Auraeus Solito | Boy / 2009

buoyancy

by Douglas Messerli

 

Jimmy Flores and Arturo Calo (screenplay), Auraeus Solito (director) Boy / 2009

 

In the noted Philippines director Auraeus Solito’s 2009 film Boy, the action begins with an unnamed boy (Aeious Asin) an 18-year-old virgin more than ready for sex, visiting a nearly empty gay night club. Believing that the boy comes of some wealth, the transvestite owner/hostess Belinda shows off her wares, her own macho dancing boys.

   Our “hero”—and in some respects “Boy” is the true hero of this romantic queer film—is disinterested in nearly all the dancers she shows him, and is more attune to the drag and transvestite numbers—that is until the last moment when Aries (Aries Pena) arrives and goes into his act.

   The reviewer from the online journal Asian Pulse outlines the situation:

 

“The performers enter and leave the stage, but it is not until the young dancer in a loincloth-thingy,

that the Boy’s attention stops slipping away. Aries (Aries) is 18 years old, has a full set of teeth and under the loincloth-thingy hides some 7.5 inches.

      Macho dancer films constitute a very specific genre in the Philippines LGBTQIA+ cinema. Named after the 1988 Lino Brocka Macho Dancer, their main raison d’être is to please the gaze. It only makes sense to set the stories of various intrigues into the worlds of night clubs, back alleys and other out-of-sight places of the society. There, young boys show their bodies in staged shows, cruise for clients and sometimes get bruised.”

 

    Boy is quite interested in renting Aries for the night, but the prices Belinda quotes are definitely out of his “allowance” range. As we soon find out, when Solito’s film changes scenes to Boy’s home, the young 18-year-old is a collector, particularly of fish, which he displays in various aquariums, the landscape proper for each collection of sometimes rare and tropical fish he has purchased over the years.

     Boy has also gathered a rather formidable collection of comic books, which he later sells in order to help raise money to purchase the services of Aries.

     His mother (Madelaine Nicolas) does not at all approve of his endless collections since it reminds her of her husband, who evidently collects wives, having another family to whom he seems more devoted than Boy and her; and boy is also cynical about the always missing father.

    Boy, we discover, is also a poet who performs his rather openly gay poetry in front of a group of other figures who seem to me to represent something like a hippie-like gathering or even an earlier beat-scene group who bear with each other’s amateur performances of dance, poetry, and musical contributions primarily since it gives them each an opportunity to find their voices.

    We also get a small insight about Aries’ life, where the father shows up momentarily to help his son hang out his washing, noting how things are in the home that Aries left as he recounts primarily the absence of his children as, all itinerants, they constantly change residences, staying with various friends and relatives, just as Aries had before now squatting in what appears a bit like a closed-down storage unit near end of the film. Aries and his family, with utterly no education, are among the poorest of Filipino culture. As he admits, there is not other choice for him but macho dancing, and it is only on stage that he truly feels loved. 

      By New Year’s, Boy has raised enough money to rent Aries for the night, and takes him home for a New Year’s celebration. Boy’s mother is busy cooking up a feast, with the hope that her wayward husband will visit for the celebrations, but he calls, disappointing the sad woman with yet another excuse for his no-show. Instead of immediately sitting down for the feast she has cooked up, Boy slips off to his room with Aries, first explaining his fascination with fish before the two finally begin sexual matters.

     Indeed, in a world in which all the adults seem to have lost their way, the two boys seem to identify more with the various environments that Boy has created for each of his menagerie of the species, recognizing in the process the cultural and social differences in their own lives.

     Before they can do much more than remove each other’s shirts, however, the mother blows a trumpet, forcing them downstairs to watch the midnight fireworks.

     They do so with a great sense of wonderment, but also with clear disappointment when the fireworks begin to peter out.

     Sitting down to the large spread of dishes the mother has placed before them, they do indeed look like a kind of depleted family, with the mother delighting in the appetites of the two boys. But, although the film’s major celebratory scene may look quite bounteous and beautiful spread, I can hardly agree with the sense of dreaminess that Michael Fox suggests in his description for Frameline’s description of the film:

 

“Sure enough, fireworks ensue after holiday dinner with Mom, amid the boy’s numerous aquariums.

