Roberto Pérez Toledo | Hola, mamá, hola, papá (Hey Mom, Hey Dad) / 2016

nothing will ever be the same

by Douglas Messerli

 

Roberto Pérez Toledo (screenwriter and director) Hola, mamá, hola, papá (Hey Mom, Hey Dad) / 2016 [5 minutes]

 

Jaime (Daniel de Llano) certainly chooses one of the most original ways to declare he’s gay to his parents, speaking from a cellphone from a hotel bed in Madrid lying next to his boyfriend Mario (Miguel Ángel Bellido). One might suggest that it is a cowardly way to “come out,” except that the two boys, who have obviously long discussed Jaime’s coming out, are so charming in their celebratory announcement, that it’s hard to be angry at them for long.

    He begins with a brief series of shots of the modest hotel room itself, as if showing his obviously provincial folks, the glamor of the city life before he then sits down, announcing that “I wanna tell you this little thing.”

     If Mario hasn’t come to Madrid to see the musical “Holy Camp”—although he will probably see it anyway—he has come to the capitol city to observe, as he explains to his parents, Gay Pride Day. And, so he declares, “I am here to celebrate too.” And it is at this point that he begins to hint at his own difficulties, as he describes the people “here” as being brave, that they don’t fear and just want to live and be themselves. He, so he reveals the real reason of this visual phone message, he wants to be like them, the city queers of Madrid.

      Finally come the words which they might have suspected would someday be spoken: “I’m gay. I like boys.” But if that isn’t enough of a shock, in the very next moment he introduces them to Mario, admitting yet another lie, that the last time he was in Madrid it was not to see a concert of Ruth Lorenzo, but to see the boy he met on Instagram. “He’s a very nice guy,” he’s studying architecture (as was Cupid’s potential boyfriend), and “I love him a lot.” As Mario waves at his suddenly new in-laws, there is something terribly funny and almost giddy in the moment.

     The message is complete. All that is left is for him to send it, and as he does so, he comments: “Nothing will ever be the same,” Mario responding, “It will be better.”

      It reminds me so very much of the several trips I made from a small city in Iowa to Chicago as a 15- and 16-year-old (although these young men are obviously older) to see Broadway touring companies perform musicals and plays in that Midwestern metropolis. The only enormous difference, sadly, is that I really traveled by bus (just as Jaime has) to see the plays, with no one there with whom I might share a bed—although I now realize in hindsight that I wished something like that might happen. I would have never been able to tell my parents back then in person that I was gay; and we had no cellphones. My father had already told me that if he found out I was gay, he would disown me. But since nothing happened, I could convince myself a few years more that perhaps I wasn’t gay, so there was nothing to tell.

     Now that Jaime has finally opened himself up totally to the truth of his future life he only must wait for his mother and father’s response. The phone rings at the end of this comic short film by Pérez Toledo, and after a few gulps and further rings he finally picks up the call. “Mom?” are the last words we hear, never learning of her response.

 

Los Angeles, February 20, 2023

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (February 2023).