just friends
by Douglas Messerli
Martín Deus (screenplay), Juan Chappa and Martín Deus (directors) Amor crudo (Raw Love) / 2008 [15
minutes]
This short film from Argentinian directors
Juan Chappa and Martín Deus begins with the roughhousing of adolescent boys,
these acts being quite self-conscious as they drag down one another, one by one
to the ground, shoving a camera into their faces, their peers shouting out
their statements to the girls like so many date apps or heterosexual chat room
come-ons. They play as if they were compelled by force, but for the most part
we can tell the boys enjoy their “tortures.” One younger member of the group
smokes what appears to be his first cigarette, coughing on the smoke as his
trickles down his neck.
But
two of the boys continue the wrestling even after the others have stopped, one, Jeremías (Valentino Arocena) struggling
as the other, Iván (Juan Felipe Villanueva) hovers
over the weaker also in false pretense, making it secretly apparent that they
enjoy the homoerotic moment.
The two boys soon share Iván’s bed—evidently a regular
occurrence—sleeping close together on the narrow bed with their heads in
opposite directions, that is until Jeremías asks Iván if he’s asleep; the other
listening to headphones, suggests he join him, handing him one earbud as they
listen together and for a moment…Iván looking dreamily into the other boy’s
eyes.
At
the breakfast table Iván’s mother (Katja Alemann) attempts to pump information
from Jeremías about her handsome son’s love life with girls—with no particular
success, although it appears that Jeremías is
willing to make up girlfriends for his buddy just to please his mother.
The answer he gets is only the expected one, “Of course. You’re my
friend.”
But obviously he has not answered satisfactorily for Jeremías who loves Iván,
we realize, more than just a friend. Tears slightly well in eyes. “But what do
you feel for me?
“That.”
“'That’ what?”
“That you are my friend.”
A
commentator on the film, Katherine Fieldgate beautifully summarizes the
situation:
“Yet as
harsh daylight streams into Iván’s cold, blue bedroom, Jeremías
does not get the answers he seeks. They lie top-and-tail, their bodies as
misaligned as the love of the film’s title, which seems not only raw, but also
unrequited. The camera underscores the division: Iván reclines out of focus; Jeremías slowly blinks away his emotions in the
foreground. We are offered a brief, bittersweet window to a formative
relationship, one never openly declared, even as we move towards the eventual
farewell.”
The next day at school, Iván finishes his final exam, Jeremías begging
him to stay on at school just a little longer. We’re never shown whether he
agrees to hang around; we simply see him walking off, as from Jeremías’
point-of-view the film rewinds some of the roughhousing joys, including a
shared masturbatory event we hadn’t previously witnessed.
It
is almost as if the young man is watching his lover leave his life forever. But
it is, in fact, even worse for never having been spoken, the full extent and
nature of the love never fully having been expressed.
Directors Chappa and Deus have created a subtle and emotive study of
young love that perhaps occurs more often than we acknowledge, one boy
remembering what might have been with the other for the rest of his life.
Los Angeles, December 10, 2022
Reprinted from World Cinema Review (December
2022).
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