Juanma Carrillo | Caníbales (Cannibals) / 2009

burned up

by Douglas Messerli

 

Juanma Carrillo (screenwriter and director) Caníbales (Cannibals) / 2009 [19 minutes]

 

In the 19-minute film, accompanied a low grinding score as if it were some kind of horror film, Spanish director Juanma Carrillo takes the viewer into a world that many heterosexuals may not know of, the world of cruising. This cruising ground is a rather open park evidently 10-minutes outside of Madrid.

    The central figure goes to the park in search of something that is not quite apparent until the very end of the film. What we do see in this short film is dozens of men wandering the space, some waiting until they can hook up with another, some already involved in sucking, fucking duos, threesomes, or in one case a foursome. Many are young and cute, others old and shunned. Like the gay world in general, they represent all kinds of individuals, some lean and appealing, others tough, brawny, and even brutal looking.  

 

     The camera, like the voyeurs who also wander this park, takes us through what becomes almost a maze of these individuals, revealing one by one, men showing off their bodies or those already engaged in sex—reminding me a bit like the “can you believe it” exploitation documentaries of the 1960s such as Mondo Cane, directed by the team of Gualtiero Jacopetti, Paolo Cavara, and Franco E. Prosperi.

 

      For a gay man, the hunt for sexual gratification in a world where the only other primary “hunting ground” is their local gay bar, is actually somewhat alluring despite the film’s evil-sounding title. These are not, even metaphorically speaking, cannibals, but rather men seeking pleasure, and although the behavior of these men might seem distasteful to many, gay men have long realized that sometimes a part just filled with men ready to openly engage in sex if preferable

to heavy-drinking meat-racks of gay bar life.

      Carrillo’s film, however, as we eventually discover is a moralistic fable. The wanderer, whose eyes are witnessing this forbidden world, we finally discover is a woman on the search for her husband, whom in discover in the final fames on all fours getting fucked, having just sucked off another man who leaves soon after spotting the intrusive female.

 

     Through the burning photos of married couples displayed throughout the credits, the film seems to suggest that the entire park was made up of married men, cheating through gay sex on their wives. In some respects that may be partially true. These men clearly do not feel comfortable to visit the local gay bars, and the public bathrooms that once served as anonymous gay sexual undergrounds have mostly been closed and reconceived to discourage gay sex. For men who have been unable to come out and have either willingly or through their families forcibly entered into heterosexual marriages, such parks are their only alternative sexual outlet.

 

Los Angeles, July 16, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (July 2024).