Hakim Mao | Idiot Fish / 2022

marital games

by Douglas Messerli

 

Julie Cebiton (screenplay), Hakim Mao (director) Idiot Fish / 2022 [24 minutes]

 

A young gay couple, Jimmy (Domhnall Herdman) and Guillaume (Arturo Giussi) are traveling the roads of Southern France on their holidays when suddenly—with either an impromptu gesture or

pre-planned enactment—they stop along the way at a gasoline station where Jimmy suddenly shaves his moustache, puts on a back pack, and plays out their original meeting years before when he was a hitchhiker whom Guillaume picked up.

    The excitement of the repeated seduction is working quite successful, Jimmy even rejecting Guillaume’s early advances as he plays out his original vague travel plans to Nimes while Guillaume, reporting that he is about to receive a small inheritance, lures him on to Montpellier with him.

     As they move forward in space, we soon find Jimmy sleeping in the back seat of the car—he does not dare drive in France since the French, unlike the Irish, drive on the right side of road. He is awakened as Guillaume lurches to a stop to pick up a truly beautiful young hitchhiker, Dylan (Sayyid El Almi), who claims to be a world-wide traveler, having just previously been to Alaska for his love of fish.

    The two continue playing their roles without establishing for Dylan the nature of their true relationship, and Dylan quickly becomes flirtatious with the driver, Guillaume suddenly stopping en route to show him a lovely Mediterranean view where he quickly strips off his shirt and pants and dives into the waters for a swim.

    Dylan quickly follows, encouraging Jimmy to do the same. But Jimmy, rather perturbed by the entire situation in which it appears his lover is playing a new role of seducer, bows out, watching the two beautiful bodies frolic in the ocean.

    Yet, Dylan quickly returns to shore, choosing instead to flirt with Jimmy, who soon discovers that Dylan has been lying about his Alaskan trip and has never even been out of France. When Jimmy pulls off his own shirt, Dylan notices a scar which Jimmy explains occurred as a child when doctors operated on him for a heart condition that nearly killed him. Dylan commiserates with his own story, another “fish” story or maybe even real, that he too almost died when while swimming he was attacked by a venomous “Idiot Fish,” a thorny-headed red codfish of the Pacific.

    Enjoying the fact that Guillaume make have been taken in by Dylan’s fish tales, Jimmy spontaneously determines to teach his lover a lesson by grabbing the keys and, with Dylan driving, temporarily stealing the car as the couple speed off for a short while before bringing back beer to Guillaume after he discovers they absence.

    But the spree lasts longer that either might have imagined as they stop by a café along the way and continue their flirtations, at one point the two almost on the verge of making love in the bathroom before Jimmy finally realizes everything has gone too far, and is ready to return to Guillaume.

    Angered by the failed come-on, Dylan however determines to go no further with the two strangers and throws the keys back at Jimmy, who must now overcome his fears to drive back to Guillaume, who himself has now gone on the road, himself hitchhiking back to safety.

    The two finally meet up in a small town (is it Nimes), but by this time Guillaume is no longer in a mood to play games, and refuses Jimmy’s attempt to pick him up.

     Jimmy is forced to drive after him and beg him to return to the car. Guillaume finally agrees to get in, but demands Jimmy now play role as the driver.

     In short their roles have shifted not only in the game they have begun but perhaps in their future relationship, if they can now salvage it.

     With a cast of three beautiful gay men, director Hakim Mao’s short film is a quite stylish and quirky work in which we observe a couple, perhaps tired of the routine of their relationship, trying out other future roles at the very moment they have undertaken to bring energy back into their affair by returning to the past. The tension between the knowable past and an unsure future enshrouds this film with a true sense of the dangerous and unpredictable that may either reenergize their relationship or possibly destroy it.

     Mao’s short cinema is certainly one of the more intriguing works of 2022.

 

Los Angeles, February 12, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (February 2026).

 

Marco Buontempo | Río (River) / 2020

trying to remember and forget

by Douglas Messerli

 

Marco Buontempo (screenwriter and director) Río (River) / 2020 [25 minutes]

 

Argentinian director Marco Buontempo’s Río is a rather nostalgic work about the childhood of two young boys, Bruno (Iván Nicolai) and Franco (Facundo Cáceres Rojo), who meet up when one of them returns for a day to his hometown where the other still lives, working for his grandparents. Since the characters are never established by name, I will arbitrarily name the one on the left in the picture below Franco, and the pink-haired boy on the right, the one visiting from the city, apparently, Bruno.

      

     We begin the film with the deafening sound of the river, but gradually are introduced to the beauty of the decaying homes and landmarks as well as the nature surrounding as the boys, now older, discuss their childhood lives together as young sexual beings trying to define themselves in the world in which they felt uncomfortable but obviously enjoyed exploring their sexuality with one another.

