two boys in the locker room before the big game
by Douglas Messerli
Alejandro Moreno (director) Fuera de Juego (Offside) / 2021 [6 minutes]
Another gay sports (soccer) story where the star player, or in this case,
the captain of team (José, played by Marc Moreno) is gay, but given the
homophobia of sports, is forced to keep it secret. You can understand why this
set-up is so popular, combining as it does the best of sports with the thrill
of homosexuality hidden just beneath.
But it’s a balance, of course, which requires either another teammate or
a new comer reveal the golden boy’s sexuality, force him to make a sexual
decision, and still win the game.
Unfortunately, Spanish director
Alejandro Moreno’s short film from 2021 is completely off balance.
Alone with him in the locker room earlier in
the day before the game José simply asks “if he is,” leaving the vague blank
for the audience to fill in, to which Óscar necessarily responds that he’s “not.”
José answers that “then he’s not either.” Since nobody asked José or, at this
point, even suspects that he is “blank,” we are more than a little confused,
especially those viewers who might not be so readily tuned into this common
trope. But the director wipes away our confusion immediately my having José
give Óscar a big kiss, which the latter gladly accepts.
As in most such movies, another
teammate interrupts, witnessing their act. What’s a closeted gay boy expected
to do but to push the presumed gay other away and, in homophobic disgust, warm
him to never try that again. In short, our director has a little hastily and
clumsily set-up the situation.
The important thing about
such films is where the director takes it from there. Generally, we are drawn
into a deeper web of lies as the boys fall in love, have sex, and begin a
relationship that the outsider usually demands the insider be brave enough to
reveal. The pattern goes back to one of the earliest of coming out films, Simon
Shore’s Get Real of 1998, where the jock doesn’t have the guts to come
out, and we’re left with the hero who’s a cute nerd named Steven Carter who
wins the day by telling everyone of his sexuality in his graduation speech. One
of the most noted of the representations of this genre of John Butler’s 2016 movie,
Handsome Devil, the sport in this case being rugby.
Moreno, however, has precluded
all of that apparatus by showing us the locker room scene as a flash back in
the midst of the big game where José has just been hit hard by a member of the
other team causing a foul which has rendered him in no condition to make the
winning kick.
Against his teammate’s
protests, José chooses Óscar as the kicker. Of course, Óscar makes the goal,
winning the game. The end.
In other words, in this
6-minute hasty we have no real drama, no real bravery regarding sexual revelation,
and basically no story. The team wins their game. Only the back-story of the
boy’s locker-room encounter is of any real interest, yet it almost seems as if
the director, along with his characters, have forgotten all about that. What
are all the cheers about? And who ultimately cares? José has not at all
revealed any moral fibre, bravery, or even sexual desire. His selection of Óscar
might as well have been out of the gay boy network playbook, choosing his
fellow queer instead of homophobes who now have to admit the faggot Óscar into
their celebratory arms. But I don’t think this young Barcelona director even imagined
that!
At film’s end, everything in
this short film seems to still be “offside.”
Los Angeles, September 28, 2025
Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (September 2025).
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