animal love
by Douglas Messerli
Otavio Chamorro (screenwriter and
director) Vagabunda de Meia Tigela (Floozy Suzy) / 2015 (25 minutes)
This Brazilian work begins with an athlete
running around the school track alone. There is, however, one good-looking
young boy sitting alone in the stands, a book in hand, Amor Animal, a
work that apparently, so we discover, contains several recipes for making
someone who is not in
love
with you or who would never even imagine loving you, suddenly fall madly in
love. This book contains not only magical potions, but ways in which to change
bodies, to transform people into other people, and other supernatural
alterations that, as we soon discover, can be dangerous.
The
cute boy drinks the potion and comes down to offer another bottle to the runner
Angelo, who is afraid that someone might see him with the boy, who obviously is
gay, but relents when the kid brings him a bottle of the potion which is
believes will help him win the upcoming marathon.
Angelo drinks, almost immediately turning back to the boy whom he finds
to be utterly irresistible, going over to him and kissing him on the lips. At
that very moment, the boy keels over, evidently dead as he hits the ground.
30
years later, things have quite radically changed at the same school. The gay
boy at the center of this part of the film, Jonas John (Peterson Andrade) is far more obviously effeminate and clearly
involved in cross-dressing. His hair is dyed pink.
Indeed this scene begins with a woman, Floozy Suzy, wrestling Jonas John
on the school yard, winning as she pins him to the ground. Her boyfriend,
Romulo, comes to Jonas’ support, pulling his girlfriend off of the boy she
describes as a fag, unable to comprehend why her boyfriend continues to protect
him. Indeed, there does seem to be an inexplicable connection between the two,
and it is clear that Jonas in in love with his protector. Evidently Jonas helps
Romulo pass his exams by sneaking the answers to him during class.
And the boy does seem particularly close to Jonas, checking on his
scratches later in the school hall and telling him that Suzy just doesn’t
understand that Jonas is special to him. When Suzy again intervenes, Jonas
takes to the school library.
The library has seen better days, ruled over by a sassy librarian who
seems interested primarily in eating smelly and stinky lunches of termite stew
and other delicacies, and who hasn’t evidently reshelved a book since the days
of the young boy we saw in the first scene Tobias. Jonas is unable to find Animal
Love, the book which led Tobias astray.
When a skirmish with Jonas makes her drop her dish of termite stew, the
boy is forced to clean it up, but in doing so discovers the magic book in a
crook between the bottom rows of a self, grabbing it up and making plans, like
Tobias before him, to turn Suzy’s boyfriend into his lover at the Halloween
school dance.
The librarian is terrified that her “doomed fairy” will also die,
leaving her with another death on her conscience; but, successfully pulling the
book away from her, he pushes forward gathering the ingredients which, in fact,
do sound very much like the magic potion cooked up by Bianca De Pass, the witch
in Bell, Book, and Candle to counteract the love spell put upon the
film’s hero by the lovely Gillian Holroyd. Bat wing, Marabu weed, caramel
syrup, the smelly underpants of a hot male athlete, and spit of a man (in this
case, a donation of Romulo) are quickly gathered up Jonas and his librarian
ally.
When Jonas’ nerdy friend Nestor discovers the infamous Amor Animal in
his friend’s bag, he is also, quite reluctantly on his part, pulled into
helping with Jonas’ schemes by helping him steal Suzy’s cellphone.
Meanwhile, we see the mad wizard of love whipping up his love potions.
And the party has already started by the time Nestor delivers up the cellphone.
The plot here thickens, alas, a bit more than the potion has, as Otavio
Chamorro’s narrative becomes weighed down by a series of somewhat unnecessary
complexities, Jonas calling her friend to tell Suzy that her cellphone has been
found in the library, Suzy busy kissing Romulo at the party forced to leave her
boyfriend in the hands of her best friend Marileen who quite literally does
“replace” Suzy by immediately making out with the fickle Romulo, and adding a touch
of horror by having Suzy—dressed up like the devil herself—wandering the
darkened library before she meets up with the librarian who invites her to cool
down with a coconut drink which knocks the girl out that Jonas can take over
Suzy’s body and presumably replace her in Romulo’s loving arms.
By
the time he arrives at the party, however, Romulo is so involved with Marileen
that he wants nothing to do with Suzy, and Jonas as Suzy is so infuriated that
she/he quickly leaves the party to take the antidote that will change him back
into himself again.
Only the vial which needs to be smashed to free the spirits which will
take him back to himself seems to be unbreakable despite how much Suzy attempts
to dance a samba upon it. Nestor and Jonas/Suzy look on in horror as the vial
simply refuses to give up its contents.
Finally, Suzy returns to the party furious with course of events,
getting drunk, falling down and passing out in the street. Several students
gather round her trying to bring her back to life with chants of “whore,”
“slut,” and similar adjectives the like of which she has all her life applied
to others. But in the process a heavy-set boy stomps on the vial, breaking it.
Back in the library Jonas wakes up with Nestor at his side and rushes out in an
attempt to find out what has become of Suzy.
Observing what’s going on, Jonas suddenly turns on his fellow students,
shouting, “This asshole”—pointing at Romulo—cheats on her in front of the whole
school and you call her a slut?”
He suddenly find himself protecting her just
as once Romulo protected him against her.
But
the school administration and students are outraged by both of them, and they
wind up with Nestor in a kind of lockdown cleaning up after the party. Nestor,
who has missed participating in the Chemistry Olympiad, is angry for having
risked everything for his friend, and tells him, in front of Suzy that he’d
warned him against all the “magic.”
She
suspects something, but Jonas quickly shifts the word to suggest it is his own
moniker, “Miss Magic,” and Suzy goes off, not wanting any part with either of
them. Once she’s gone, Jonas reprimands Nestor, suggesting that maybe he wanted
to tell her about switching bodies as well, and wondering why Nestor is always
following him. “After all, what do you want?”
At
the very moment of their face off, Nestor moves forward with an intense kiss
that is returned by Jonas, leaving the latter astounded, a little confused, but
equally delighted.
The
next day in the school hall, we see some other boy unsuccessfully trying to
hook up with Suzy, Romulo prowling alone, and Jonas and Nestor hand-in-hand.
The magic has worked its own tricks.
Sitting alone in the school library, Suzy glances once more at a photo
of her and Romulo, tossing it to the floor. When she finally decides to bend
down to retrieve it, she discovers under it the once again “lost” book Amor
animal, taking it up and reading one of its entries, “Camel’s Magic.” Get
ready for Act III.
Los Angeles, July 20, 2021
Reprinted from World Cinema Review (July
2021).
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