Osama Chami and Enrique Gimeno Pedrós | El joven Diego (Young Diego) / 2021

the cannibal

by Douglas Messerli

 

Osama Chami and Enrique Gimeno Pedrós (screenwriters and directors) El joven Diego (Young Diego) / 2021 [7 minutes] 

 

Living as we do in a world of the virtual, have we forgotten the realities of “real” or actual behavior with its often terrifying results? Do we now perceive true statements as being merely metaphors of experience?

     These are the kinds of questions that Spanish director Osama Chami, the former production assistant to Pedro Almodóvar and his filmmaking partner Enrique Gimeno Pedrós ask in their 2021 work Young Diego. As in their earlier film, According to Mateo, it is clear that these two writers/directors are interested in exploring the grey area between pleasure and pain, or even experiences of life and death.

     The titular young Diego (Iván Pellicer) is sitting in a café, evidently the meet-up place he has arranged with an older man (Quim Ramos). His cellphone rings and, as he picks it up, immediately cuts off, the voice the man heard without apparently even Diego being able to see him, since he asks if he is watching him?

     The man is surprised that the boy has remained, expecting him to go. But Diego explains that he is staying, the man having previously told him that if he ever gets truly depressed, he should look him up; he would know what to do. The man asks again if he remembers what he told him that he wanted to do. Yes, Diego recalls, “You want to eat me.”

      The man explores the statement. What did you think? Did it turn you on? Diego replies only that he thought it was “strange.”

      “Do you like me?"

      Diego responds, “I like your voice. Do you like me?"

    The man explains that he has been watching the boy since he arrived. He imagines his dry and bruised lips. His fingernails that are no longer there since he bitten them off. It turns him on. “I’m hard right now.”

     When the voice tells him that he really likes him, the depressed boy begins to sob, the man telling him not to make a scene, that he must stop.

      A man enters the shop and quickly moves to Diego’s table, sitting down across from him, explaining to him that he is there to calm him down. “We can’t draw attention.”

      Diego stops, apologizing. He didn’t imagine him like he is: tall and handsome.

      “Are you scared?”

      Diego pauses, but responds in the negative, the man reassuring himself of Diego’s resolve, “If you don’t want to go ahead we don’t have to do it now.” They agree, the man will leave first and Diego will follow.

      

     But suddenly we realize Diego’s lack of comprehension, asking if he might drop him off afterwards to pick up his bicycle. The man asks for the key to the lock to see if the bike might fit into the back of his grey car. Because of several clips interleaved into the scenes throughout this conversation, we already know that the bike does fit and that likely Diego will not return. But does he perceive that? What does he imagine their encounter might consist of? Does he imagine a kind of S&M experience? Certainly, he seems not to have taken the man’s words literally.

        The question remains: should we?

 

Los Angeles, December 18, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (December 2022).