art wins the heart
by
Douglas Messerli
Anthony
Aguiar (screenplay and director) Only Always You / 2012 [9 minutes]
US
director Anthony Aguiar’s Only Always You is a pleasant trifle of a film
that focuses on a young man in shorts on his daily workout (Andy Florian) being
voyeuristically watched a day-
With essential music by Glen Cheney and
others, the 9-minute film alternates between dream encounters between the gay,
slightly overweight “watcher” and the athlete of his dreams. In the first
daydream the boys meet up, the boy in shorts wanting to see what the sketcher
has in his little book. They are all “always you,” he shyly hints, the subject
of the film, the final image of the two kissing, an image which the boy in
shorts doesn’t all seem to mind, leading him to kiss the artist.
Reality is quickly reestablished, this
time interrupted by the two boys sitting side by side in another pleasant
encounter which again leads to possible love between the boys.
But soon, in real life, an Eve (Baily
Hopkins) enters the sketch artist’s garden, going up to the boy shorts and
engaging him in a kiss precisely as he had previously himself has been awarded
by his object of desire.
The girl not only intrudes in the sketch
artist’s imagination, but challenges him, as he imaginatively retaliates, going
up to the couple and pulling the boy away from her.
Reality is brought home again, but this
time even in the dreamer’s imagination as the boy in shorts rejects him, throws
water upon him, and walks away with the girl.
But the sketch artist wins: he has the
picture with his hands and the boy’s entwined.
In the world that Aguiar depicts the
dreamer is awarded his desires through his ability to turn them into art.
Los
Angeles, October 14, 2022
Reprinted
from World Cinema Review (October 2022).
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