     Solito suggests that it’s more than physical attraction, or even the irresistible allure of ‘the other,’ that binds the duo. Aries and the boy easily transcend economic and educational barriers to make a powerful connection. The filmmaker takes care to show, through scenes between the boy and his mother and Aries and his father, that the youths are decent, solid guys connected to their families and mainstream society. Instead of the tormented, guilt-stricken or self-destructive teens that populate many queer movies, this deeply satisfying film gives us self-aware lads destined to grow into self-assured men. From nuanced sociopolitical commentary to a lengthy, lovely, languid love scene, Boy makes all the right moves.”

 

     The mother in this scene is actually quite skeptical of visitor, happy only because he partially fills the vacuum her own missing husband; and later in Aries’ visit, quietly checking on them after they have had sex, she discovers, perhaps for the first time, that her son is gay.

    The boys eat quietly, the hungry Aries, perhaps, a little more intently; but Boy still argues fiercely with his mother’s pro-Marcos feelings, and ultimately leaves the table in disgust, asking Aries soon after to join him upstairs.

    And even then, these lovers to not rush into sexual bliss, but turn again to the fish, Aries asking, as he points to one of the tanks, “Where can he survive?” The Boy answers, “In the water.” Aries, continues by asking, “How does he breathe?” The Boy “Through his gills.”

    The question, we recognize is not just about the fish, about human survival. As he has pointed out earlier, “Some live clean, others live in the dirt.”

     Aries even interrupts their early love-play to tie the rubber-band many go-go and macho dancers do around their penises to keep their erections, but during sex the Boy insists he remove it, freeing him to natural instead of imposed sex.

     The sex scene itself is filmed mostly through the fish tanks, and for that reason, above all, is hardly what one would describe as sexy. These are two individuals are attempting to define a world in which they might live together—and not very successfully.

     After a brief after-sex rest, as is Aries’ and other prostitutes’ pattern, he dresses and leaves, the Boy awakening and running after him.

      He finds Aries sitting still on the doorstep, wondering if there is any transportation that is nearby.

      But the Boy is hurt for his quick departure. “Why did you leave me?” he asks Aries.

      “That’s as far as we go.”

      “I still want to be with you.”

      “I want to go home.”

      “Why did you leave me alone?”  

      “Sorry, it’s force of habit.”

      Boy asks if he might accompany Aries back to his home, Aries responding, as if he were the fish who lived in the dark and dirty tanks, “My world is a filthy, rotten place.”

      Yet he does take the Boy back to his dirty world, where drinking me sit celebrating on the cement floor. They offer the boys drinks, which both accept.

       As they continue, Aries warns the Boy that the floor is wet. The come to a beat-up door featuring a key-lock, which Aires opens, revealing a narrow room with a small bed against the wall and other religious detritus and other nicknacks, not unlike the things the Boy’s mother collects, but beaten-up and used.

       Aries also takes out a bottle of liquor, and again the Boy drinks, but quickly falls asleep in the bed, Aries joining him.

       But soon after, the Boy awakens, sick to his stomach. He makes his way out of the small room and vomits on the wet floor outside, Aries soon joining him to check of his condition. The boy admits that he also wants to go home, but since he is unable to walk, Aries picks him up and, like a grand chevalier, carries the Boy off.

      The entire New Year’s sequence, unlike what Fox almost paints it as being, is not at all akin to a Filipino version of a Norman Rockwell world. Each boy lives in a different tank, so to speak, and at night’s end, the Boy realizes that, unless he’s willing to rent Aries once more, he will never see the macho dancer again.

      The poem the Boy reads at his arts gathering the next week sounds more like a Gertrude Stein poem than a loving memory of sexual delight. In English, the Boy recites:

 

       “Boy, what are you looking for? Boy. Boy looking for a boy. I’m a boy. Oh, boy. I just like boys. I’m a boy looking for a boy who likes boys looking for a boy who likes boys who would like this boy who likes boys. Are you that boy? Boy? Boy. Boy. Buoyant.”

 

      And that is where the film ends, with Boy still looking, but feeling that, at last, he knows what he is seeking and, perhaps, even why.

 

Los Angeles, June 25, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (June 2025).