going gay
by Douglas Messerli
Johanna Alfaro and Jaíme Cortez
(screenwriters and directors) Tenemos que Hablar (We Need to Talk) /
2012 [17 minutes]
A seemingly happy heterosexual
couple, Mateo (César Durán) and Victoria (Giselle Calderón) meet for lunch in
Salvadorian directors Johanna Alfaro and Jaime Cortez’ 2012 film Tenemos que
Hablar (We Need to Talk). As the couple enjoy their streetside lunch,
two of Vicky’s gay friends spot them and embrace her, the more gregarious of
the two announcing that it’s his birthday and he’s celebrating that evening at
a trendy gay San Salvador bar.
Vicky immediately agrees, but the handsome Mateo, when the two are again
alone, demurs, saying that it’s simply not his scene and he feels uncomfortable
in such spaces, hinting that it may be a gay bar open, as most gay bars are
these days, to all interested parties.
His girlfriend insists that she has to
go and it would be impossible for her to be there without him. And, just to
please her, he is finally convinced.
At the bar, just the kind of place we might have imagined it to be,
Vicky suddenly dances with another girl as Mateo dances with other boys.
Somewhat unexpectedly, but also not without any sense of exceptionalness, she
kisses the woman with whom she is dancing. And Mateo similarly kisses the boy,
Diego (Walberto Galego), with whom he is dancing.
Over the next few days we witness brief interludes which makes us aware
that Vicky is seeing her friend Varonika (Jeanet Rodríguez) and that the two
are growing closer. Mateo is also seeing Diego but is still most uncomfortable
with their relationship, pushing away as he is equally drawn to him in the
process of gradually coming out.
Finally, Vicky faces off with her homophobic mother, who is not only
shocked by the news but threatens her with damnation, her and her husband’s own
health, and finally with outright hatred.
In the next scene we see both Vicky and Mateo phoning one another with
both insisting “we need to talk.”
Vicky finally moves out of her family home with the intent of moving on,
leaving evidently her new love even behind. Although she has previously argued
with her mother that being lesbian was not an infection which you can simply
“catch,” she now speaks of being the cause of her mother’s illness and talks
about the incident at the bar as if it were the cause of her shift in
sexuality, arguing, quite illogically, that if only she’d listened to Mateo and
not gone to the bar everything would be different.
Yet clearly she knows and talks about the fact that Mateo is now in a
rather permanent relationship with Diego, even hoping that his mother will be
more accepting that her own. We see the male couple curled up comfortably in
bed.
It seems unfair that the gay male couple in this story appear to have
come to terms with their sexuality, while Vicky, the representative of the
lesbian desire, feels all the guilt. But perhaps that is the directors’ point.
Women get none of breaks that society allows males, not even when it comes to
homosexuality. Although in truth we know that in most cultures lesbianism is
generally far more acceptable—when it is admitted to—than is male
homosexuality.
This is the first El Salvadoran gay film I have encountered, and was
fascinated with it just for its existence. What again becomes clear through a
film like this, another product of university film school, is just how much
film studies around the world have contributed the remarkable explosion of
LGBTQ short filmmaking that has entirely altered the gay cinema scene.
Los Angeles, April 5, 2022
Reprinted World Cinema Review
(April 2022).
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