Luis Fernando Midence | Te Toca (Your Turn) / 2019

playing jenga

by Douglas Messerli

 

Luis Fernando Midence and Marel Ramírez (screenplay), Luis Fernando Midence (director) Te Toca (Your Turn) / 2019 [11 minutes]

 

Santiago (Marel Ramírez), and some of his best friends, Lucía (Xiomara González), Carlos (Diego Sierra), and Pablo (Luis Vargas) are together, several of them seated around a table playing Jenga

when one of them mentions that a female acquaintance’s former boyfriend had been diagnosed as HIV-positive (although he describes it simply as AIDS), and almost immediately they all go off on a discussion of how terrible it is to fuck every pretty thing in sight, how disgusting to have such a disease, and other such crude remarks. One of them finally summarizes their hostile views of gays: “They should just have a holocaust with them or something like that.” Another agrees “They’re all going to die,” a woman asserting, “We’re all going to die.” The response is another swipe at gay men, “But not for being a whore.”

     In a flashback, we see Santiago sitting in a bath tube fully clothed, tears running down his eyes. His cellphone rings, but refused to even answer it. Finally, his sister Andrea (María José Batres), calls out to him, having dropped by after not hearing from him for 3 days, only to find him now completely dressed and under water. She wonders if he and his boyfriend Fernando have been fighting again, but he explains that, in fact, they have broken up. After some insistence he finally

explains to her what is wrong. Handing her the document, she perceives that a report has arrived suggesting that he is HIV-positive.

      He’s understandably terrified that, if nothing else, it will be the central issue with which he must contend for the rest of his life, the constant pill-taking, the fears of death, and the mockery of those around him. Although his sister assures him that things will turn out all right, and that she will help him get through the initial problems, Santi is perhaps most frightened about the loss of friends.

      When Santi returns to the present in his mind, he is still at the table with his friends, and it’s his turn to pull out a block with destabilizing the entire tower of wooden blocks. But he suddenly realizes it is also “his turn” to speak, immediately announcing that he is “Seropositive.” One of the friends with his hand on the boy’s shoulder, doesn’t even know what that means, but when told that it means Santiago is HIV-positive, he quickly removes his hand. He wanted to tell them, Santi explains, because they are his best friends.

       But, of course, they cannot remove their ugly words of a few moments earlier, despite their attempts to say, obviously, that they weren’t referring to him, of course. “We weren’t talking about you.” But Santi knows that, without their comprehending it, they were. Any attack on being gay is an attack on him, now openly gay, as well.

      Whether or not Santiago will be able to forgive his friends or they will begin to disappear from his life, the lesson is that if you care about others, you need to know more about AIDS and being HIV, and what it means to be gay.

      This work by Guatemalan filmmaker Luis Fernando Midence sounds to my ears far too much like the numerous short films now being made to help the heterosexual community comprehend gay issues, and to reassure the gay community that their voices are being heard. It has almost become a new genre, sort of the reverse of the “Boys, Beware!” genre. You might describe it as “Gays, Beware,” since these films often warn the gay community of the need for education about their straight friends.

      Midence, however, is a seasoned director, having made several previous films and movies since, and the work fortunately doesn’t creak quite as heavily as do the educational films of which I’m speaking. But it does move terribly close to that territory and have several other well-meaning films by talented directors I’ve recently seen. Perhaps if we had a bit of deeper characterization of Santiago’s friends, we might better understand their own dilemmas in trying to comprehend something that seems so very outside their own experiences but which could just as easily affect them, despite one of the straight boys insisting that he doesn’t just go to be with anyone. What he doesn’t seem to understand is that ff he goes to bed with “anyone” he too might be infected. AIDS, as we have repeated over and over, is not a gay disease, but an equal opportunity virus.

       One also has to put this in the context of the deep conservativeness of Guatemalan culture at present, and the violence all these young people are daily facing in Guatemala City where the action of the film takes place.

       At the end of this short film, Santiago does remove a block without toppling the structure and lays it gently on the top. Perhaps he can also rescue his friendships and help them to comprehend that what he facing can just as easily some other day face them.

 

Los Angeles, February 23, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (February 2024)