Tavo Ruiz | Línea 9 (Line 9) / 2016

the adventure of sex

by Douglas Messerli

 

Tavo Ruiz (screenwriter and director) Línea 9 (Line 9) / 2016 [17 minutes]

 

Mexican director Tavo Ruiz is one my favorites, but his Line 9, despite its endless beauty and truly hot sex, is also rather portentous, I’m afraid.

     Beauty Andrés (Andrés B. Durán) has a sense that he is merely lost in a repetition of acts, and attempts to break out of his repetitive world simply by taking the subway, Line 9. He pauses before entering the underground, not even sure he wants to venture into his repetitive behavior yet again, but at the last moment catches the train.

     There, almost immediately, he observes, sitting opposite, a handsome young student Miguel (Holil Herdia). They share gay stares for a few minutes, and by the next stop is hooked, getting out of the car with Andrés, surely ready for something to happen.

     Perhaps they might share dinner together, but Andrés argues he really just wants to kiss him and knows of a lonely walkway nearby. Miguel is suspicious, suggesting they kiss right where they stand, now on the street above the metro.

     Nonetheless, he is lured into the narrow side street where Andrés begins to passionately kiss him, ending in Miguel giving momentary head before he is intensely fucked.

     Andrés is insistent that perhaps they are destined for one another, explaining that he has no past, just a future which the two might share. Yet, as always, he has no plans for that future. He simply takes Miguel’s number as Miguel, now at street level, decides to head off home in the Route 9 bus. There is no suggestion that they will ever meet up again despite Andrés’ grand profession that there lovely encounter might mean the beginning of something new and different.

      Andrés returns to the underground, almost immediately encountering another cute boy (Ernest Agraz) who begins flirting with him.

     For a moment, at least inwardly, Andrés screams out in the horror of his inability to escape the repetition of the pattern of his life—clearly quick sexual hookups that go no further than the moment of immediate six, despite his protestations of a changes destiny. He howls out in near despair.

      But a moment later, he too begins the knowing smile, the flirtatious wink all over again. He is stuck in a kind of hell of endless pleasure without any of the true meaning for it all he desires. He cannot escape the adventure of sex.

      Albert Palomo’s score and his song “Causualidad” adds a great deal of depth to this short film.

 

Los Angeles, June 1, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (June 2026).