Ricky Mastro | Xavier / 2016

i really like you, little lion

by Douglas Messerli

 

Ricky Mastro and Eduardo Mattos (screenplay), Ricky Mastro (director) Xavier / 2016 [13 minutes]

 

Brazilian director Ricky Mastro’s 2016 short film Xavier begins with a teacher (Helena Ignez) explaining to Nicholas (André Guerreiro Lopes) what she sees a problem regarding his son Xavier (Gregório Musatti). Although the boy is doing well in school and is a perfectly charming young man, he seems to have few friends his age (11 years of age), and appears to be friends with only older boys.

    Looking out a window, he watches his son, a drummer, playing with his drum sticks in an imaginary solo, speaking briefly to another boy whom he is told is Lucas, a boy who’s not in the same grade. “The real issue is that he doesn’t interact with the other students,” the teacher insists.

   “Do you find it strange that Xavier gravitates toward these older boys?” the teacher queries.

    We are so used to see precisely such comments create a sense of horror in cinema patresfamilias that we are suddenly prepared for the worst: a father to son lecture, a stern warning about his behavior, a misguided attempt to introduce his young boy to the opposite sex, or even worse.

     What a lovely surprise then, particularly given the general intelligence of Mastro’s films, that that this apparently widower father, clearly loves to hear his son practice his drums as he works in the kitchen preparing dinner, encouraging the boy to continue playing as he cuts up the vegetables while nodding his head in rhythm to the beats. He seems utterly confused, moreover, by the teacher’s concerns.

     What could be wrong with a boy preferring the company of slightly older boys, those with a bit more experience, better vocabularies, and a slightly more sophisticated behavior than the boy’s peers?

     As a pre-teen I was just such a boy, always more interested in the high boys than those in my grade school. Girls were out of the equation, their language being the squeals and giggles of trying to impress the opposite sex.

     When picking his son up after school, Nicholas observes his son staring down the street after a slightly older and taller boy who has just passed, Nicholas arranges a luncheon with his brother and sister-in-law, making sure that their daughter Tais (Alessa Previdelli) invites a couple of her male friends, Felipe (Netuno Trindade) and Marcio (Natan Felix Matiusso) who completely intrigue Xavier as he sits listening to their discussions of surfboarding and a young acquaintance who has shaved one of his eyebrows.

    Xavier particularly hits it off well with Filipe with whom, after lunch, he sits down to demonstrate—with sticks only—how to properly drum. When Filipe tries to imitate the younger boy’s great performance, it is an almost comical failure. Xavier explains that he has to close eyes and imagine a big audience cheering you on. This time Xavier suggests that Filipe was much better, the two of them exchanging generous smiles, Nicolas watching them enjoy each other’s company.

    At that very moment, his sister-in-law tries to gather everyone up to attend a show they’re planning on seeing. Nicholas suggests that Xavier join them, but his brother’s wife argues that he’s too young and that they can’t risk not getting in.

    When Filipe attempts to hand the drum sticks back to Xavier, he suggests he might want to keep them so he can practice. The boy wonders whether Xavier won’t be needing them, but the father immediately steps in to tell Filipe that he can take them and bring them back later, thus arranging another get together with his son.

     As if we haven’t observed clearly enough just how open and loving a father Nicolas is, the film ends with a gentle guitar piece that Nicolas, who at Xavier’s age studied the guitar, sings to his son. A sampling of the lyrics of Caetano Veloso’s Leãozinho goes something like this.

 

“I really like seeing you, little lion,

walking under the sun.

I really like you, little lion.

To cheer up, little lion,

My oh-so-lonely heart.

It’s enough just to run into you.

A little lion cub, morning sunbeam

Drawing my eye like a magnet.

My heart is the sun, father of every color,

When it browns your bare skin

I like to see you in the sun, little lion

To see you go in the sea

Your skin, you light, your mane

I like to be in the sun, little lion

To wet my mane

To be close to you and play around.”

 

     Xavier closes this beautiful short film with the perfect words: “I love you, Dad.”

     Here all the homophobic huff and puff of so very many gay father-son relationships has totally disappeared. Nicholas smiles upon a son who likes older boy with gracefulness of Zeus watching is son Dionysus at play.

     In 2022, director Ricky Mastro made a second short film about Xavier, this titled Xavier and Miguel, in which the now older boy decides to shoot scenes from his weekend with Miguel via his cellphone in an attempt to tell his father and the world that the two might be love. The film, as of this date, is not yet available on DVD.

 

Los Angeles, December 22, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (December 2025).