a list of rules for being in love
by Douglas
Messerli
Carlos Ocho
(screenwriter and director) Versátil (Versatile) / 2017 [15 minutes]
Álex (Eudald Font)
and Hugo (Christian Cánovas) return home from some event particularly hot for
one another. Although they’ve been going together for more than six months, they
seem sexually ravenous, hardly able to wait to get back into the apartment. As
usual, Hugo starts kissing
Álex, who hugs the
wall waiting for Hugo to fuck him. But this time Hugo wants to be fucked,
startling Álex who now thinks of himself as a bottom.
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They grow angry with each another, putting their
shirts back on before finally sitting down a discussion. Hugo summarizes the situation.
When their relationship started, Álex fucked him beautifully, and he loved it.
But now everything has changed, Álex having gotten used to being the fucked.
What happened to the versatility of their relationship?
Álex wonders
if Hugo now has fantasies of having sex with others, to which Hugo replies, “Not
consciously. What does that mean Álex, Hugo explaining that perhaps he dreams
he might imagine others. The other night someone in his dream was fucking him
so pleasantly. “I mean, I woke up wanting you to fuck me.”
They again try to have sex, this time with Álex
fucking Hugo, but he soon claims it’s just not turning him on. Hugo
understandably wants to know why it no longer works for his companion, Álex explaining
that was in his early days when he was taking drugs, “I’d put my dick anywhere.”
Moreover, he argues somewhat incoherently, that was in their early days. Now
that they’re in a relationship….
“So you’re telling me we need to get back
into the ‘crazyness,'” is that what you’re saying.”
Álex insists that he’s simply a bottom
that’s all.
And suddenly they both realize that they
haven’t really talked about their relationship and discussed what each of them
needs. Hugo has a theory that there are 4 things necessary for a relationship
to work. “The first one is the loving part.” Meaning, he explains to tell each
other that they love them. To hold hands in the street. To say cute things. To
cuddle. And they have that. He’s not complaining.
“The second one is to have a friend in
your boyfriend.” Someone, he argues, you can party and get drunk with, to cry
with, to dance.
The third area is about family. When you move
into together you buy a pet, a dog….(Álex shakes his head in the negative)…or a
cat. And you end creating a true family.
And the final area is of course sex. Álex
turns away. “And our sex is fine…listen. But I think people have this animal
instinct and sometimes we need naughty sex…a great fuck!” There sex is okay, but he’s begun to wonder
about the passivity of it all. Namely Álex’s passiveness.
Even Álex recognizes the truth of what
he’s saying. Perhaps they might find a solution…and he suggests the obvious: Perhaps
he wouldn’t mind if sometimes Hugo had sex with someone else. “I’m not thrilled
with the idea, but…if it’s going to satisfy you.” Alex takes out his cellphone,
looking up Grindr.
The action infuriates Hugo. But Álex
explains that if they love without another they need to find a solution.
Hugo agrees that he loves him. But
adds, “Sometimes love is not enough.”
“Enough for what?”
“To
keep a relationship going.”
He explains that he just wants one
person. And he’d like the person to be able to embrace of the qualities he’s
seeking. Moreover, he’d like Álex to be that person. And perhaps, he admits, he
realizes not that it’s not going to be that way and perhaps they should break
up.
He begins to leave, with Álex shouting
what he sees as the absurdity of the situation, that he’s breaking up just
because he can’t fuck him.
Hugo’s question back, however, is
interesting “You want everyone else to fuck me?”
Álex pleads for him not to leave.
“If you have to be drugged to fuck me, you’re
off if I leave.” And so it does.
There’s
something to strongly to be argued for versatility in sex most certainly. And my
companion and I have never played the roles of top or bottom. But neither have we
ever felt to need to be able to experience sex in every possible way if one
does not prefer a method or manner. It seems to be that both these men are
strangely delimited binary thinkers without the willingness to either try out
other methods or imagine themselves involved in various different sexual
possibilities. Although Hugo argues for elements in a relationship other than
sex, it’s also apparent that he has fetishized and glorified sex above all the
others.
At the same time, it appears that Álex is quite stubborn in sticking to the one sexual
action that he’s grown used to when apparently he once quite enjoyed the other
as well. If Hugo is prescriptive, Álex is at least lazy or unadventurous.
Both lack true versatility, the “ability
to adapt or be adapted to many different functions or activities.” Change, for
both of them, seems impossible. If one truly believes in versatility and
change, one doesn’t start with a list of rules. Love and marriage of any kind,
I’ve found, has little to do with rational thought.
Spanish writer and director Carlos
Ocho appears to promote Hugo’s point of view without fully wanting to explore
their equal failures which might have made this film a truly fascinating work
of art.
Los Angeles, May
28, 2024
Reprinted from My
Queer Cinema (May 2024).
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