a day at the beach
by Douglas Messerli
Marco Leão and André Santos (screenwriters and
directors) Pedro / 2016 [20 minutes]
A young man, Pedro (Filipe Abreu) is seen
during the credits as returning home in early morning on his motorcycle. In the
kitchen he pauses for a drink, overhearing his mother having a conversation with
someone on the phone with whom she is attempting to meet up, promising to keep
close to her phone to await his or her calls.
Pedro retires to his bed, turns on his computer to a porno on-line
masturbation site and watches a young man beginning what promises to be a long
process, Pedro’s mother (Rita Durão) immediately intervening to tell him that
it’s time for him to get ready for the beach; she doesn’t want to be late. As
she sits beside on the bed, she shares his cigarette, seemingly oblivious of
the image he has on his computer. Of one thing we are already certain: this is
not going to be a “coming of age” or “coming out” movie.
He
heads to the bathroom, pissing as she again enters, adjusting her swimsuit in
the mirror and complaining once more of his tardiness for not even having
showered yet. Meanwhile, she asks him to re-tie the suit’s string in the back.
“Do you like it?” she asks.
But
when they’re both now dressed for the beach she suddenly cannot locate her
cellphone, and proclaims she can’t leave until she finds it. Sitting in a blue
lounging chair, his eyes closed, the boy appears to be exhausted and clearly
disinterested in whatever they’re planning to do at the beach.
In
the next scene the boy is again driving his motorcycle, his mother riding
shotgun holding him closely. As they stop at the beach, his mother steps down
from the bike moving forward
immediately to their supposed definition, while Pedro looks off in the
direction of a man who has just walked behind him. His mother trudges off to
the sand dunes, while her son follows leadenly after. She calls out, “Over
here,” and walks down the dune to the open strand. In the next frame they are
both laying out on the beach on blankets, Pedro fully-clothed, she in her
swimsuit, side by side, as if they were a couple of lovers.
After a long pause, she sits up, calling over to him, “Pedro. I think
we’re too early.” And then adds, “We should have come in the afternoon. I
prefer that. I wonder why we came so early?”
A
handsome nude man (João Villas-Boas) comes running from the water back to the
beach, picking up his towel, and drying off. He pulls on his bikini, openly
adjusting his crotch, and walks over the couple to ask for a cigarette. As he
carefully eyes the boy, his asks if they have a lighter. And it slowly begins
to dawn on us what is soon to happen, as Pedro looks intensely back at the man,
takes out a cigarette and waits for the stranger to light it, which he does
with his own cigarette.
Suddenly the man lifts himself out of his hunched position, says
goodbye, and begins to walk away, both mother and son starring back at him as
he moves away. When they finally look back, she asks her son, “Did you see the
way he looked at me?”
Pedro puts on his shoes, stands, and announces “I’m going for a piss.”
By now, however, we can guess where he is headed. To confirm our suspicions,
the camera observes the man pausing in his slow moseying walk, grabbing his
crotch and moving forward again, as Pedro comes into view behind him. After
trailing him through heavy brush, the boy meets up with the hunky stranger near
the shade of a tree as the two come together, Pedro pulling down his shorts as
the man leans into him for a kiss, the pair soon moving their hands across
other parts of each other’s bodies.
When Pedro saunters back some later, tossing off his shoes, his mother,
now standing, asks him if he managed to “pee.” She goes in for a swim, he
begging off joining her as she requests. She asks once more and he pulls off
his shirt and joins her, both of them soon frolicking in the heavy waves.
Soon we observe the mother standing, looking over to the waves where
Pedro continues to play. A very handsome man suddenly appears behind her and
kisses her neck. You didn’t call, she mumbles, you stood me up, he replying
something like “But I’m here,” lines that might almost be out of a romance
novel.
When Pedro begins to return to the beach he sees the man with his mother
and waits for a while before continuing, the other two having moved off out of
view. The boy returns to their original spot, lays down, and finally falls
asleep, certainly by this time utterly exhausted. When he awakens there is
still no sight of his mother.
In the last shot of this Portuguese short, we see him on his motorcycle
as in the very first scene, presumably returning home again, as if everything
that we have just witnessed might be ready to repeat as in a loop tape.
We are still left with several questions, however. Is she playing pimp
to her son or if he serves as the lure that draws men to her? More likely, they
both just seek out their sexual pleasures together, as a kind of mother-son
team duo who enjoy witnessing the others (surely numerous) that come in and out
of one another’s lives. If nothing else, we now no longer wonder why she so
desperately needed her phone.
Perhaps how we interpret the scenes we have just witnessed say more
about us as voyeurs than about the actual relationship of this sexually active
mother and son. Yet, I can’t help perceiving this as a 21st century positive
spin on Suddenly, Last Summer in which the all-consuming flesh isn’t
taken quite so literally.
Los Angeles, April 1, 2021
Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog
(April 2021).
