Vasilis Kekatos | I apostasi anamesa ston ourano ki emas (The Distance Between Us and the Sky) / 2019

the bartering bride

by Douglas Messerli

 

Vasilis Kekatos (screenwriter and director) I apostasi anamesa ston ourano ki emas (The Distance Between Us and the Sky) / 2019 [9 minutes]

 

If there was ever a film that began more strangely—even odder perhaps because it does not suddenly drop us into an unexpectedly violent or perverse situation—I don’t recall. Greek director Vasilis Kekatos’ beautifully filmed The Distance Between Us and the Sky begins with a motorcyclist and an itinerant attempting to raise the money for the bus ride home discussing the latter’s origami creations of what he describes as “love birds” which he’s ready to sell to raise money for the trip.

      The seller of these handmade treasures, a gay man from Athens (Nikos Zeginoglou), is stuck apparently in a Greek outpost, Kypseli in the Ionian Islands, at a gas station, connecting up with someone of the internet for when he returns to the city. Showing him his dick, the guy on the internet suggests he won’t find such lovely meat in Kypseli, to which the other jokes, “Man, I’m not in Kypseli often enough to know what dicks are around.”

      Spotting the cyclist (Ioko Ioannis Kotidis), he asks if he can spare 20 euros for his bus trip home. When the man seems hesitant, he begs for at least some money for which he’ll raise the rest. Finally turned down outright, he tries to sell some cigarettes for a low price. The man turns away again saying he doesn’t smoke that brand.

      Not to be deterred he moves closer to his prey, almost whispering the words, “Pot. Weed. Hash.” The cyclist, turning back asks “Why are you slinging?”

       “Are you a cop?”

       “What if I am?” the black-leathered beauty asks as the two move closer to one another.

       “What if some innocent passerby came across it?”

       The dialogue suddenly gets crazier as he makes up some story about finding it, the junkie becoming addicted, that he found it, putting it under a stone. A tombstone that says “All Cops Are Bastards.”

        Clearly what began as a seeming request for cash has become a sort of strange game, a challenge to keep the other one off-balance and, most importantly, in one place long enough to intrigue and charm him without cracking his macho armor. A dangerous game.

     Finally, the cyclist, smiling, moves away once again, the other pulling him back with the unexpected, tender and almost effeminate switch to offering up his origami “love birds,” the “pocket parrots,” I mention above. This time the cyclist is intrigued and bites, asking how much. The seemingly desperate rider returns to his original offer: 22.50 euros. Unexpectedly, he agrees to purchase one, but the seller refuses, he must take them both or none. Since they are love birds the other will wither away without his friend.

      The buyer wants only one putting a ten euro between his fingers, but the seller refuses, it’s a no go without both, handing him back his money.

      As the cyclist trudges away, the other calls to him again, “so you’re going?” “Yes,” the other responds. Then you have no choice but to blow us up? he pouts, a strange metaphor, but somehow making sense as he pulls out a cigarette and again moves toward his friend, this time the camera pulling back to reveal the service station, a simulation surely of the memorable Esso station of the last scene in Jacques Demy’s romantic fantasy, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) where that film’s love birds meet for the very last time, after their love has long ago withererd away due to societal and cultural demands.

   The two move up close together, the cyclist asking if he has a light and other lighting the cigarette, as in an almost comical reference to Humphrey Bogart’s lighting of Ingrid Bergman’s cigarette in Casablanca, the cyclist puts the now lit flame end first into his mouth as the other moves in close to a kiss as he pulls it out of the other boy’s mouth in order to turn it around, the cyclist suggesting it would be a shame if the love birds burned up. The other replies: “Don’t worry they’ll fly away.” “Where to?” “Buy them, you’ll see,” answers the salesman, pulling back and tearing up because the smoke has gotten into his eyes.

      In a manner of seconds, this film has posted two romantic cinema references and one musical to make certain that we comprehend that what is really being sold and bartered here is not drugs or even paper birds, but human flesh, a desire that these two treat, albeit somewhat satirically, as seriously as hookers meeting up with their johns.

       The cyclist looks up to something just out of sight. “Could they fly that high?”

       “Up to that street sign. they could even fly up to the moon.”

       “To the moon, huh?” he looks ups to the moon in a moment of wonderment. “How much?”

       “A thousand euros.”

       “A thousand euros? Come on, man!”

       “Make it 500 euros, and you can keep the love birds.” 

       “What happened to 22.50?”

       “You’re killing me man.”

       “You know what, you seem like a nice guy, all right 22.50 it is.”

       It turns out, however, that the cyclist has no money. He suggests the other simply hop on his bike and he’ll take him back to Athens.

       Still our bargaining friend can’t resist. “Screw that, I don’t do bikes.”

       When asked why not, he admits he’s simply afraid.

       “Come on, you can hold on to me?

       “And sit in the backseat? ...What if I fall and crack my head open?”

       “What do you suggest then?”

       “You take the backseat and I ride in the front.”

       The camera catches them riding off in just such a position of complete surrender into love, a song reiterating just those words.

        The Distance Between Us and the Sky deservedly won both the best Short Queer film and Short Film Palm d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 2019.

       

Los Angeles, October 18, 2021

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (October 2021).