Cristian Riquelme Ripoll | Hermanos (Brothers) / 2016-2017

destroying the evidence

by Douglas Messerli

 

Cristian Riquelme Ripoll (screenwriter and director) Hermanos (Brothers) / 2016-2017 [series with 4 episodes]

 

As Vito Russo might have put it, another couple of gay boys bite the dust in Cristian Riquelme Ripoll’s 4-part TV and web series from Chile, Hermoso (Brothers), these boys being products of and unknowing participants in incest, which in Chile is legal while still being cursed by the of the powerful Catholic Church and conservative forces.

      In the first of the series, we’re introduced to the twink, Daniel (Mario Álvarez), fresh in from Canada, who is seeking information about his biological birth mother, evidently having discovered that he was sent off from his Chilean homeland at an early age. Somehow, without sufficient explanation, he’s been an online partner of the boy who meets him at the airport, Joaquín (Alejandro León), who unbeknownst to Daniel but particularly after their initial sexual bedroom encounter, has claimed the newcomer as his boyfriend.

      Meanwhile, in the same small town, the handsome youth Ricardo Camus (Gonzalo Bustos) is entrapped in a relationship with a woman who he’s made pregnant, Ariela (Pilar Muñoz), to whom Ricardo is totally committed to marry in a few weeks along with his mother Magdalena’s (María Olga Matte) blessing and careful overseeing. Yet, is not at all sure of the changes it will make in his life. Ricardo, we soon discover, has not yet fully explored his sexuality, which an accidental meet-up with Daniel, Joaquín, and the latter’s overbearing sister Luna (Deborah Carrasco) among others at a local swimming spot, triggers. While Luna, Joaquín and friends dive in for a pleasant skinny dip, Daniel and Ricardo introduce themselves to one another and before Ricardo can even plead “help,” Daniel has pulled him off into the distance where the two suddenly engage in passionate sex—an event that eventually draws the notice of a jealous Joaquín and his sister, and which leads to total confusion in Ricardo’s life.

      In his absence, Ariela has attempted to call her fiancée all day, and his mother, the conservative local political leader Magdalena, are equally furious by his unexplained absence, Ariela in the meantime having lost their baby.

    To deny the impulses to which he’s just indulged, Ricardo not even believing in the possibility of bisexuality, he further commits to an early marriage. But when Ariela, rather understandably denies him sex, he gets up and seeks out another woman, a former sexual partner, Pamela. When he can’t get aroused even by her, Ricardo visits the local men’s sauna, having sex with the first man who pays him attention.

    Daniel has been given a name by someone back in his Canadian homeland, which turns out to be Magdalena, whom he seeks out. Earlier in the film, as they were cleaning out boxes in the attic, Ricardo’s sister Valentina notices an old photo of Ricardo with another small boy whom none of them can identify. Accordingly, we easily guess that Daniel might be that young boy in the photo, although Magdalena strongly denies any such possibility and calls in one of her brute assistants to take care of the matter, while pretending to care for the boy by sending him off to the local hostel run by Ricardo. Before Daniel can get there, and the second episode’s credits have even begun to run, the beautiful gay boy Daniel has been hit from behind by a blunt object and dies, disappearing from sight even before we or Ricardo have had a chance to truly get to know the likeable kid.

      Episode 3 is mostly devoted to the police investigation in which almost the players are invited in for questioning. Obviously Joaquín, became of his jealousy, and Ricardo because of his sexual indiscretion are the most obvious suspects, and as the police hold them for questioning they gradually strike up a friendship, without being totally open with each other about what they know.  Joaquín, for example, says nothing about having seen Ricardo and Daniel engaging in sex and dare not openly declare the jealousy he felt. But then, in the interim, his younger sister has connected him up with Tinder, which seems to have calmed him down somewhat. Moreover, it’s clear that he’s developed an interest in Ricardo, who his two sisters also have continually declared as being “cute,” the younger one having even become Facebook friends.

      What Ricardo does reveal to Joaquín is that his sister Valentina has told him that she observed his mother talking to the now dead boy on the day of his death. He is surprised, moreover, that Daniel was found with a card in his pocket for the hostel which Richardo runs.

      In short, everyone in this episode is busy keeping secrets from the others, and when Magdalena discovers not only that Daniel is dead but that her son is one of the suspects, she is furious. She did not mean in taking care of the matter that her minion should kill him, she insists. But he swears that he has not killed the boy and did not have time to even encounter him before Daniel was killed.

      While Ricardo’s mother races off to the police station, we are more fully introduced to a new suspect, her elder son Alberto (Johan Baez) who calls someone else suggesting that he needs obtain something even earlier they’d previous discussed. What it is that he needs and for what purpose bring up questions of Alberto’s involvement in the murder and hint at the major issues of the 4th episode.

      But something strange evidently happened in the writing and direction of the first 3 enticing works of the series and the last, which seems to basically have forgotten the real villains of the piece, the story about family incest, and Daniel’s death. Although the episode begins with Magdalena retrieving the photographs we now believe to be of her son Daniel as a child, and later burning them, the story quickly changes course.  Instead of focusing on the logical development in the plot, the three younger figures of this work, Ricardo, Joaquín, and his sister Luna take off for a day in the country. The boys get to know each other better and the three of them end up at the ocean for a hug fest. In a sense, this new twist in the plot seems to be attempting to introduce something like “normality” into the lives of these characters who have already experienced a world far beyond the heteronormative or even bisexual normality that the movie seems now about to impose upon us.

     Later the group visit a nearby gathering of amusement rides and food stands, Joaquín bowing out of the rides, while Ricardo and Luna enjoy several of them.  Joaquín meets up through his new Tinder app with a young boy and they have sex.

     When the three of the reconnoiter it is finally time for Joaquín to explain what he knows about the connection of Daniel to the Camus family, and whatever bits and pieces missing, Ricardo has now been able to figure out.

     He returns home to take a rope and hang himself, a scene which we’ve already encountered in the very first episode of the series.

      Why writer/director Cristian Riquelme Ripoll felt he needed to kill off the two young men involved with incest is rather inexplicable, and why the film doesn’t end with a round-up of the two real villains, Magdalena and Alberto—who have hidden the knowledge from nearly everyone—is equally unexplained. We can only hope that Valentina, who has since heard the interchange between her mother and Alberto and Joaquín will go to the police with the truth. But given the odd direction this series has taken it is doubtful that they will even be brought to justice. As Russo long ago might have complained, it’s far easier to kill of the gay boys for anything that has gone wrong in the family.

 

Los Angeles, September 5, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (September 2023).