Hieu Tran | Squared / 2014

square peg in a round hole

by Douglas Messerli

 

Hieu Tran (screenwriter and director) Squared / 2014 [15 minutes]

 

Tate (Yamil Jaiman) and Wally (Ethan Le Phong) have been communicating via the internet for some when they finally meet up at a local bookstore.

    Both are high attractive young men, who obviously lust after each other the moment they enter Tate’s apartment. Tate has medical degrees and Wally is determined to soon finish his education, after a late start due to circumstances out of his control as we later discover, with the intention of setting up an apartment as nice as Tate’s. That’s the moment we first perceive that these near-perfect young men—Tate also seems to be a wonderful cook, regularly serving up an extra plate for which no one ever shows up—are more than a little competitive of the old fashioned school concerned with masculine pride.

    Finally, when they get down to bed time activities it turns out that both men are tops! A disaster so gay films even today proclaim.

    Frankly, I’ve never quite comprehended the whole top/bottom issue since I just like sex and enjoyed both positions. I do understand that some men are simply afraid of the anal pain and can never get beyond the first two or three “pains in the butt.” But really the issue of where you put your body having something to do with dominance and submission just makes no sense. Bottoming is truly every bit as pleasurable as topping, and neither position has ever meant that I feel more masculine than the other guy.

     But cultural gender values have evidently put it into some of our stupid collective heads that top is strong, bottom is weak (even if some bottoming takes more athletic agility; just try bottoming for a threesome). Yet, particularly given today’s gay-coded computer-based statements of desire, it has become almost a defining feature, so much so that when the lovely, highly masculine, Shane Hollander of the series Heated Rivalry (2025) actually admits that he has discovered that he “kind of prefers to be the hole rather than the peg,” it was greeted with jubilation and wonderment.

     When Tate and Wally, on the other hand, discover their predicament, they attempt to find various nonsensical solutions to demand their topping rights: muscular definition, cock size, and finally a wrestling competition which Wally wins. Eventually, of course, such ridiculously macho and old-school heterosexually-learned values turn into what they truly are, a kind of racist blur, in which Tate brings up the ridiculous trope that all Asians, so he has heard, are bottoms.

     But then, Tate has utterly no comprehension of Asian reality, confounding Koreans with Japanese and not even imagining that Wally might be a Vietnamese orphan who found a loving Texas family. Ultimately, when they actually begin to really discuss the various backgrounds and childhood loves, they find they have a lot in common and return to bed, if not for sex, at least for a beautiful night’s sleep in one another’s arms.

     Tate even rises early to fix a beautiful omelette, which again is sent to the garbage when Wally, playing the standard “fuck ‘em and leave ‘em” role, gets quickly dressed and hurries out the door.

     He has, however, left his red good luck envelope, a common Asian custom, for his newfound friend. And sure enough, Tate meets another young Asian man, Brad (Kevin Tan) at the bus stop. As he moves in to help him play a new video game, we can be assured that he will ask the essential question: top or bottom. And perhaps this potato and rice combo will go home happily ever after.

     But, no thank you, I’m tired of macho and racist stereotypes even when they are meant to satirize the situation. In the end, these men seem so superficial and dumb that as buff as both of them are, I wouldn’t even bother to try to get to know them. And Hieu Tran’s film alas convinces me I’d have stormed out long before it got to making bodily comparisons in order to determine my worth.

     My advice to Wally: “Honey, you want somebody to fuck and after to share and slurp up your salmon and pasta, go pick up a girl.”

 

Los Angeles, January 2, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (January 2026).

 

Luis María Mercado | El inicio (The Beginning) / 2010

nothing happens, everything happens

by Douglas Messerli

 

Luis María Mercado (screenwriter and director) El inicio (The Beginning) / 2010 [15 minutes]

 

Argentinian writer and director Luis María Mercado tells a tale in The Beginning that is all too common in gay stories. El (Nicolás Dellarole) and his friend Rafa (Martín Gil) are at the important moment of 17 or 18 when one is about to leave the home province, in this case Córdoba from college in Buenos Aires to attend college. He wants to become a photographer.

    Yet the pulls remain for him to stay, not only the love of his family—in this case he is bicycling on his way to see his grandmother and aunt who live on a farm—but also the feelings he holds for his best friend Rafa, who picks him up in his battered pick-up truck and joins him on the visit.

     They are greeted friendly by the entire family who wine and dine them, gossip about family members, and in the case of a younger cousin, display their open love. On this hot day, the boys, obviously friends since childhood, roughhouse together, attend a cattle sale, and finally wrestle, Rafa finally topping El and bending over him with what might have been a kiss if only—if only such behavior does not befit two male friends in their society and an open expression of their open love for one another would obviously force the other to out him as a real “fag,” a word one of them playfully uses earlier to describe the other’s pushing and pulling actions. They stop short, pausing just long enough to also know that in that very moment their deep bond has been cut, just as all such childhood homoerotic relationships must be severed for heterosexual boys.

     One may become gay later, perhaps both, or both boys may marry. But their relationship in the now must end. Their love is not in the right time for its full expression and, accordingly, can never be anything but a bittersweet memory about growing up, a tale to tell some other day.

     El will move on to Buenos Aires as is planned. Perhaps he will become a photographer. Perhaps he will see what for now he must turn a blind eye.

    Rafa drives off, the dust following in his tracks. Some day one or both of them will remember the other with regret that they could not express what their hearts longed to. Actually, this film recounts and ending, which also, of course, signifies the beginning of new lives for them both.

   In María Mercado’s beautifully filmed narrative nothing happens; everything happens at the very same moment.

     

Los Angeles, February 2, 2026 | Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (February 2026