     They begin by simply catching up, establishing whether or not Bruno’s mother is still into cosmetics and, in both their cases, asking how their parents reacted when the announced their gay sexuality upon coming out. Both have been basically accepted with some difficulties at the beginning, but agree that little is now said about it in their families.

      Gingerly, they talk about Bruno’s site on Instagram where he is evidently quite popular and ask about their sexual partners, both suggesting that they not that sexually active despite Bruno’s popularity; he even suggests he might quit the site such while most people show themselves doing things, traveling, shopping, etc., he is just mostly sitting in his room, which Franco suggests might account for his popularity.

      When Franco mentions that he has had sex with Ivan, Bruno taunts him wondering about two “bottoms” having sex together, a statement which Franco clearly resents and for quite a long period becomes a sort of buried discussion among the two.

       Apparently Franco served as the boy whom Bruno fucked, in part because he thought as a young man that that is queers did, behaving like women. And his continued desire for sex made him feel like a woman, something he now realizes is absurd but which he still resents. Both agree that they are now sexually “adaptable” on the giving and receiving end, but it is clear that roles they felt as children still hold sway over them to a certain degree.

       Several times as Bruno attempts to initiate a kiss or possible sex with his friend, Franco pulls away; yet they continue to move on throughout the city ruins, including the ancient baths, which are decaying. Franco suggests that where they are standing used to be the changing rooms at a popular tourist destination. When Bruno says he likes them better now, insinuating that the two of them might use it Franco pushes the issue somewhat, suggesting he so gay. As a child, he reminds him, Bruno used to attempt to hide his sexuality, but now, according to Franco, Bruno looks so very gay, like all his gay friends. Franco has now become the conservative.

      In short, they continue to test each other in the roles that they were forced to conceive of their world as children not knowing what gay love really was or whether or not it was even possible without changing gender or engaging in gender-shifted roles.

      They keep apologizing for the stereotyping they do to one another, but cannot resist it given their own pasts. When Bruno asks, “Aren’t you going to invite to your place?” Franco snaps back, “Ok no, no way. Who know if you are not into that bareback trend?” Bruno responds, “You are the one who likes getting into the woods?” In short, there are tensions and fears about both their past and current sexual behaviors. In some respects, they know too much about each other and yet they know nothing at all about one another having quite literally “lost touch.”

        After a full day of wandering their childhood haunts, they play a couple of arcade games, drink several bottles of beer, and finally in a sudden instant turn to one another as if they have been holding their passion in just for that moment. They kiss deeply and obviously have sex as the camera shyly blacks out. 

     Sitting by the bus stop, Franco asleep against him, Bruno awakens him to tell him the bus is coming. Franco replying, “It’s late, I have to go to sleep,” while Bruno counterposes, “It’s early.” Bruno continues, “I guess I will see you again in five years,” with Franco responding: “Yes. I had enough of you for like a decade.” They hug deeply and Bruno gets on the bus, while Franco walks off without looking back.

        We see Bruno in the bus first with a look a deep sadness on his face before he gradually begins to smile with the memory of it all—of the day, but also of their entire childhoods together. They surely realize, as we have, that they now live on opposite sides of the river that has come between them, a metaphor for time itself. Their lives are as different as their costumes and hairstyles. For a moment they regained the lovely childhood thrill of boyish love, but it does not represent their lives now, and even if Bruno does go home again, he can never re-experience it as it was. Surely the decade will pass and years after that. Another meeting surely will be too painful for them to face just how wide and deep that river between them has become.

        This film, with its often clever and cryptic dialogue, and its beautiful cinematic reveries of time passed, is a truly excellent short film, quiet and intense.  

 

Los Angeles, September 2, 2022 / Reprinted from World Cinema Review (September 2022).

 

 

Julián Hernández | El Día comenzó ayer (The Day Began Yesterday) / 2020

gay sex returns to cinema

by Douglas Messerli

 

Ulises Pérez Mancilla and Julián Hernández (screenplay, based on a work by Saúl Sánchez Lovera), Julián Hernández (director) El Día comenzó ayer (The Day Began Yesterday) / 2020 [31 minutes]

 

Julián Hernández’s El Día comenzó ayer (The Day Began Yesterday) has to be the best film about HIV positive gays ever produced. Notice I did not say that this was the best film about AIDS, which we would have award to works such as Arthur J. Bressan’s 1985 film Buddies, Bill Sherwood’s Parting Glances of 1986, or Norman René’s Longtime Companion of 1989; indeed, I’d rank them in that order, not that ranking movies is of much interest to me.

