Carlos Alejandro Molina M. | Rojo (Red) / 2013

seeing red

by Douglas Messerli

 

Carlos Alejandro Molina M. (screenwriter and director) Rojo (Red) / 2013 [16.12 minutes]

 

If familial rejection, peer censure, fear of AIDS, and simple lack of information about behavior and sexual methods were not enough to scare off a young person seeking out his or her first sexual encounter these days, the very fear of whom one might connect up with given the known dangers

of on-line computer predators is enough the terrorize a young boy impatiently seeking out his first sexual encounter, made even worse for a young adolescent growing up as I did in a more rural than urban part of a country; even middle-sized populated towns, as Jesse’s Venezuelan community seems to be, might not readily seem to offer a visible queer of one’s own age, and in small towns the odds seem near to impossible.  

      Jesse (Noél Duarte), like many boys his age, spends hours on the internet and, as a hidden gay boy, uses much of his time to enter chat rooms mostly devoted to “boylove,” since he recognizes that as a boy seeking love he’s more likely to find it in the arms of an older man.

      Being savvy, however, even when he’s communicated with someone for a while, he is careful about invitations to meet up, particularly if he’s never before seen the individual. Yet we can also sense his loneliness, the many dark hours we spends in front of the computer, the long showers, and the quietude of the home he shares evidently with his now widowed elderly father (Rafael Ibarra). Clearly, Jesse was a late-born child in his parents’ life, and the father, with the look of a bearded, gray-haired, stern-faced gentleman that looks more like the portrait of the great grandfather that hangs in the hallway than a middle-aged dad, seems equally reticent to verbally communicate with his son.

    Upon the elder’s arrival in what appears to be the house den or office, Jesse closes down his conversation and clicks off several layers of porno and chat-room sites before facing the front page of his computer, his father not even bothering to ask what he might have been viewing.

      And, in fact, a little unwelcome intrusion in his son’s life may be called for, since the boy has just reluctantly agreed to meet up the next morning with his on-line contact, protecting himself only by insisting that they meet in the central square of the town at 9:00 AM, and that they will recognize one another through the fact that both will both be wearing the color rojo, red.

      Jesse might have been clued into his correspondent’s age when he asks the boy if he wants money, Jesse quickly responding, “I’m a boy, not a whore.” But he is clearly so anxious to find someone to actually share a few hours in real life that he overlooks the evidence that the person to whom he is writing is apparently someone willing to pay for sex or even the company for a few hours of a young man.

      If the idea of wearing a color full of life and symbolizing love and daring naturally appeals to the adolescent setting out to meet one of his first potential sexual encounters, Venezuelan writer/director Carlos Alejandro Molina M. allows it to also provide a much-needed comic interlude in his otherwise rather grim fable. The boy dons his bright red Polo-like shirt—so far the only color except for dark brown, blacks, and greens and the bright white of the screen—with almost a ritual joyfulness only to discover that nearly everyone in the square this morning, several strollers, a toddler, a whole group of obviously leftist protestors, and even a dog is draped in red. Jesse engagingly smiles at the ludicrousness of it all as he settles down unto a bench mostly hiding his red identifier under a black outer jacket. A heavy-set man with a red T-shirt is sprawled out in the sun on the grass, obviously not his contact.

     But a somewhat handsome man in his late 20s or early 30s with sunglasses sits nearby in a red pullover. Jesse hopefully pulls up a bit of his coat to reveal his “rose” so to speak. But suddenly his phone rings, the message declaring it is his father, who was scheduled to be away that morning, calling. Clearly the man is just checking up on his son’s whereabouts, as the son slouches down to again eye the red-shirted middle-aged man who now stands and walks toward him and then past him into the arms of a waiting woman.

     What Jesse has not noticed is a man lurking over his shoulder dressed in a heavy brown outer coat. It is his father, whom after a few moments of assimilation to the meaning of it all, accompanies the boy to the family auto. If we might imagine that perhaps the gentleman had simply suspected and tracked down his troublesome son, we note as he puts his hands upon the steering wheel that under his jacket is a sweater of red.

       It is clear, if nothing else, that these two wayfarers will now have a great deal to talk about for some time to come. How they will ultimately accommodate the realities of each just uncovered is surely the subject of some other such excellent short film. This work might, of course, have been included in my long essay on “Family Secrets” except that in this case it seemed to be that the secrets were not as fascinating as the almost hallucinatory voyage father and son took to get there.

 

Los Angeles, October 17, 2021

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (October 2021).