Miguel Lafuente | El primer beso (The First Kiss) / 2023

kiss and run

by Douglas Messerli

 

Miguel Lafuente (screenwriter and director) El primer beso (The First Kiss) / 2023 [14 minutes]

 

Since 2010 Spanish director Miguel Lafuente has written and directed about 8 short films and, more recently, as begin a TV series. His films, which have grown increasingly in popularity, concern family and situations in which young gay men are often ostracized from it and bullied by outside forces as well. The most despairing of these may be his My Brother (2015), where both sons of a homophobic provincial family are gay, the younger having been virtually abused by his own parents to such a degree that he commits suicide, with the elder’s parents attempt to cover up. Yet in nearly all of these works, there is also a truly positive and hopeful element that, without precisely cheerleading, provides the LGBTQ community with true sympathy and hope.

      Since 2012, moreover, Lafuente has served as the artistic director of the Madrid International LGBTI+ Film Festival, LesGaiCineMad.

      The most recent short film, The First Kiss has almost all the typical elements of a Lafuente film. A young teen, Andi (Julio Bohigas-Couto) has discovered he is gay, but is afraid to come out to his mother, who he perceives as quite conservative. His father, as he describes him later in the film, could not “give a shit.” But he has come out to his loving straight elder brother Raúl (Álvaro Lucas) who despite his macho teasing of his virgin brother, looks after him and provides him with the kind of fatherly love the younger boy seems to be missing.

       This 14-minute film begins with changing shirts several times, finally choosing one of his brother’s, admitting that he has his very first date. He and Raúl live in a boring suburban community, and he’s taking the train into Madrid to meet up with a on-line friend for the very first time, clearly exited as well as being a bit frightened, particularly when his brother insists it will probably end in his first kiss and forces a couple of condoms on him, “Just in case.”

 

     In the city, the shy provincial boy meets up with the gregarious Néstor (Aritz Itoiz), who takes his new friend to a gay bookstore, to several others of his favorite spots, and ends in one of Madrid’s most notable gathering spots in the Chueca district. Andi finds himself thrilled by the people and the surrounding action, skateboarders, street performers, couples kissing, café diners sipping on coffee nearby and the numerous other street activities that simply do not exist in his “dead” as he describes it, hometown.

       At the end of the day, the two boys discover themselves in a small park sitting on children’s swings, checking their text messages and promising to get together again soon. Finally, as Néstor readies to leave, he leans over to give Andi his famous “first kiss,” but at that very moment three

park hoodlums (Javier Amann, Jandro Cambello, and Samuel Díaz Sánchez) suddenly appear out of nowhere reading to bully and beat the two gay boys.

      Néstor goes on the run, with two of the boys running off after him, while the shocked and puzzled Andi remains, shoved, thrown to the concrete, and kicked by one boy who finally, losing interest in his passive victim, runs after his friends in their chase of Néstor.

      In the very next scene, Andi is back in his bedroom, desperately trying to contact his Madrid friend to find out if he’s survived the attack. He finds that Néstor is okay, after they chased him into the Metro; the boy apologizes for running off and leaving him behind. But all Andi can wonder, in his confused and dazed condition is if his new friend will want to meet up with him again after what has happened. And finally, the whole terror of the ordeal comes over him in as in a wave and he begins to cry, his brother holding him close to comfort him.

    This time when his mother enters, it is far more gently and understanding that her previous appearance in the film. She asks her son if he’s ready to go to the police, where they plan to report the attack. Clearly she now knows of Andi’s sexuality, has assimilated it, and, like Andi’s brother, is ready to help him through his difficult spots.

      One can only hope that someday, this boy can look back upon his first kiss and laugh, perceiving it as being something so momentous that it brought out bullies into the streets in an attempt to squelch the power of the young boys’ blossoming love. In the end, sometimes it is only through humor that gay men can face their lot in life.

 

Los Angeles, April 16, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (April 2024).