Martín Bautista | Entre amigos (Between Friends) / 2010

the opportunity

by Douglas Messerli

 

Marisol Torres (screenplay), Martín Bautista (director) Entre amigos (Between Friends) / 2010

[5 minutes]

 

Since the turn of the century, some of the most interesting gay films have been made by Mexican filmmakers. Beyond the early films of figures such as René Cardona, Jr,. Alejandro Jodowsky, Arturo Ripstein, Jaime Humberto Hermosillo, Enrique Gómez Vadillo, and Alfonso Cuarón, younger directors such as Julián Hernández, Roberto Fiesco, Julio Hernández Cordón, and Antonio Serrano have become staples in the LGBTQ+ film festivals, the first two being the most significant filmmakers of the new Mexican gay film scene.

 

     Martín Bautista’s very short (only 5 minutes) film follows in their tradition. In this case two young friends appear in a hospital Noé and Jorge (Shaanty González and Víctor Rodríguez) wherein one of them has been somewhat injured, his arm in a sling and bruises around his fate, perhaps an auto accident, while his friend plays video games, while also verbally repeating the noise the machine that the intravenous tube makes as it pumps the necessary fluids into his friend.

     Bored and frustrated by the situation the bedridden patient asks his friend if he might do him a favor by jacking him off.  

   At first his friend seems somewhat offended by the suggestion, gathering up his backpack and appearing read to leave, but friendship duty calls, and he proceeds to start the masturbation. Before too long, however, he is completely taken over by the sexual situation and attempts to kiss his friend, an action greeted with a rejection by calling him a puto, a gay whore. Sweat, however, has gathered on the eager boy’s face, and it’s clear he has an erection which hints he’s now fully ready to challenge the other’s boy’s rejection, and perhaps, probably, the boys might be ready to engage in their first real gay sexual act. We gather from the song that follows, “I’m Confessing That I Love You” that they do succeed in expressing their hidden love.

 

    Some commentators suggest that perhaps the boys have mutually jacked off together previously, but now that the other has become basically feminized by his passive position, the other is finally able to proceed to engage in his long-hidden desires.

     The film, accordingly, is both high erotic and comic at the very same moment, as the two boys are finally “in a position” to engage in their real sexual fantasies.

 

Los Angeles, July 21, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema Blog (July 2024).