Lucas Mac Dougall | Anochecer (Nightfall) / 2012

the territory of each other’s hands

by Douglas Messerli

 

Lucas Mac Dougall (screenwriter and director) Anochecer (Nightfall) / 2012 [9 minutes]

 

Lucas Mac Dougall’s Nightfall is almost a “best friends-turned-into-lovers-film” presented in the abstract. In this instance we are hardly told anything directly. This is primarily a movie of sound, with a lyrical piano score by Jorge Obeaga and the patter of heavy rain throughout, which perhaps explains the situation.

    A young teen (Leandro Gauto) stands in a boy’s bedroom, his backpack still strapped to his shoulder, as his friend (Juan Yarcho) drags in another mattress, the two of them placing it snugly up next to the boy’s own much higher bed. Obviously, due to the heavy rain the first boy has decided or been encouraged by the other to spend the night at his place. The boy to whom the room belongs climbs a small ladder to the linen closet to bring down bedding which the two lay out upon the bed and pat into place.  

     The second begins to strip off his T-shirt, which the guest notices out of the corner of his eye, and turns to watch. The now bed-ready friend lays down on his bed, checking his cellphone as the guest steps into his mattress on the floor. The other asks him what time he needs to leave, the guest responding 8:00. “We’ll set the clock for 7:00 then?” We have utterly no indication of where the guest for the night is going, but it is clear it’s not to school, since the other seems exempt from the hour. True to pattern of these tales, the second boy is obviously on his way to another place, whether for just the day or forever we can’t yet tell.

     The host checks his cellphone once again and turns off the lights. We hear only the heavy patter of the rain and crickets, the camera panning slowly over the room and its contents in the dark. The two boys, at their different levels, seem to be sleeping as the piano music returns, the guest switching positions, clearly not really sleeping well.

     Eventually he whispers to the other, “Are you asleep?” and when he receives no answer he lifts his head up to look into the higher bed and at the face of his apparently sleeping friend.

     You don’t have to be gay to know what’s troubling him. I’ve been in the very same position a couple of times in my life and I know the feeling. But unlike this guest positioned in almost hierarchical relationship with the other, I obeyed the symbolism of my placement. Our young backpacker, on his way to somewhere other, has evidently so such reservations, gradually moving up his hand along the side of the higher bed and feeling with his fingers for human flesh. He finds nothing, but obviously sensing his friend’s search, the other turns slightly, freeing his arm from under the covers.

 

   Eventually the guest feels the warmth of his fingers, the other moving his own fingers over those of the explorer as if to assent to the search of touch. Their fingers timidly explore the tiny territory of the back of each other’s hands, and by the time Obeaga’s piano score shifts keys, the floor-bound boy has joined his friend in the higher bed, sleeping as they cuddle up in the endless rain.

      Evidently, these friends were both ready to change their definition of themselves to lovers. But then we cannot know whether they will ever truly be able to consummate that new designation of their relationship since we have no idea where the other is going in the morning.

 

Los Angeles, July 8, 2021