something for his own dinner, attempts to reassure Dylan that everything is just fine. And when he mother calls shortly after, he tells her of Dylan’s call and worries.

        Evidently Santi has not been listening to the news, because his mother reports with some horror, that he couldn’t have been talking with Dylan, because he died three days earlier.

        Suddenly, as in works of such a genre, lights flicker and telephones ring, including an old land-line phone they still keep in the house. The call, of course, is from Dylan and Santi, at first, is absolutely terrified by the consequences.

        Yet he soon calms down, and finally answers the constant right of the old telephone, talking to his friend in a serious manner. Dylan does not know how he’s able to communicate with Santi, but in a long conversation he explains how he was short, soon after the group broke up, by a random series of gunshots. His body was found several days later.

        Most importantly, Santi is finally able to explain to the voice of the ghost how he loved him, and the ghost confirms his love as well. We realize that what Santi may be experiencing is simply a psychological breakdown, wherein he finally comes to terms with his own feelings and realizes what Dylan has also never been able to express to him.

         In a strange way, it is like coming out to the ghost of someone you loved, admitting to him what you could previously not have and in that admission coming to terms with oneself. If it is somewhat perverse, it nonetheless makes perfect psychological sense, a kind of projection of feeling in which the other cannot truly react. And in that respect, Palomares and Perez’ work is truly original, a new way of coming to terms with gay sexuality, no real negative responses permitted. In this world, you are freed from even admitting the truth to the other, only admitting it to yourself.

         The actors of this short film are truly likeable, and we would like to see a further continuation of their adventures, perhaps even developing a kind of Topper-like series wherein Santi is haunted by his former friend without being able to explain it to his family and friends, a gay love affair that continues even after death. Surely Carey Grant would have loved the idea.   

 

Los Angeles, February 7, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (February 2024).