     For the last couple of decades Hernández and his fellow Mexican director Roberto Fiesco (who co-produced this film) have been making some of the most remarkable LGBTQ films of today, so perhaps it should come of no surprise that this 2020 work is a masterpiece of sorts.

     The film begins with what some might describe as a kinky sex act, as the hairy-chested and quite beautiful Bruno (Hugo Catalán) is intensely at work licking and sucking the feet of his sexual partner Saúl (Esteban Caicedo). So good is the sex that Saúl ejaculates during the opening credits.

      When asked, Saúl admits that he has been involved with feet fetishism before, but it has never made him “cum,” and that he still prefers cock. Bruno responds that perhaps it’s better to be safe, to which Saúl suggests that being HIV positive does mean you have AIDS or that you can’t enjoy sex—a strange way, incidentally, to begin a movie.

    When Bruno asks if he’s been tested, however, he responds seemingly in the negative or least vaguely. But it’s time to go, and leaves the hunk who introduces himself to us by providing his name.

     As we might suspect, given the film’s title, we now scroll back to the previous day, the yesterday of the title wherein Saúl sits in the waiting room of the university medical clinic, waiting presumably for the test he claims he’s never had. A handsome janitor catches his attention, and a woman also waiting in the room, Samantha, moves over to tell him that all the janitors in the center are just such studs, it must be part of the job requirement. Her name is called and the camera returns to a somewhat nervous Saúl, following him soon after into the doctor’s office as we watch get a simple blood test, being told that the results will be available in 30 to 40 minutes.

      Still a bit shaky from the test, Saúl visits the men’s room where he encounters the most beautiful boy yet, Orlando (Cristhian Díaz), who’s obviously ready to jump into a bathroom stall with him, but has to run at the moment, leaving his cellphone number in writing upon Saúl’s hand.

      In the very next scene Saúl, who’s obviously followed up on the cell call, is watching Orlando, who it turns out is a gymnast, go through his training routines, another boy, Sergio (Alfredo Veldáñez), who seems to be an acquaintance comments on the athlete’s total beauty, but warns that on his Grindr page he’s admitted that he’s HIV positive. But if Saúl is afraid to go ahead with the planned meeting, he’ll be glad to take his place.

      We can tell that Saúl, who apparently didn’t wait around for his test results, is still nervous, hesitant to move into territory which might endanger his life. When the two meet up after Orlando’s workout, he offers to show the athlete how to rollerblade as the two get to know one another, Saúl asking him if it is true that he’s advertised on Grindr that he’s HIV positive. He admits it, but claims it was just a ploy to see if he’d get more hook-ups. But it didn’t work. If he is HIV-positive, he suggests it just a matter of taking your medicine and moving on. After all, in the early days he’d gotten crabs and other infections that were quickly resolved. His good looks and his open and assertive personality keep Saúl close to him, and before they know it they are in Orlando’s bedroom quickly pulling off their jerseys and jumping into one another’s arms.

      What follows is one of the most beautiful filmed erotic scenes, with full nudity, that I have seen in ages. Hernández bravely has determined to return sex to post-AIDS gay movies, allowing his totally believable characters to behave just as two young, beautiful boys filled with lust normally might. They go at it with great pleasure, and it is an absolute joy to watch, not as voyeur but as someone who remembers still what sex was truly about.

       Saúl stops a moment to dig out a condom, but beyond that the director allows his two male bodies to do what gay boys have been doing from time immemorial, pleasure themselves. Alejandro Cantú’s sensuous color photography, backed up by David Solis’ gorgeous sets create cinematic magic that I haven’t observed in an LGBTQ film since Roberto Fiesco’s works such as Actos impuros (1993), David (2005) and Tremulous, Carlos and Julio (2015). I felt young again, almost as if a sensual, loving gay world without disease was almost possible.

     After sex, Orlando stills perceives that his friend is worried, and in support of his new lover, admits he understands his fears, arguing that it’s better to know and suggesting that he’ll join him the next morning to get his results.

       Orlando does not show up, but Saúl takes a deep breath and enters the clinic alone. We never actually hear about the results, but we suspect that he’s positive given the fact that soon after he attends a meeting of medical figures speaking on HIV matters. His friend Sergio is there as well, and Orlando soon joins him, apologizing for not being there, the two making up finally with a kiss.

       The doctor has encouraging news to share. With some caution, life after the discovery of being HIV positive is still very much an option and it has now been established that if they take their meds, HIV-positive individuals can live every bit as long as those who prove negative.

       Obviously reassured, Saúl has since met up with Bruno. And surely there will be many others in his life.

        Sex, one of the post important definitions of LBGTQ life is still alive and well—if needing just a little special protection. How I wish US and even today’s European films could be as refreshing honest as Hernández’s lovely work.

 

Los Angeles, August 18, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (August 2022).