escaping paradise
by Douglas Messerli
Gabriel Páucar Vásquez (screenwriter and director) Hotel Paraiso
/ 2019 [17 minutes]
Young teenager Pierre (Priya Darsham Acosta)
is working in a small textile factory in order to save money, hoping to get him
and his kid brother, Abel, a better place than the room in which they live over
his father’s gay porn cinema.
His
father cannot even be trusted to look after the pre-pubescent Abel (Piero Arce
Alvarez) while he’s working, sending the boy into the streets or allowing him
to come and go between the porno rooms. Even the narrow alley outside his father’s
porno palace is lined with older boys, prostitutes who frequent the “Hotel
Paraiso,” who taunt him with offers of sexual activity.
What’s worse, is that the next day Pierre is fired from his job due to
complaints of some of his co-workers regarding rumors of his sexuality, perhaps
more based on his father’s occupation than his own sexual activities, although
he does hope to sell some of his home-made designs to “faggot” drag queens. But
his articles of clothing are too expensive for the drag queens who he knows,
and perhaps too coarsely made with everyday fabrics for the posher drag queen
clientele.
Down
below in the porno place, Pierre stares at one of the male prostitutes, Omar
(Giannatonio Martinez), obviously finding him attractive, as an older client
comments, one of the old kind of prostitutes, handsome and dashing, little
soldier boys or like muscley officials; “that’s how you get good cash.” He
offers Pierre money or presumably a way to earn enough money to survive. The
boy walks away.
Later the boy talks with Omar, who tells him he rents a room and lives
alone. “Why, don’t you want to move in; I can give you a good deal,” Omar
jokes.
Back
in the father’s apartment, he catches the man about to beat Abel for stealing a
cookie, and as he attempts to intervene the overweight thug slugs his son. The
event forces him to take up his little brother and move in with Omar, hoping to
sell some of his scarves and other items to drag queens; but he has no success.
In the few days he rooms with Omar, however, there is at least one beautiful
moment as Pierre, folding up his fabrics, discovers his little brother in the
box, the two old boys momentarily playing with Abel in pure delight.
Finally, he asks Omar to watch Abel for a night, while he goes out on a
job, presumably to find a pick-up, hoping to make enough money to seek out a
place for him and his brother.
We
see him after sex with the man to who talked in the porno place, having
obviously taken up his offer of prostitution. But meanwhile, Abel wakes up,
spots a cockroach to which seems always attracted, and climbs a tall set of
shelves to try to capture it. We hear his body fall to the floor.
The last image is Andrés in tears for what the life he has been forced
to enter, the older man attempting to comfort him. We don’t know what he faces
when he returns to Omar’s room; but it probably will be even worse. As Peruvian
director Gabriel Páucar Vásquez hints, there are few other alternatives in his
society for boys such as Pierre and his little brother Abel.
This tragic short movie is so beautifully filmed that it almost
contradicts the story it tells. The beautiful luminescence of its central trio
of characters shines through the darkness of their encounter, making their
situations even more painful to witness.
Los Angeles, July 18, 2023
Reprinted from World Cinema Review (July
2023).
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