Agostino Leone | We Had a Time / 2019

the date

by Douglas Messerli

 

Agostino Leone (screenwriter and director) We Had a Time / 2019 [12 minutes]

 

Billed as a prequel to Tell Me How, Leone’s We Had a Time of the following year is a strange work in that we discover that Matt was indeed further “out” than we were led to believe, having as he tells Damien in their second encounter together, that he has purchased the Warhol piece hanging on his wall, evidently one of his “Self Portrait in Drag” works, because it seems vulnerable and the artist was interested in issues of gender, etc. We never see the photograph, but we are almost surprised that the still-confused figure of the 2018 movie has clearly been thinking about issues of sexuality before we see him being left behind by Damien in earlier film.

      He almost loses Damien as well in this film. The two have evidently met up through the internet once previously when, so it appears, when they simply engaged in sexual foreplay. But now Matt has invited him back, perhaps this being the time when he expressed the fact that he was “horny.”

      But Damien appears, at the beginning of this short work, more cautious about having sex with a stranger than does Matt. We soon realize, however, that Matt’s interest may be in just sex, satisfying his urges, and that he has not actually yet developed the notion that he may want to spend any significant time with another gay man, which Damien is truly seeking.

      It is yet another way of pretending to oneself that you aren’t truly gay, that you’re just interested in exploring a range of sexual experiences, or that sex somehow doesn’t have anything to do with being a homosexual. The latter, in fact, is the same ruse so many male prostitutes use to protect themselves from describing what do for a living as having anything to do with their own private sexuality. Which, in turn, is presumably why Matt would be just as happy with “fooling around,” a session of mutual masturbation serving the purpose just as fully as more complicated sex.

     It also explains why when Damien suddenly bends forward and kisses him, he is taken aback, responding, “well, this is a first.” Many prostitutes, in their denial of being homosexuals, do not kiss or allow themselves to be fucked, those activities suggesting a deeper commitment to queer self-definition.

      In any event, this time the two have sex, after which Damien suggests that they might continue the “relationship” by getting to know one another through a date.

       That word is truly an anathema to Matt, who expresses his total disinterest. Couldn’t they just meet again here and fuck? But Damien is adamant that if they get together again, it has to be date first and then…perhaps sexual activity.

       Matt simply replies that “he doesn’t do that,” meaning “dating” or what one might better describe as socializing. Actually, engaging with a queer man clearly suggests another kind of involvement, a recognition that the other is an equal, a human being with whom one might communicate other things than sexual pleasure.

        Yet clearly Damien has aroused something else in Matt, and when the boy dresses and is ready to leave without any possible return, Matt finally agrees to the “date,” afterwards calling someone to whom he had been talking earlier to describe the “event,” saying “We had a time,” still unable evidently to attach an adjective like “good” or “wonderful,” which might suggest his real involvement and evaluation.

        Once more Leone has demonstrated through what appears like a simple series of events, that he is exploring a far more complex territory in his short movies. I hope with these two under his belt, he might take this into a feature film that will further explore Matt’s and Damien’s gay maturation.

 

Los Angeles, September 24, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (September 2022).