Marius Gabriel Stancu | È solo nella mia testa (It's Just in My Head) / 2020

friends and lovers

by Douglas Messerli

 

Marius Gabriel Stancu (screenwriter and director) È solo nella mia testa (It's Just in My Head) / 2020 [17 minutes]

 

Andreas (Claudio Segaluscio) and Alessandro (Carmine Fabbricatore) have known each other from childhood, and now every year they summer together as friends at a seaside resort, swimming, sunning themselves, and just hanging out with one another. But now the summer is nearly over and Andreas, in particular, is in a funk, the mood he often gets each year when its time to return to his college studies and exams.

 

    Alessandro can stay on with his girlfriend for another week and then he must return to write his dissertation. His friend is so irritated by the situation that he leaves without even sharing in another swim with Alessandro.

     But we so recognize, if we haven’t been alerted by our gaydar, that Andreas is in love with Alessandro, and his irritation is not just because his vacation has come an end, but the fact that yet another year has passed without his friend even hinting that he might be homosexual.

    Andreas returns to his room, takes out a package of new snapshots he’s taken of himself and Alessandro, and chooses one to bring to bed with him as he masturbates.

    So far, the film has seemed far too familiar, yet another example of the inevitable breakup of best friends when the straight boy discovers that for all this time the other has been gay and secretly in love with him.

     Fortunately, Italian director Marius Gabriel Stancu surprises us. Some time seems to have passed, when Alessandro, now home again, checks his mailbox to find an envelope containing the very photos that we’ve just seen Andreas peruse. To some of these photos he’s attached notes telling his friend, after all these years, the real reasons for what he has long described as Andreas’ moods of “nostalgia.” He admits that all these years that he’s been in love with his Alessandro, waiting for a sign which never came.

      Alessandro attempts to call his old buddy to assure him that his feelings have not been such a secret, and that he has shares his sentiments. It appears that Andreas has gone to the beach; Alessandro follows, the two of them meeting up in the water with the romantic Palolo Baltaro ditty “Minha mente, somente” playing in the background.

     Instead of the standard breakup of old friends, these long-time besties realize that their friendship has turned into love. Unfortunately, however, this short film’s conceit is even more irritating than the predictability of the other. Although it’s lovely that the two may now be beginning a relationship, since we know absolutely nothing about them, its difficult to care about what happens in the end.

 

Los Angeles, May 30, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (May 2024).