David Barba | David Barba

the break-in

by Douglas Messerli

 

David Barba (screenwriter and director) Bésame (Kiss Me) / 2022 [10 minutes]

 

A bit like Lee Haven Jones’ Want It (2015) and Walden Woods’ Surprise Houseguest (2022), Mexican director David Barba’s Kiss Me is centered upon an apparent break-in of another man’s house. If the first short film, however, actually involves fantasy role-playing and the second a kind of parental replacement of an errant son come home from school break, in Barba’s short movie, the break-in is truly what it seems to be, a teen boy (Jonathan Andrade) illegally entering into wealthy man’s (Víctor Hugo Villaneuva) estate.

     True, the boy’s been keeping a watch on the handsome neighbor and accidentally sees him driving off as he’s bicycling by, seemingly offering up an open invitation, particularly since no door seems to be locked. The teen is not actually seeking to rob the house, but mischievously leaves small clues that he’s been there throughout the place: shifting books about on a bookcase, eating peanuts and stringing their shells along a ledge in a walk-in cabinet, and twisting dolls into sexual positions before placing the strategically between pillows on a bed. What the apparent bachelor is doing with Barbie dolls and a bikini top, which the boy tries on, is not explained.

     What the boy doesn’t know is that he being watched the entire time on surveillance cameras and just as suddenly he is confronted by the owner, demanding, “What do you want, faggot?” He shows him his cell phone image, displaying his movements throughout the house. “You’re fucked, dude.”

      He threatens to call security or his parents. The boy suggests he has money. But all the man wants is a kiss. He’s seen the boy when they cross paths, how he’s been watching him, and he knows he wants it. And within seconds the two are madly engaged in an intense smooching session. They jump into the pool to continue their sexual tryst.

      As they look out from the pool over the landscape, in post-sexual satiation, the boy says, “I think...if you don’t mind…I could come back tomorrow. This time I’d actually knock at the door.”

      The host answers, “Could be…Why not? You could come every day.”

      And so ends this rather banal and pedestrian fantasy. Even the beautiful bodies can’t mask the emptiness of its cinematic imagination.

 

Los Angeles, April 12, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (April 2023).