Santiago Zermeño | Agua (Water) / 2020

on the run

by Douglas Messerli

 

Santiago Zermeño (screenwriter and director) Agua (Water) / 2020 [14 minutes]

 

A young man, Camilo (Daniel Bolaños), momentarily shares a lunch with several men, who, like homophobic heterosexuals world-wide, mock and berate one another with sexual humor: “What’s up Camilo, have you scored some pussy or do you keep using your hand?” But suddenly there is a call for another rower, and it is time for him to return to work. He is a rower of flat boats on the Xochimilco jetty, the famed tourist spot of the floating gardens near Mexico City.

     His phone rings and he tells the caller that he’s working, please don’t call him at work. Within the next few frames, as the telephonic friend finishes fucking Camilo, we realize why the sensitive young man has demanded that he not call him at work. He now repeats the request, suggesting his friend doesn’t realize how difficult it is with his fellow workers, who make many a homophobic joke.

     No sooner has he spoken, but another rower, Beto (Zezé Ramos) passes by, and Camilo is sure that he has seen him with his sexual companion, evidently infamous in this strange floating world, and that the news will soon be all over the lake.

      Indeed, when he returns to work, he spots Beto talking with the other rowers, laughing and gesturing, Camilo now certain that the conversation is about himself.

      Returning home, he demands his sister help him to find some money as he packs for a getaway. She wonders what he’s done, what trouble he’s gotten into. But there is no response, he simply reassuring her that he is not in trouble the police, and asking her not to mention the incident to his father.

      When he meets up with Beto the next morning, he confronts him, slugging him for having shared what he’s seen with the others. But Beto is confused, angry for the sudden attack. It is clear he has not seen or suspected anything, but now quite suddenly realizes that his friend has been taking out time to engage in sex with the man who lives in a nearby shack. The word is now spread with relish.

     Camilo goes on the run, and the film ends with him on a downtown Mexico City street with obviously nowhere to go and no money. The next step for his young teenager is obviously for him to prostitute himself in order just to survive.

     The message Mexican director Santiago Zermeño’s short film conveys, accordingly, is not only that homophobia and gay bigotry are still alive and well even in the most cosmopolitan areas of the world, but that it forces young gay men into a kind of paranoid state where their every action appears to them to be shouting out what they are most attempting to hide. Paranoia and bigotry always go hand-in-hand in such patriarchally-controlled societies where every story told might be interpreted as evidence against anyone who behaves in a manner outside of the strictures of that world—a reality explored by Franz Kafka time and again.

     In a sense, Camilo has created his own evitable casting out of this seeming paradise, which may possibly someday be for the better, for the present can only represent the worst nightmare imaginable for a boy on the run without a place in which to even sleep.

 

Los Angeles, February 14, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (February 2023).