Dannon Lacerda | Indícios Dois (Traces Two) / 2012

evidence of love

by Douglas Messerli

 

Bruno Dubeux, Dannon Lacerda, and Caetano O’Maihlan (screenplay), Dannon Lacerda (director) Indícios Dois (Traces Two) / 2012 [12 minutes]

 

Two life-time friends from the Brazilian countryside, Guto (Caetano O’Maihlan) and Pedro (Bruno Dubeux), have suddenly arrived, a bit like country bumpkins to Rio de Janiero, amazed by nearly everything they encounter as the taxi takes them to their destination: a small apartment with only one bedroom and one bed which they will have to share.

     Yet hardly anything can quell their youthful excitement, when even the opening of a closed French shutter is a kind of delightful game: the views seem to them to be astounding.

      On the wall some previous tenant has written a decorative message in red: “We love to live not because we are used to living but because we are used to loving.”

      A moment later it’s time to hit the famous Rio beach, the two good-looking boys quite literally leaping through the sand to the water’s edge before stripping off their shirts and pants and jumping into the ocean waves.

      Momentarily we see the two studying together, obviously higher education being the goal that has brought them together in their adventure. Soon Pedro has met a new girl, Flavinha at the college, but Guto seems quite disinterested in another girl who approaches him.

     Talking together in their close quarters, Pedro describes his interest in the girl, speaking of her “great energy,” language which makes Guto tease him. And a frame later, Pedro awakens in the tiny bed their share with Guto’s arm about him.

    He jumps up, somewhat disturbed by the fact which he previously may never have even given a second thought. He stares at his face in the bathroom mirror as if pondering what their relationship really is about.

     Soon after, when Guto returns to the apartment he finds Pedro sitting in the room before two lit candles, pissed because Guto has forgotten to pay the electric bill. The friend argues that he’s fed up, Guto begging him to give him a break. Clearly their relationship appears to be beginning to fray at the edges.

      Yet, when Guto reminds him that it’s his birthday, Pedro suddenly produces a chocolate cake which he has specially made just for him. They sing happy birthday together, and this time in the middle of the night, it is Guto who awakens to feel Pedro’s arms about his body in a deep hug. He lights a match once, twice, and three times just to make sure of the reality of the experience.

     He too looks into the mirror in consideration of the newly discovered intimacy between them.

     In the last few frames of the film, we see a now empty bed, a lamp with a shade because there is no bulb, suggesting perhaps that their deep love is now just a memory of the past or perhaps has something they both have just accepted as the reality of their lives. On their wall the decoratively written phrase remains as one of the earliest signs along with the “two clues” (surely a better translation of the original title of this piece than the formally assigned “Traces Two”) that they have been in love all along.

      This short is one of the most beautiful testimonies to a kind of queer love between two friends that I have seen in a long while. One is almost tempted to read this Brazilian work as a prequel to the 2015 Argentinian short I recently reviewed, Matias and Jeronimo.

 

Los Angeles, September 22, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (September 2025).