Hakim Mao | Idiot Fish / 2022

marital games

by Douglas Messerli

 

Julie Cebiton (screenplay), Hakim Mao (director) Idiot Fish / 2022 [24 minutes]

 

A young gay couple, Jimmy (Domhnall Herdman) and Guillaume (Arturo Giussi) are traveling the roads of Southern France on their holidays when suddenly—with either an impromptu gesture or

pre-planned enactment—they stop along the way at a gasoline station where Jimmy suddenly shaves his moustache, puts on a back pack, and plays out their original meeting years before when he was a hitchhiker whom Guillaume picked up.

    The excitement of the repeated seduction is working quite successful, Jimmy even rejecting Guillaume’s early advances as he plays out his original vague travel plans to Nimes while Guillaume, reporting that he is about to receive a small inheritance, lures him on to Montpellier with him.

     As they move forward in space, we soon find Jimmy sleeping in the back seat of the car—he does not dare drive in France since the French, unlike the Irish, drive on the right side of road. He is awakened as Guillaume lurches to a stop to pick up a truly beautiful young hitchhiker, Dylan (Sayyid El Almi), who claims to be a world-wide traveler, having just previously been to Alaska for his love of fish.

    The two continue playing their roles without establishing for Dylan the nature of their true relationship, and Dylan quickly becomes flirtatious with the driver, Guillaume suddenly stopping en route to show him a lovely Mediterranean view where he quickly strips off his shirt and pants and dives into the waters for a swim.

    Dylan quickly follows, encouraging Jimmy to do the same. But Jimmy, rather perturbed by the entire situation in which it appears his lover is playing a new role of seducer, bows out, watching the two beautiful bodies frolic in the ocean.

    Yet, Dylan quickly returns to shore, choosing instead to flirt with Jimmy, who soon discovers that Dylan has been lying about his Alaskan trip and has never even been out of France. When Jimmy pulls off his own shirt, Dylan notices a scar which Jimmy explains occurred as a child when doctors operated on him for a heart condition that nearly killed him. Dylan commiserates with his own story, another “fish” story or maybe even real, that he too almost died when while swimming he was attacked by a venomous “Idiot Fish,” a thorny-headed red codfish of the Pacific.

    Enjoying the fact that Guillaume make have been taken in by Dylan’s fish tales, Jimmy spontaneously determines to teach his lover a lesson by grabbing the keys and, with Dylan driving, temporarily stealing the car as the couple speed off for a short while before bringing back beer to Guillaume after he discovers they absence.

    But the spree lasts longer that either might have imagined as they stop by a café along the way and continue their flirtations, at one point the two almost on the verge of making love in the bathroom before Jimmy finally realizes everything has gone too far, and is ready to return to Guillaume.

    Angered by the failed come-on, Dylan however determines to go no further with the two strangers and throws the keys back at Jimmy, who must now overcome his fears to drive back to Guillaume, who himself has now gone on the road, himself hitchhiking back to safety.

    The two finally meet up in a small town (is it Nimes), but by this time Guillaume is no longer in a mood to play games, and refuses Jimmy’s attempt to pick him up.

     Jimmy is forced to drive after him and beg him to return to the car. Guillaume finally agrees to get in, but demands Jimmy now play role as the drive.

     In short their roles have shifted not only in the game they have begun but perhaps in their future relationship, if they can now salvage it.

     With a cast of three beautiful gay men, director Hakim Mao’s short film is a quite stylish and quirky work in which we observe a couple, perhaps tired of the routine of their relationship, trying out other future roles at the very moment they have undertaken to bring energy back into their affair by returning to the past. The tension between the knowable past and an unsure future enshrouds this film with a true sense of the dangerous and unpredictable that may either reenergize their relationship or possibly destroy it.

     Mao’s short cinema is certainly one of the more intriguing works of 2022.

 

Los Angeles, February 12, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (February 2026).