the eternal light of a falling planet is extinguished
by
Douglas Messerli
Tavo
Ruiz (screenwriter and director) Tierra (Earth) / 2014 [11 minutes]
Arturo
(Ernesto M. Agraz) and Sagi (Héctor Archundia Ibarra) meet up on the streets of
their Mexican city to say goodbye. We don’t know why these intense lovers are
leaving one another, or what has torn them apart. But the fragments of their
first encounter we overhear make it clear that they have are about to be separated
for numerous reasons beyond their will or even explanation.
The younger of the two, Arturo keeps returning
to the metaphor of a shooting star falling to its nearest planet, the rain of
the stars each night.
The elder, Sagi, attempts to explain to
him that their love will be forever despite their necessary break-up, that
their love will continue in the memory of each other even beyond their deaths,
as if this were almost a high Romantic drama that imagines such eternal
consequences of the heart.
Unfortunately, since we do not really know
either of these attractive young boys in any way, or why there are now having
to sever their ties, it is hard to accept their fairly empty romanticized
jabber. Is one or both of them dying? Is this a statement about AIDS? Are they
moving to other places? Has their affair ended? We haven’t a clue, and the
drama, despite its reference to the stars remains entirely earthbound.
Over the years since this 2014 effort,
Mexican director Ruiz has made some significant films including Line 9
(2016), Juan Gabriel Is Dead (2018), Eden (2021), and Memory
of an Afternoon on the Roof (2022), all highly romantic in nature but
focused on its characters and event; but his early effort, pretending to be a
poetic statement of sorts, is quite portentous and inexplicable. We might wish
to feel for these handsome young boys, but we have to basis to imagine any empathy
or even the slightest sympathy. They are little more than mouthpieces of a love
that is difficult even to imagine in this day and age.
Los
Angeles, July 13, 2026 | Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (July
2026)
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