Álvaro Martín Sanz | El Adorable Inquilino (The Adorable Tenant) / 2013

putting his money on the man

by Douglas Messerli

 

Álvaro Martín Sanz (screenwriter and director) El Adorable Inquilino (The Adorable Tenant) / 2013 [17 minutes]

 

What’s a poor idle slob, who’s recently lost his job and his girlfriend, to do when he wakes up in bed with a gay man in a wig who insists they have had a delightful night together fucking. The slob (Edgar García) orders the uninvited tenant (writer and director Álvaro Martín Sanz) out of his house, but as the delightful guest reminds him, he has his ring on his finger—a tacky dimestore ring explains his guest, telling him he’s welcome to take it off, except that it’s stuck—and serves him up lasagna for dinner.

     The slob keeps trying to tell him he’s not gay, but the tenant responds, “And the Pope wears black.” He tries again to explain that he’s never done anything like this before, his new friend explaining “They say that someone who’s drunk shows his real self.” According to his future husband, it’s all a matter of the subconscious.

     It’s hard to throw someone out after they make you a delicious lasagna dinner, but when he returns to your own bed in your own pajamas, that going too far. The guest insists it’s all right; he needs his sleep after the previous wild night of fucking. The lights go out, and soon after the tenant is screaming in pain and delight; “You see, it’s all subconscious!”

      And the next morning, with breakfast in bed, two eggs staring their sunny sides up into this sleepy face; what’s a man to do but to eat what’s on his plate. And then, all day this adorable tenant works hard to clean up the dozens of tossed off beer cans and bottles, the left-over pizzas, the junk on the floor crawling with cockroaches. He even vacuums. And suddenly the scrawny, effeminate boy who’s been offering up all these services even begins to look like a beautiful female to the idle loafer.

      Soon they start going out together to visit spots around the city. The tenant cooks him up wonderful meals each evening of all sorts of Spanish delights. It doesn’t take long for the new companion to come out of the shower without any pajamas, the now well-groomed male pulling a bottle of vodka out of his bedstand and swigging down a few belts before subconsciously performing their nightly pleasures.

     But now he/she’s complaining about the man’s habits of watching football day and night. And then there’s the news that soccer player Leo Messi’s priceless wedding ring is still missing, stolen from his house a few weeks earlier, its value approximately ten million euros. The picture of the suspect looks strangely like the slob’s new companion, described as a psychopath.

     At dinner the tenant announces that he’s bought a new lubricant like the one used by mechanics to help his lover to remove his ring. And suddenly like his old girlfriend, the original resident’s new boyfriend is complaining about his constant drinking and refusal to help out with any chores in the house.

     For once, the former idle slob takes an active role in the relationship, suggesting how beautiful it might be if he never removed the ring from his finger, that indeed they might marry. Wouldn’t that be nice? Even the tenant must tentatively assent to that.

     If nothing else, Spanish director Martín Sanz proves that it is often the heterosexual male who is truly passive, not effeminate homosexuals, even if keeping up a relationship with them is tricky. The tenant has easily gotten what he seemed to be looking for, but does he truly want it?

     This clever moral fable is worth watching through a couple of times at least.

 

Los Angeles, April 26, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (April 2023).