Matteo Pilati and Alessandro Guida | Maschile singolare (Mascarpone) / 2021

the gay divorcée, or let the sunshine in

by Douglas Messerli

 

Giuseppe Paternò Raddusa, Matteo Pilati, and Alessandro Guida (screenplay), Matteo Pilati and Alessandro Guida (directors) Maschile singolare (Mascarpone) / 2021

 

One has to give Masculine Singular—the literal and I’d argue preferable translation of this Italian work—credit for arguing that the source of a gay romantic-comedy in 2021 can be a divorce rather than an endless search to find true love. Contrary to the evidence of hundreds of queer short and feature films whose characters—since the epidemic of AIDS and the possibility of gay marriage— are generally portrayed desperately seeking a boyfriend, girlfriend, or just true love, a break-up of a relationship can actually be liberating, and learning how to live with oneself and defining one own’s life might be perceived to be a positive thing. In short, directors (and co-writers with Giuseppe Paternò Raddusa) seem to recognize a time before queer films all imitated heterosexual cinematic fantasies.

     Not that the idea comes easily to the handsome Antonio (Giancarlo Commare), who, although trained as an architect, has spent the last 12 years of his young life (he’s now about 30), playing a trophy wife and household pet to Lorenzo (Carlo Calderone), whose profession is kept vague except to make it clear that he makes a good salary.

     In the first moments of this film, beautiful Antonio wakes up after apparently a luxuriously fulfilling night to find his bed-partner missing. But unlike the dread of many another gay film whose hero finds the person with whom he has just had sex has suddenly left, our hero isn’t all perturbed. His hubby has simply gone off to work, leaving him all day to go to the gym, where’s he’s ogled and hit upon by a handsome man who suggests that early in the day is the best time to visit the gym since there are only tired old men and an occasional trophy wife in attendance. “Which one are you?” he jokingly asks, Antonio responding quite seriously by flashing his wedding ring.

   The afternoon for Antonio is spent cooking and whipping up a special treat for his hubby: tiramisu, made incidentally with lady fingers, coffee, liqueur, and mascarpone cheese topped with chocolate powder, hence the English-language name of the movie, Mascarpone. Antonio makes his own lady fingers, although he is not yet convinced that making your own cheese, as his grandmother did, is absolutely necessary.

   Home from work early, Lorenzo looks exhausted and chides his lover for constantly baking up sweets. This special concoction, however, has been chosen by Antonio because he has already heard the sadness in Lorenzo’s voice earlier in a phone call.

    What he doesn’t realize is that his companion’s sadness is not about work, but about his life with Antonio. He is tired of their shallow existence and for more than a year has been seeing another man, Enrico. In short, he suddenly demands that his husband leave his house, although he’s perfectly nice about it in suggesting he will help pay for his rent if he can find a reasonably-priced room in Rome.

     Antonio is, in fact, a product of the happy-ever-after films that have generally been de rigueur since the awful demise of so many gay boys of AIDS who had lived wildly sexual independent lives, those “unhappy single men” also portrayed in the dramatic versions of a great many contemporary queer movies. Accordingly, our hero spends perhaps far too much of this otherwise charming and witty film whining about his suddenly single condition. Fortunately, he has a bestie female friend (an old-school fag-hag) Cristina (Michela Giraud), who has now found he own boyfriend in the laughable but loyal fool Paolo (Albert Paradossi) who becomes the butt of the gay boys’ jokes. And she, in turn, provides support as he goes on the search for a new room, finally finding one with a true old-fashioned bohemian and sexual slut, Denis (Eduardo Valdarnini), who may also be a semi-prostitute and drug seller who works from the pleasant place he has inherited from his aunt.

    It’s clear from the start that he likes Antonio, but the rent is a bit steep at 200 euro a week. Antonio, however, still hasn’t assimilated the fact that his move is a permanent thing, imagining that in a week or two, a month at most Lorenzo will want him back. But although even Lorenzo finds 800 euro a month a high price to pay, he’s willing to pay it just to allow Enrico to replace Antonio in his bed.

    Fortunately, the slightly effeminate Denis, who walks around day and night in a dressing robe when he isn’t nude, takes a special liking to his new roommate, introducing him to his friend Luca, a baker who owns a small pastry shop and is seeking an new apprentice; that he just happens to be the man who seemingly propositioned Antonio in the gym seems to have slipped Luca’s memory, and fortunately does not become part of the plot except that we know that at least our boy’s new boss finds him attractive.

