say goodbye
by
Douglas Messerli
Leandro
Wenceslau (screenwriter and director) Enquanto Ainda é Tempo (While
There Is Still Time) / 2014 [14 minutes]
In
Brazilian director Leandro Wenceslau’s short film While There Is Still Time,
longtime friends discover that they are also in love with one another when Caio
(Thiago Aguiar) announces to his friend Lucas (Filipe Morais) that his father
has received a scholarship in Germany, and that he and his family will soon be
moving there.
Lucas first senses it as a kind of
betrayal. Why hasn’t his friend told him immediately, he wants to know. He
backs away for a short while from their intense relationship, the kind of
friendship where, at any moment, you expect the two to come together in a kiss.
But gradually the two high school boys do
return to some sense of normalcy. And just as we might have imagined, at a
point when Lucas asks Caio to help him put on a necklace, the two boys suddenly
find themselves in the middle of a deep kissing session, realizing, perhaps too
late, that they have truly loved one another all along.
Unfortunately, the film has not
established any of their previous relationship, and at no point do we see
either of these boys engage with their families, who seem well-attuned to their
son’s friendship and not particularly homophobic—although Caio does comment
that his father is committed to the entire family staying together, even though
they have long ago gone their separate ways.
Accordingly, we are simply told that
these two boys are in love without providing us with any previous evidence,
even if we can see it in the eyes and gestures from the first moment that they
communicate with one another in the film.
Before either the boys and their audience
realizes it, Lucas is rushing to the airport to say goodbye, perhaps forever,
to the boy he now realizes he loves. He presents him with a new necklace, a
cross, as a sign of his love.
So the film might have ended had not
Wenceslau created a strange melodramatic ending right out of a telenovela, a
form so popular in South America. As Lucas begins to leave the airport longue,
he appears to be hit by a car, people gathering around him to photograph the
event. Almost at the same moment, Caio suddenly appears, presumably having
miraculously convinced his family that he must stay on in Brazil. Lucas comes
round, and the two embrace, suggesting a very happy ending. Or is it, we must
wonder, simply the last image that Lucas imagines before dying? There’s no way
of knowing, and we feel cheated, either way, by the implausible ending.
Los
Angeles, February 27, 2024
Reprinted
from My Queer Cinema blog (February 2024).
.png)
No comments:
Post a Comment