Darwin Valencia Martínez | Sin Retorno (No Return) / 2015

kisses

by Douglas Messerli

 

Darwin Valencia Martínez (screenwriter and director) Sin Retorno (No Return) / 2015 [15 minutes]

 

Like many a buddy movie where the relationship between two men turns into something else, in this film Mateo (Fabio Concha) and Diego (David Noboa) have been life-time friends, and their caring for one another has both helped them to get through many a crisis.

     At what appears to be an utterly unpleasant prom, Mateo admits that his girlfriend Andrea (Coralia Yelenia), who has just passed out drunk, has finally grown tired of him, the two as good friends do in such situations, commiserating with one another through a long brotherly hug, Mateo arguing that he simply wants to leave the place, his only friend being Diego. But this time it quickly turns into something else as Diego suddenly kisses him. Mateo immediately backs off, Diego regretting the kiss since it may have broken the close friendship they have had for so many long years.

     Still, together they drive Andrea home, leaving her on her on her doorway pounding for her mother to let her in.

   The tension between the two continues, Mateo finally insisting that he cannot deal with it that evening.

     Diego spends a long sleepless night, trying, unsuccessfully to phone his friend to apologize, and is now even more fearful that the relationship between the two of them has been severed. Yet, surprisingly Mateo does show up the next morning, and the two take a lovely bicycle trip into the countryside, returning to share video games and watching movies. But again, the specter of the kissing rises up as Diego tries to explain his longtime feelings.

     This time Mateo’s anger leads to violence, both of them battling physically with one another, until finally, Mateo kisses him fully on the lips, mocking him for his desires. But Diego does not back down time, demanding that Mateo face his own feelings as the two finally fall into a deep kissing session. But when it begins to turn into a sexual episode, Mateo again rises and runs off, bicycling away as Diego cries for him to return. Yet, strangely, Mateo has still insisted that perhaps they still can be friends, but nothing more. As he rides off, accordingly, we do not quite know whether there can “no return” to their friendship or that nothing can return to what it was in the past, that perhaps he will return to their new possibilities.

     This Ecuadorian film is quite deftly realized, and leaves the viewer with the desire, that may or may not be actualized, for these two boys to find and discover their true love. But in such a culture, it takes a brave man for someone like Mateo to realize his own being and reality. It is apparent he is desperately in love with Diego, but whether or not he can come to admit that is left up to speculation.

 

Los Angeles, September 7, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (September 2026).

Elena Weinberg | The Weight of the World / 2013

no sympathy in sight

by Douglas Messerli

 

Duncan Coe (screenplay), Elena Weinberg (director) The Weight of the World / 2013 [8 minutes]

 

In this very short coming out film from 2013, Taylor (Jon Lee Richardson) has just come out to his father, the most important scene in the film which the writer and director have removed from evidence, draining their film from any true dramatic significance.

    Instead, our your “hero,” if you can describe him as such, rushes off to tell his best female friend Jesse (Brenna Sturdivant) what has transpired. Beginning with a metaphor, asking her if she has seen the flocks of parrots who have been tossed out of their homes, “Pets that have escaped or are now living in the east side. Bright green wings, pale gay forehead. Dark scalloped feather around the breast. Fragile, feral. Tossed out.”

    She reminds him with her comment: “Or escaped.”

    Evidently his father said nothing, just what he might have expected, and he will now be forced to live for the rest of his life, he fears, in total resentment of the man whom he still loves, or, even worse, resist becoming the full gay man he now identifies as. He is terrified of either future, that his whole life will now be “buried in his past.”

   Actually, if when I told my father and mother that I was gay and that Howard and I were in a relationship, they had said nothing, I might have seen it as a good sign, but getting up mid-dinner and driving from Washington, DC back to Iowa did not at all bode well. But even then I quickly got over it, knowing that when it comes to such revelations of sexuality, you have to free yourself from parental approval. It hurt and still does today, but I was not devastated and had no intentions of either hating them for their blindness nor resisting my own sexual inclinations. Perhaps Taylor is still simply too young, and since he apparently has still not found someone to love, maybe he just might have waited until he had left the house, gone off to school, and found someone to help support him in such a difficult act.

    Obviously, this sulky boy does not even find the open love which Jesse offers him to be enough, and he gets back into his beautiful SUV (evidently a gift of the father he supposes hates him) and drives away to god knows where, brooding, the title of the film falling upon his shoulders.

    Unfortunately, since we know nothing about the father and very little about the son, it is hard to sympathize with this character, and, in a sense, the vagueness of his future plans symbolizes our feelings toward him.  

    The film relies entirely upon our knowing the genre, and remembering how painful it was for others to imagine what this young man is suffering. But, in the end, we don’t even quite know what is in his mind, how his father has really felt about his admission. If the film’s intention is to simply mock such an extreme reaction—after all it is described as a comedy—this short cinema itself declares itself from the beginning that it is a failure, mocking the plight of its central figure.

       If we are meant to share in the young man’s worries, writer Duncan Coe and director Elena Weinberg might have first introduced their characters. As it is, I feel only for his friend Jesse, whose love is apparently not enough to begin to salve this foolish boy’s pouting.

      And who is the Erik she calls at the end of the film, perhaps a male who has long been waiting for this event before he makes his move?  That might be a nice ending if the movie weren't so lazy to even explain it to us.

 

Los Angeles, September 7, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (September 2026). 

 

 

Emma Westenberg | Lucky Strike / 2019 [music video]

heart in hand

by Douglas Messerli

 

Emma Westenberg (director) Lucky Strike / 2019 [4 minutes] [music video]

 

Sitting on a California beach, Troye Sivan, clearly having a crush on the beach bartender (Brandon Good), begs his would-be lover to “Tell me all the ways to love you.”

Oh, I want to know just how to love you

The jewel of California

Oh I want to skip stones on your skin boy

And drown me in your water

 

And my boy like a queen,

Unlike one you’ve ever seen

He knows how to love me better

A hit of dopamine, higher than I’ve ever been

He knows how to love me better

 

Cause you’re safe like spring time

Short days, long nights, boy

Tell me all the ways to love you

 

Cause you taste like lucky strikes,

You drag, I light, boy

Tell me all the ways to love you

    Clearly this man has the young man’s heart in his hands, as Sivan begs for a way to be able to fully express his love.

    Soon the rather disparate beach crowd around him have joined in on his dance of pleasure, slightly reminiscent of Salome in Oscar Wilde’s famous play and later opera—only here, despite the fact that the bartender holds the singer’s heart in his hands, there is no perversity. This is male on male love, pure and simple, with the blonde Australian beauty, in the end, left on the beach alone.

 

  Is it sad or joyful? In this case, it’s hard to tell, particularly if his wondrous day with the bartender is simply one of his imagination. There is a strong sense of longing here that is missing from some of his more joyous videos.

 

Los Angeles, September 7, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (September 2026).