Papu Curotto | Esteros / 2016

back to the beginning

by Douglas Messerli

 

Andi Nachon (screenwriter), Papu Curotto (director) Esteros / 2016

 

Based on a script by Nachon with direction by Curotto from 2015, a short film titled Matias and Jeronimo, this movie of the following year can’t match the beauty and exquisite-horror of the early short film. The two boys in that film, Rodrigo Coutinho Da Silva and Gabriel Rost, are far more lovely and innocent than the slightly older child actors, Joaquín Parada as the young Matías and Blas Finardi Niz as the child version of Jerónimo in Esteros.

     Yet, the movie as a whole is quite moving and fulfilling, even if one wishes that it might have included the terrifying scene when a lovely gay dancer in the local Carnival Madi Gras is beaten and left for dead at the black the bleachers where the boys sit, an incident which they observe and explains why perhaps the older Matías of the film, Ignacio Rogers, is slightly homophobic and imagines that he is a straight man, now in a relationship with a woman named Rochi (Renata Calmon), whom he has brought back to the Esteros or Tidelands from Brazil, his new homeland. She also seems to know her way around the small Tidelands town.

    His visit, it quickly becomes apparent, is not only because of his love of region, but his particular obsession with the estuaries near the farm where Jerónimo (Esteban Masturini) lived with his family, particularly his wonderful accepting mother Marilú (María Merlino) who endlessly took snapshots of the boys as if she recognized that their simple boyish affection and later adolescent sexual experimentation was far more than just early male bonding.

    We discern quite quickly in this film when we realize that Matías has told Rochi a great deal about his love of the farm near the estuaries without explaining to her that the home was where Jero lived with his parents, not the home of his own family.

     Jerónimo, in the meantime, who has remained in the backland instead moving on to the cities, has abandoned his possible career as a film director and his now happily involved in creating small action figures and creating small scenes of them for actions films. He still occasionally works as a make-up artist, which is how Rochi knows him, and with knowledge of his intimate childhood friendship with her boyfriend, having asked him to help make over Matías as a zombie for a costume party she and he are attending.

     Jeró is now openly gay, and seeing him again after all these years obviously enlivens Matías’ interest, although he strongly resists the pull of the old relationship, now equally impatient with his girlfriend. Immediately we perceive that something’s got to give, particularly when even Rochi, surprised that he has an old friend in the village, encourages him to meet up.

     Matías does so, as the two basically evaluate each other lives, realizing that neither of them have fully lived their potentials. But Matías is also fascinated by the fact that Jeró has remained in his beloved tidelands as an openly gay man, while Matías has chosen a straight life in which he is clearly unhappy. While he once dreamed of becoming a wildlife biologist, he is now employed in researching a new strain of soybeans.

     Jerónimo, on the other hand, has not become the director that dreamed of being, but is somewhat happy just making small movie action figures which are often used as figures in movie scenes. Both realize, without saying so, that there is something missing—and although they cannot yet admit it, they subliminally register that missing element is one another.

     Jerónimo, in particular, does not attempt a full expression of his feelings, going about his daily acts almost as gesture of his separation from his former childhood friend, Matías misunderstanding several of his friend’s hugs and friendly relationships with other males as representing relationships, which finally Jeró makes clear are only friendships; he has not found a companion with whom he wants a relationship.

     If Matías appears to have found the love of his life, we realize, particularly in Rochi’s need to constantly remind him of their love for one another, that something is not quite right, Matías passively accepting her hugs and kisses while yet remaining somehow aloof.

     When Jerónimo tells him that his mother and father still live on the farm in the estuaries where Matías spent so many of his summers, he is totally complicit that two should out a day to revisit it. They arrive to find Jeró’s parents away, due back perhaps that night, but actually the next day.

     Jerónimo suggest they revisit their old playing grounds, the nearby swamps wherein as children they imagined to be infested with alligators and snakes, but nonetheless, stripped off they clothes, jumped into swim, wrestle, and fling mud at one another, later to be forced to shower together in childhood eroticism resulting later in adolescent in masturbatory sessions with one another.

    Not trusting Jeró’s ancient truck, Matías borrows Rochi’s car to travel to the place. This time they boat to their old destination, as somewhat distant adults. For the first time, they along with us as voyeurs, actually take in the full beauty of the estuaries, the natural habitat of so many birds and other wild life. And there, suddenly Matías pulls off his shirt and dives in dressed in his blue jeans, Jeró following where they swim, wrestle, and repeat their childhood pleasures.

   By the time they return home it is raining heavily, and Matías pretends concern for Rochi’s car, both realizing that they cannot drive back to the town in such a tropical downpour.

    Jerónimo pours out scotches, and Matías turns on the music, the two of them briefly dancing together which they also freely did as children, although always with a slight sense of dis-ease.

     He attempts to telephone Rochi, but can’t seen to reach—or perhaps merely pretends to.

    Matías is determined to get some ice for their drinks in the kitchen, delighted to see the very same small fridge from old days. But the door is coming loose, and although he attempts to screw back in the bolts, he fails, Jeró joining him to quickly fix the situation.

    It is as if in Jeró’s easy accomplishment of the task that Matías suddenly realizes his complete ineptness at attempting to live as a straight macho male who might “take care” of his female lover. He realizes that he is indeed inept, passive, perhaps not even interested in heterosexual sex. The shock of realization terrifies him, and he suddenly charges out back into the rain to sit out a long period in the car, while the startled Jerónimo awaits he return.

   When he finally does come back into the house, something earthshattering has happened. For now when he enters, he suddenly kisses his old friend and two begin to engage is glorious sex, even when they hear Jeró’s parents have returned home, simply relocating to Jeró’s bedroom where they continue to fuck.

   In the morning they appear without shame to Jerónimo’s mother, who seems to accept the fact that they slept together now as full adults. She even offers a photograph on her cadenza she has taken of two boys laying together as children. But Matías does not take it. He now knows that he must face a future that he is not at all reader to accept. He returns to town, cautiously returning to their apartment. Roschi, smart woman that she is, has perceived what has occurred, and refuses, as they later sit of the staircase to hash it out, for him to even touch her. She demands that he listen to her, always the dominant one in their relationship. Her statement is not one of devastation or even disappointment. She simply insists that Matías return to his true love.

    Unlike so many thousands of unhappy movies where the male is still unable to overcome his learned homophobia, or to release himself from his myth of his heterosexuality, Matías immediately seeks out Jerónimo in the small shop where he sells many of his models of action heroes. The two kiss, and it is clear they have found themselves to their utter delight in love with the person they had always hoped to become their lovers. As in a fairytale, we know these two will continue to live happily together until the end of their lives.

 

Los Angeles, May 26, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (May 2026).