Roberth Mendoza | Aviones de Papel (Paper Airplanes) / 2022

visitations from those who have disappeared

by Douglas Messerli

 

Roberth Mendoza (screenwriter and director) Aviones de Papel (Paper Airplanes) / 2022 [17 minutes]

 

Mateo (Santiago Cabrera), a 16-year-old, is having difficult times. He now lives with is grandmother Carmen, his mother having evidently left for Spain or perhaps have died. It is difficult to tell because Mateo, subject to visions of her, tells others that she’s in Spain, but is also told by another of the ghosts he sees that he needs to let her spirit go, which may mean she is dead. On top of all of this, early in the story, his grandmother has a heart attack and is sent to the hospital, her religious sister coming to stay with the boy. Never perhaps has the boy felt more alone.

      That other spirit, far more interesting than his mother, was a fellow classmate, Enrique (Alex Orellana) who, rumor has it, committed suicide when his parent discovered that he was gay. Clearly, it must be extremely difficult in a small farming community in the backlands of Ecuador (where this film was shot) to admit being gay. And who might one possibly hook up with in this world of macho homophobes. Mateo, although having a close female friend Christy, is also having to come to terms with being gay, and sends out paper airplanes, one of which has found its way to the football captain. And now rumor has it that Mateo is a fag, almost beaten for having been seen filming that team captain.

Meanwhile, Enrique begins showing up everyone, including in the locker room shower.

 

     But it is the spirit of Enrique, who most haunts him, and stays close to him throughout the film, asking him if he will please speak to his parents, which Mateo clearly cannot imagine doing. But the very persistence of the spirit of Enrique, who at one point dances with Mateo and at another instance  kisses him, helps the young schoolboy gradually come to terms with the dilemmas he faces. As the spirit of his mother comes to sit beside him, he lets loose of one of his paper airplanes, perhaps a message suggesting that finally he has forgiven her for whatever transgression she committed, leaving him or dying—there is no difference since she has disappeared from his life, and now her ghost can disappear as well.

    We don’t know what happens to Enrique. Perhaps Mateo resolves the problem by finding a way to speak to the dead boy’s parents. Or perhaps he might just want to keep the gay ghost close to him for a while long as he acclimates to the new self which he must learn to embrace. 

    Roberth Mendoza’s film, with its many unexplained absences, deaths, and near deaths, is somewhat inexplicable in its narrative plot. It takes a couple of times watching the film before it all begins to make sense. And we’re still not quite sure to whom Mateo imagines he might sending his flying missives. But the utter loneliness of the young man whose mind calls up visitations from the dead just to salve the silence that surrounds him is quite obvious and sadly memorable. Everyone whom he has loved, or even imagined loving, seems to have disappeared from his life, and he has been left alone to resolve his multiple problems all by himself.

 

Los Angeles, August 13, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (August 2024).