the kiss
by Douglas
Messerli
Fernando Grisi (screenwriter
and director) Frutinha (Fruity)
/ 2023 [21 minutes]
11-year-old Pedro
(Fellipe Samuel) plays goalie for the older soccer players Santos (Garbriel
Mionete) and Marcos (Lucas Alves Rodrigues Martins), while Felipe (Pedro Miguel
Chiappa),* a fragile boy of Pedro’s age sits on the sidelines to draw. The
older boys make fun of his lack of talent and refusal to even attempt to play
with them, as Felipe, by now somewhat use to their abuse, moves to pack up his
things and leave.
But this time Pedro stands up for him,
telling the older boys to leave him alone and assuring Felipe that he doesn’t
have to play if he doesn’t want to.
Later that evening Felipe overhears
another of his parents’ incessant fights, in which the father arrives home late
again, refusing to even go up and see his son, despite the mother’s protests. “That
boy’s turning out very weird. You give him too much freedom,” he argues. Painting
and decorating are not what men do, insists this macho slob, probably cheating
nightly on his wife.
In the morning, Felipe, after dressing,
doesn’t even dare pass by the rooms in which his parents might be waiting,
leaving by his own bedroom door.
In
the gym, Pedro sits alone, awaiting perhaps the arrival of his older friends.
But seeing Felipe enter, he suggests that he help him train. Felipe demurs,
having been told previously by Pedro that didn’t want him playing the game with
him. But something has changed. He now recalls that Felipe has a great kick.
And Felipe agrees, but as a goalie is completely useless, afraid of the ball.
When Pedro laughs at him, Felipe again moves to leave, but Pedro suggests that
they switch. Felipe kicks, while Pedro leans in the other direction, permitting
him a goal.
When the other boys arrive, Santos can’t
believe that Pedro has brought the “fairy” to join them. But Pedro simply says,
watch. And this time, with Marcos as goalie, he kicks in a score, Pedro hooting
in delight. The two have become friends, with Pedro, on their walk home, even
inviting himself to Felipe’s house.
Pedro notes that he’s never been to
Felipe’s house, Felipe commenting that he didn’t seem to be a friend until now.
But Pedro is wowed by Felipe’s art on the walls, although he finds some of then
to be a little “weird,” the word which keeps creeping up on Felipe throughout
this short movie. Pedro asks his new friend to draw him in a Spiderman suit.
When
Felipe next pays football with the group, however, he trips and falls, Santos
calling him retarded, while Marcos warns him, sarcastically, that he’s scaring
the “fruity.” They further describe him as a baby and a loser. This time, Pedro
does not come to his defense.
When Felipe finishes the drawing of Pedro in
a Spiderman suit, he briefly shows it to him before crumpling it up into a
ball. Yet that doesn’t stop Pedro from putting his head on Felipe’s shoulder.
When walking home, Pedro invites him now to his house, Felipe suggests that he
might see him as a little baby. “Yes, you, Santos, and everybody hates me.”
Given his home situation, it is no wonder that Felipe is so sensitive to what
his own school mates say.
Pedro suggests he just forget “those
assholes,” explaining that he doesn’t hate him, and neither do they. “They just
have to be tougher. Show it to them,” and he walks off. But Felipe follows. Pedro
suggests he liked the drawing, Felipe that he shouldn’t have made it, with Pedro
responding, “Ouch, that hurts. What did I do?”
Of
course, it’s what he didn’t do that hurts Felipe. But the boy also has to get used
to a world without protectors. You’ve got to be tough, Pedro consuls, and show
them you’re not….”
“A fruity,” Felipe interrupts. “So, it’s
my fault.”
Pedro,
the more mature of them, takes on all the blame. “No, it was all fault.” From
now on, he insists, he will speak up.
But Felipe is still hurt. “You used to
never talk to me.” He moves on to his own home, so it appears, alone.
Yet, in the next frame when we think we
are seeing Felipe in bed alone, he suddenly discover that he is instead in bed
with Pedro, evidently on an overnight stay, apparently in Pedro’s house. Pedro
apologizes for having made fun of him earlier, but argues that it was, in part,
a result of his having stopped playing with them. “I was sad no one remembered
how well you could play. But I would like to be your friend. If your majesty (a
slight ribbing that he has also previously used to signify Felipe’s standoffish
behavior) will allow.”
