Marco Berger | El intercambio (The Exchange) / 2023

sex change

by Douglas Messerli

 

Alex Aguilera and Marco Berger (screenplay), Marco Berger (director) El intercambio (The Exchange) / 2023 [22 minutes]

 

Best friends Mateo (Franco Mosqueiras) and Lucas (Gonzalo Garrido) motorbike into town to visit the local bar. There Mateo picks up a girl, Lucia (Irune Porcel), telling his friend that he’ll be staying over at his father’s hotel that night, and brings Lucia home, where upstairs his grandmother lives.

 

        They have sex and she decides to stay the night, remarking on the beauty of his penis, not the size necessarily, but the simple looks of it; he meanwhile suggests that he likes her “pussy.”

       By the time he wakes, Lucia is gone, Mateo looking everywhere for her. The reason, we soon discover, is quite serious, and it is here that our standard heterosexual sex story is transformed into something like a fairy tale, or more specifically a kind of metamorphoses akin to Ovid’s sexual tales. For when Mateo has to pee, he discovers that she has taken off with his penis, leaving him with her vagina.

       Troubled by the incident, although not particularly surprised by its utter absurdity, Mateo calls Lucas to come immediately, reporting the problem. Luca arrives, totally intrigued by the situation, as the two boys set out to find the whereabouts of Lucia so that Mateo might get his penis back and return the female part to its rightful owner. But the more they search, the further away she seems to have gone, and by evening Lucas is more than a little intrigued to witness what his friend now looks like “down below.” Finally, after some lengthy urging, Mateo reveals his transformation, Lucas, a virgin, quite in awe of it.

       Little by little, it dawns on him that his friend might help resolve his situation. Since he’s never before fucked a girl, mightn’t he explore the territory with his friend to help guide him. And after all, there’s no reason to presume that Lucia is not using his instrument in the meantime.

       It doesn’t take much coaxing before Mateo agrees, helping his friend place it properly into the “right” hole and leading him carefully through what for him is also a new experiment. In fact, the two utterly enjoy their sex.

       The next day they continue their search, finally hooking up with Lucia. Mateo and she sit for a while on the beach, he finally returning to the waiting Lucas, who’s now eager to see if she has returned his penis as he has claimed she has.

       Again, after some coaxing, Mateo shows him his penis, Lucas responding that he’s never had a penis before. Maybe his friend could share that experience with him as well.

       It’s clear that Mateo is not at all against that possibility, and, as Lucas goes riding off breaks into full smile, obviously looking forward to the day when the two might share another new experience. 

       Argentinian director Marco Berger, known for his films Butterfly (2015), Taekwondo (2016), The Blonde One (2019), and Absent (2011) and writer Alex Aguilera have obviously been convinced that they’ve found the perfect metaphor for explaining how two boys can come to have sex without all the macho fears of sexual parts and gender, revealing the fact that sex between boys is just, after all, sex, and there’s nothing to fear in same-sex experiments and expressions of friendship and love: sex, as they put it, “without fear, without labels, without holding back.”

       Only thing is, as almost any cis-gender heterosexual or homosexual will tell you, there is indeed a difference, and sex with a penis and a vagina is not at all like sex with two penises, each preferable to those who enjoy those specific differences.

      Sexual choice, moreover, is rarely simply a decision, but an inexplicable desire that transcends mere experimentation. The only answer for these two boys is which of the two experiences, if they feel now free try out homosexual sex, is preferable for them. And what if Lucas, as it seems likely, prefers the penis inserted in an anus (whose doesn’t matter), while Mateo prefers the feel of a vagina?

       Part II, I believe, would be the far more interesting part of this little fable. And, of course, there’s always the chance that they might equally like both. After all, Mateo has asked to be put on Lucia’s app. Maybe he plans for a latter “exchange” and is moving in a very different direction than even he imagines.

       I can only say that both boys are very cute and watching them have sex, no matter what you might want to imagine, was a pleasurable experience. If only I’d had a boyfriend like Mateo to let me experiment, I might have discovered heterosexual sex. But I doubt we would have altered the course of my sexuality. If nothing else, Berger’s little metamorphoses helps to explain why many macho men enjoy sex with transgender women, dare I say for some of them, a desire borne from a knowing pretense—not for the women, but for the men.

       And finally, we have to wonder—although typically the woman’s view is left unexpressed—how did Lucia like her borrowed cock? And with whom did she test it out?

 

Los Angeles, July 23, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (July 2023).