Javier Acha | Mañana todo será major (Tomorrow Everything Will Be Better) / 2008

when the phone rings

by Douglas Messerli

 

Javier Acha (screenwriter and director) Mañana todo será major (Tomorrow Everything Will Be Better) / 2008 [8 minutes]

 

Álvaro (José Sospedra) has a problem. He likes men, but he has long had a girlfriend (María Cotiello) to hide his gay infatuation—whether from himself or others, it doesn’t matter. 

     His evenings with his girlfriend seem long and tedious, but at the pool the next morning, as he kicks around a soccer ball with other male friends, he encounters a beautiful exotic gay lovely (Jaime Mendez). Their eyes make immediate contact, and before long the new gay boy with the tight red thong has gone off to the men’s room hoping Álvaro will follow.

      He does, and the two about to make bathroom contact, except at the same moment another male enters. Álvaro leaves frustrated, walking off with his friends, but tossing his cellphone number on a piece of crumpled paper to the boy in red. Almost immediately Alvaro’s girlfriend calls: “Don’t forget to buy the dessert.”

      Álvaro shows up back home, dessert in hand, his girl meeting him with a kiss. “Where is your brother,” he asks, “I thought he was coming to dinner. I can’t wait to meet him.”

      He’s already here, in the bedroom the girlfriend responds. He’s met up with a new guy and I encouraged him to call him.

      Álvaro’s phone begins to ring, as he looks over at it in terror, she in disconcertment.

      Spanish director Javier Acha’s one-line gay short surely explains how in the morning things will be better, for Álvaro at least, and possibly for his girlfriend’s brother; perhaps even for the girlfriend herself, who clearly hasn’t been completely satisfied of recent with Álvaro, who is now having to regularly pop some kind of pill, perhaps Viagra each night before he joins her in bed.

     This is the kind of gay film that makes you smile and send out a chuckle in delight.

 

Los Angeles, September 2, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (September 2024).