Tom Pardoe | Same Time Tomorrow / 2020

the shroud of silence

by Douglas Messerli

 

Michael Vacccaro (screenplay), Tom Pardoe (director) Same Time Tomorrow / 2020 [8 minutes]

 

Andrew (Michael Vaccaro) lives in the US and his would-be lover Vittorio (Giovanni Bienne) is in Italy, the two evidently having undergone a long COVID-related Skype relationship, talking late night and early mornings with each other about their fantasies and their eagerness to join each other in sex.

     Andrew is apparently close to scheduling a flight to Italy, but is still worried that Vittorio is maintaining a safe distance from others. From our viewpoint, through the lens of their Skype connection, they seem a slightly unlikely couple, Andrew a bit overweight and someone effeminate, snacking throughout his conversation with the lean, bed-bound, long-haired Vittorio.

      Both reassure one another that they’re being careful, but Vittorio is seeing his mother daily, although he sits outside her window to talk to her; Andrew tells Vittorio that his roommate is a nurse who comes home each night to cry, telling him all the stories, which sounds to be a much less safe connection that Vittorio has with his mother.

      They can hardly wait to meet, as Andrew watches Antonioni films and Italian TV series, Vittorio tells him he wishes he were there right now. But Andrew is also afraid that when they finally meet in Rome, Vittorio may not actually like him. He knows that their on-line adventures aren’t real life.

       But in a very touching scene Vittorio tells him that from the moment he gets up in the morning until when he goes to bed, he thinks about nothing but Andrew. When he broke up with his previous lover, he never thought he could love again, but Andrew has been so good for him. He knows he now has love. They close the day in tears with same refrain as always: “Same time tomorrow.”

       On March 23, 2020, Vittorio’s call to Andrew is not answered. Nor is it answered the next day. We see him attempt the call again on March 27th. Still no answer.

        Another love lost to COVID, along with the immense distance of time and space it demands in wrapping its victim up into the shroud of silence.

 

Los Angeles, June 4, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (June 2023).