They now ask one another what they will
be when they grow up. Felipe asks, “Do you still want to be a soccer player?” “Well,
that’s very hard,” Pedro answers. “But you can do it. You play better than
anyone I know.” And when Pedro asks the same question of his friend Fe, he
jokes back, “A soccer player, obviously.”
“You should be an artist,” suggest Pedro.
“And being an artist is not too hard?” Felipe responds. “Not for you,” assures
his friend.
In short, the two boys, in getting to
know each other, reify their talents, praising each other for their own natural
gifts.
When Felipe complains that the mattress
on the floor on which he is sleeping is hard, Pedro invites him into his bed,
where they sleep laying in opposite directions.
But now
Felipe is troubled, asking Pedro “But what if I am…you know…” Pedro joins him
in a head-to-head position. “What do you mean?” Felipe backs off: “Nothing, nothing.”
Yet Pedro probes, “How do you know?”
Pedro: “I just know…I think it’s…because
of you.”
To end up side by side in bed, on the
verge of a kiss.
The next morning when Pedro brings
Felipe to the soccer gym again, insisting that he is the best player among
them, the boys again demean Felipe and insist that he is now Pedro’s boyfriend,
which gives them further fodder for their endless bullying. “No need to crush
his little heart. He was hoping for a romance with you.” It’s clear they sense
where they can hurt anyone not like them the most. But suddenly they do hand
the ball to Felipe, explaining they were just razzing the newbie.
Still, Felipe wanders off, tired and
frustrated with the endless dismissals of his identity as a human being. His
parent’s nightly quarrels ring out like a continuation of his own difficulties:
“I don’t know how you can be such an
asshole”
“You know I can’t take this anymore.”
“So you’re giving up, just like that.”
“Shut up. Shut up, you can’t say shit
about that.”
Clearly, this couple is ready to break
up, just as Felipe has felt it necessary to leave the toxic company who surrounds
his beloved Pedro.
As Felipe goes to his door-window he
encounters Pedro, chastising him for just walking off. Again, Felipe attempts
to defend his hurt, but Pedro insists it was “no big deal.” But then, of
course, he knows nothing about the internal fights about similar issues taking
place in Felipe’s own house.
All you say, Felipe argues, is they’re
dumbasses, and I can talk to you. He challenges Pedro: “Are you afraid of what
Santos will think of you?”
Pedro points out that he too is afraid
the same thing. But Felipe declares he was afraid before he had made friends
with Pedro. “I believed it when you said you wanted to be friends.” Obviously
he is still seeking a protector. But then, there is something more behind his
words.
Pedro insists that is still an amigo,
but Felipe will not buy what he sees as his dishonesty. Say it, that you like
me back. Pedro’s startled silence seems to answer Felipe’s accusations.
Now it is Pedro, holding Felipe’s
drawing close to him, who cannot sleep at night. But then Felipe can’t sleep
either. It is almost two much to observe two 11-year-olds suffer over the
slights of love, but today’s world has already poised them, far too early, to
become adults.
The next day, finally frustrated, Felipe
determines to return to the school gym where the three boys, Pedro, Santos, and
Marcos are already at play.
The
moment Felipe enters the gym, Pedro goes over to him and kisses him on the
lips.
YouTube advertises this beautiful
Brazilian cinema as “a gay kid’s short film,” which perhaps it is. But I have
seldom seen teenage and even adult films so honest about the difficulties of
establishing a gay relationship in a world in which despite all the expressions
of community embracement, is still ready to attack queerness in whatever form
it appears on the immediate and local level. The polls may show that most
people support gay equality, but tell that to the locker rooms, the school
hallways, the dark streets around gay bars late at night; send the news to the
film industry and many work spaces throughout the US, and then try to pass that
message on to Russia, Kenya, Uganda, Hungary, Poland, and China. For anyone
still trying to live a gay life in most of the world, things are still
difficult. Perhaps an open kiss on the lips is what we need to remind us that being
gay is simply another form of love.
As you might guess, I was touched by
Brazilian director Fernando Grisi’s short film. The music by an unidentified
composer surely helped. This short film is actually a wonderful tonic to the
absolute sweet perfection Heartstopper, my beloved series about slightly older boys undergoing some of the
same experiences.
*The
director, in a rather perverse sense of casting, chose a Fellipe to play Pedro,
and a Pedro to play Felipe. It must have been rather confusing for both actors.
Los
Angeles, December 20, 2024
Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog
(December 2024).
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