Marco Berger and Mariángela Martínez Restrepo | El reloj (The Watch) / 2008

outside time

by Douglas Messerli

 

Marco Berger (screenplay), Marco Berger and Mariángela Martínez Restrepo (directors) El reloj (The Watch) / 2008 [15 minutes]

 

It’s getting dark on the rural street where Juan Pablo (Nahuel Viale) and Javier (Ariel Nuñez Di Croce) meet up in Argentinian director Marco Berger’s quite visually beautiful short film, The Watch. Both are waiting for a bus to take them back to the neighborhood where they live, although they’ve only met once before, Javier recognizing Juan Pablo because of the seemingly coincidental incident, at both the movie date he had with a girl and now in the street, Juan Pablo taps his watch since it has apparently stopped running.

     Juan Pablo decides to take a cab home and asks if Javier might wish to join him. When they reach the boy’s home, he asks if Javier might want to come in since his parents have gone off to Rosario.

      Inside the small house, Javier encounters Juan Pablo’s nearly naked cousin sitting on the couch watching TV. The cousin (Javier Morea), almost oblivious of the world around him, makes no movement to greet or even invite Javier to join him on the couch, and hardly attempts to move his feet to accommodate the stranger. But Javier nonetheless finds a space and sits, Juan Pablo having immediately gone off elsewhere.

      Juan Pablo finally brings his guest a coke and sits on the other side of the unresponsive cousin who claims Juan Pablo’s mother has called, but fails to repeat the message she left. There is something humorous and even absurd about the ever-present cousin, and, far more importantly, his undressed existence becomes another homoerotic element.

      But Juan Pablo himself behaves oddly, in the next frame having gotten up again to washing off his face and chest, calling out to see if Javier plans to stay over. Surprised by the invite, Javier responds, with some look of surprise, “ok.”

      The cousin rises for a moment to look into the refrigerator for something to eat, the light outlining even more clearly his tight pair of red shorts as he puts his hand under the underwear band for an itch, a view we presume that Javier observes. In the next moment, Juan Pablo has joined the trio on the couch in a clearly uncomfortable and slightly disconcerting silence.

       Finally, Juan Pablo suggests they go to sleep, and Javier joins him in the bedroom. Both strip down to the their underwear and crawl into bed together where they lay on top on the covers.

 

    There is a long pause, neither of them closing their eyes. Finally, Juan Pablo reaches over his friend, almost as if he finally might sexually engage him, but instead grabbing up a small red stereoscopic viewer to show off to Javier. But as he hands it over for Javier to view, he clearly also notices the outline of the boy’s cock. Just as suddenly Pablo gets up to check whether his cousin has gone to sleep.

       It begins to seem like a possible prelude to a sexual encounter. But he returns to say that his mother is home and that the room is her room, although he claims, without fully explaining, “It’s okay anyway. We always sleep here.”

       Both boys get up and dress, Javier returning momentarily to the couch with the cousin. Juan Pablo introduces him to his mother, who seems happy to have to stay over; but her son is already putting on his coat, clearly intending to escort Javier out or perhaps even home for the seven blocks where he lives. 

       Outside, Juan Pablo suggests that he will walk himself home alone, but also asks where he dances, adding “Maybe I’ll see you there.”

        Javier turns to go, and Juan Pablo looks down at his stopped watch, amazed to find it working. For a moment he even calls back Javier, but on the second thought, as Javier turns, calls out “Nothing, nothing.” Javier disappears into the dark.

        Seated on the walkway, Juan looks down at his watch, lays it out in front of him, picks ups a rock and slams it into the watch, shattering it.

        What it clear is that both times he met Javier the watch stopped, and that Juan Pablo would like to return to that world where time had stopped. His action further hints that he had hoped his cousin would fall to sleep and his mother remain away for the night, and in that timeless void he might make love to his handsome new friend. But time and all of restrictions returned ending his plans. Now perhaps, with the clock permanently stopped, he might be able to find his way back to that possible idyll.

        Without any sexual action of even mention of it, Berger, I argue, has created a highly homoerotic work about the attraction between two neighborhood boys, the results to be played out off stage and out of the range of the film’s carefully clocked flickers.

 

Los Angeles, October 2, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (October 2023).