Piergiorgio Seidita | Goodnight / 2019

sex with a stranger

by Douglas Messerli

 

Piergiorgio Seidita (screenwriter and director) Goodnight / 2019 [8 minutes]

 

Christian (Andrea Lintozzi Sinneca), the nervous gay boy in Italian director Piergiorgio Sedita’s Goodnight—and what gay boy isn’t nervous on his first few times out seeking out sexual delight (O how I recall even decades later the butterflies in the stomach that represented the thrill and terror of returning each night to the local gay bar where I was sure to meet up with a sexual partner, the excitement of meeting someone to whom you might give up your body to pure pleasure)—decides it’s best to call his mother before undertaking what appears soon after to be a Grindr meetup. The mother (voiced by Claudia Cervelli) is upset that he is even calling her instead of entering back inside to be with whomever he has chosen for the night. She seems almost mystical in her insights, insisting that instead of calling her, crying and out of breath, he should simply return to the party—from which he has led her to believe he has temporarily escaped to call her—and enjoy the company he has chosen to be with, as if she knows very well what his call is truly all about.

    With her tacit approval, he visits Mattia (Andrea Patetti), who himself sensing his young visitor’s uncomfortableness suggests that he begin with a message. Christian, who evidently has foot fetish begins rubbing Mattia’s feet, who meanwhile asks him the strange question whether or not as a young man named Christian he truly believes in God.

    Obviously young Christian feels this is an odd question given the actions in which they are now engaging, but Mattia insists that when he feels comfortable these are precisely the kinds of questions which cross his mind. On the other hand, he almost casually mentions, he finds Christian to be beautiful.

     Christian pauses, sitting back to respond that if there is a God, he certainly hope he isn’t watching them at the moment. But Mattia continues in a philosophical mode to wonder “where has the magic of our times gone?” Christian answers, perhaps a little predictable and maybe even somewhat cynically: “I suppose the old generations exhausted it.” Mattia gently touching Christian’s face insists that they might be able to get it back, but Christian suddenly sitting up almost in resistance insists that he couldn’t know how to do it, Mattia in response insisting “That’s impossible.”

    Suddenly, I could well imagine in the age of Grindr—even the company name hinting at a job to endure in order to provide the necessary sexual release—that any idea of magic seems totally meaningless. Sex has become a kind of job to produce the necessary pleasure to get through the next day. To me way back in history sex was more than magical, it was a delicious sensation of melding momentary with another beautiful body that might result in anything…a simple conversation, a friendship, an inkling of love. Did my generation exhaust that with our endless nights of pleasure leading to loneliness, drugs, and disease? Christian’s fear, it is quite apparent, is something I never felt, and perhaps more poignant such I can’t place it, understand it. Even his mother has given him her permission. Perhaps the fact that in my generation no one gave us any permission was at the heart of our delight.

   The beautiful Mattia stands, drops his bathrobe, and walks off toward the bedroom. We see Christian returning to his car. He looks sad, and we can only presume he left in frustration.

   But soon after his cellphone bings, and we hear Mattia’s voice: “Ciao…I thought that…if God, or whoever is above…HOPE…saw us tonight!” For the first time Christian produces a big smile.

“Because I truly believe,” Mattia continues, “in that magic we’ve spoken about tonight [we] were kept safe in a room like ours…lost rooms in the world between strangers…strangers or….people who had known each other the whole life.” He hopes that they felt the same thing they were feeling in the moment. “A true feeling that shakes the heavens. Like colors. The taste of a kiss between two people.”

    All right, I never would have ever put my many wonderful, one night affairs in these terms, even though I was a philosophy minor in the university. But in more ordinary terms, isn’t that what I just expressed above in the experience of the joy, the pleasure of meeting up with an individual to share sex?

    We witness a truly different Christian listening to this message, smiling, laughing, almost pounding the steering wheel of his car with joy. The “goodnight” offered to this young dreamer is a offering into the future, the kind of night gay boys such as us have always longed from—and sometimes, even briefly received.

    Sedita’s small work is a valentine to gay sex with a stranger.

 

Los Angeles, March 4, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema, March 2026.