Luis María Mercado | El inicio (The Beginning) / 2010

nothing happens, everything happens

by Douglas Messerli

 

Luis María Mercado (screenwriter and director) El inicio (The Beginning) / 2010 [15 minutes]

 

Argentinian writer and director Luis María Mercado tells a tale in The Beginning that is all too common in gay stories. El (Nicolás Dellarole) and his friend Rafa (Martín Gil) are at the important moment of 17 or 18 when one is about to leave the home province, in this case Córdoba from college in Buenos Aires to attend college. He wants to become a photographer.

    Yet the pulls remain for him to stay, not only the love of his family—in this case he is bicycling on his way to see his grandmother and aunt who live on a farm—but also the feelings he holds for his best friend Rafa, who picks him up in his battered pick-up truck and joins him on the visit.

     They are greeted friendly by the entire family who wine and dine them, gossip about family members, and in the case of a younger cousin, display their open love. On this hot day, the boys, obviously friends since childhood, roughhouse together, attend a cattle sale, and finally wrestle, Rafa finally topping El and bending over him with what might have been a kiss if only—if only such behavior does not befit two male friends in their society and an open expression of their open love for one another would obviously force the other to out him as a real “fag,” a word one of them playfully uses earlier to describe the other’s pushing and pulling actions. They stop short, pausing just long enough to also know that in that very moment their deep bond has been cut, just as all such childhood homoerotic relationships must be severed for heterosexual boys.

     One may become gay later, perhaps both, or both boys may marry. But their relationship in the now must end. Their love is not in the right time for its full expression and, accordingly, can never be anything but a bittersweet memory about growing up, a tale to tell some other day.

     El will move on to Buenos Aires as is planned. Perhaps he will become a photographer. Perhaps he will see what for now he must turn a blind eye.

    Rafa drives off, the dust following in his tracks. Some day one or both of them will remember the other with regret that they could not express what their hearts longed to. Actually, this film recounts and ending, which also, of course, signifies the beginning of new lives for them both.

   In María Mercado’s beautifully filmed narrative nothing happens; everything happens at the very same moment.

     

Los Angeles, February 2, 2026 | Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (February 2026