    Antonio, moreover, even though he somewhat resents his role as apprentice—which means simply following the rote rules of bread-baking, sweeping-up floors of spilled flour, and layering cakes with frosting—is surprisingly capable and even obedient. If nothing else, it’s clear he prefers baking to designing buildings.

     Denis, moreover, also takes the boy under his wing, suggesting that instead of bemoaning his now empty life that, as critic Steven Warner observed in his Online review, “inspires the aimless young lad to ‘find his light’ before becoming engulfed by yet another lover’s shadow.”

     Quite humorously but with sufficient doses of sexual allure, Antonio gradually begins to explore the world of Grindr, competing with Denis in the apartment space with the stream of handsome young Roman studs who find their way to his bedroom. And at one point, now that Antonio is no longer averse to pulling down his pants and has removed what he earlier described to Denis as the cobwebs in his ass, pastry chef and apprentice suddenly discover they have the hots for each other and in a few moments of quiet in the kitchen meet up in a truly hot scene of sex. And even if his first threesome is an absolute failure, a later reincarnation of the sexual trio seems quite delightful when shared with Luca and Denis.

   Several critics, inevitably, found these numerous one-night stands and Denis’ flamboyant life “sad” or “unfortunate,” but I suggest they have simply forgotten the fun that open sex used to be before we had to worry every moment about whether or not we were infecting our bodies with something that might quickly lead to death. Denis keeps screaming out about the abundance of condoms around the house in case his younger charge might have forgotten to protect himself, but basically the formerly regretful and fretful loyalist rediscovers his mojo in being something of a sexual maverick to the current trend of seeking out a mate for life; even with a cute young man, Eugenio (Vittorio Magazzù), appears to want to settle down with him, when the boy doesn’t answer his next day texts for several days, Antonio politely shows him the now revolving door.

     Just as importantly, Antonio appears to have made a career choice, joining a pastry baking class with a famed chef Orsola (Barbara Chichiarelli) who instead of encouraging his vague pleasure in sweets helps to install in him the realization of him just how much hard work it takes to follow the strict rules of rolling out and patting up dough, layering cakes, and depending upon the timer for the oven instead of the instincts of the eye and heart.

     In short, our hero discovers just how liberating and intense it is to live a single life defined by attempting to attain what one really wants. If the film was a bit weighed down previously by Antonio’s societally defined needs, it becomes almost buoyant when he begins to explore what he personally desires. That is until he meets Thomas (Lorenzo Adorni), a perfectly beautiful photo-journalist with whom Antonio has great sex in bed who suggests Antonio join him in his home of Milan filled with the perks of a foundation-provided mansion, pool, and surrounding garden that looks like a forest. In fact, Thomas seems to be the perfect mate for Antonio, and our handsome baker almost takes the bait, aggravating Luca, who suddenly appears surprisingly possessive about his former “apprentice,” (spoiler: in the 2024 cinematic follow up this work, Mascarpone: The Rainbow Cake, we discover that their may have been more between Luca and Antonio than imagined in the first film).

     So too does our previously fun-loving friend begin to ignore the wise observations of Denis, and even begins to dismiss the restrictions put upon by his learnèd pastry chef. We fear he is falling back into the shadows of a Milan moon instead of coming out into its famed golden light of the Roman sun.

    You can’t blame the writers/directors for staging a kind of deus ex machina with the sudden death, off-stage, of Denis, who suffers the crash of a car into his meagre bike, and the appearance, just as unexpected, of a mother who appears to care less about her son’s death than finding where he kept his money; after all, it costs a lot for her to rent such a space, she proclaims, making it suddenly clear that Denis needed the money he made from sex and drugs just to keep a roof over his head, offering up some of that space to Antonio for far less than what it might cost. Just maybe Denis has lied to protect the innocent.

     That sad event, Luca’s shared grieving for the loss of his friend, and the continued council of Cristina forces Antonio to explain to his potential new husband that he knows he might be happy with Thomas but he is not yet ready to give up what he has just begun to discover, including the fact that homemade mascarpone really does taste better.

   He passes the grueling test of the pastry chef and runs into a once again frowning Lorenzo, who having been handed the same quick goodbye from Enrico that he once awarded Antonio, suggests his former “lover come back.” But this Antonio is no longer a fool ready to return to his role as a houseboy. He politely gives Lorenzo a quick kiss and, as Dionne Warwick so succinctly suggests, “walks on by.” This is, after all, at heart a comedy of self-discovery, not an old-fashioned rom-com which ends up at the altar with a societal or institutionalized definition of the rest of one’s life.

 

Los Angeles, September 29, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (September 2025).