Jannik Splidsboel | Between Here and Now / 2018

four days of copenhagen

by Douglas Messerli

 

Jannik Splidsboel (screenwriter and director) Between Here and Now / 2018 [22 minutes]

 

A young Italian man Tony (Francesco Martino) has been sent to Copenhagen on some dirty business. We never discover what precisely he has been asked to do, but from the look of his Danish contacts and the murder that has taken place just before his arrival at an industrial location, it obviously has something to do with the mafia or camorra and perhaps drugs.

     On his first night Tony also meets Oscar (Peder Bille) at Copenhagen bar and briefly goes home with him to Oscar’s nearly empty apartment since he has just moved in and is still determining how to decorate it. He shares a few sips of whiskey and leaves early, before the two men really get to know one another, or before the film even establishes that they are gay, although we presume given the circumstances that they are.

  

    Tony clearly doesn’t like his contact (Peter Oliver Hansen), the waiting, nor the job he’s been asked to do. He revisits Oscar’s apartment, discovering that he has been painting a single swath for over a week; laughing he settles in to help, the two soon witnessed on the couch as Tony attempts to correct Oscar’s poor Italian accent. They drink, smoke weed, and talk, Oscar admitting he was already almost stoned before Tony’s arrival and is now ready to fall asleep any moment. To Tony’s question about whether he might fear that the stranger will suddenly steal all of his money and paintings (there are none, of course), Oscar replies no, he hoping for it, so that he might feel like a victim. They quickly develop a rapport, and in the next frame, it is Tony who is already asleep on the couch with Oscar still smoking.

       The next day, after his contact takes him to the meeting up place where he discovers two bodies, sends him on the run. Dare he even go back to his hotel, since his contact might surely admit to having taken him to the spot where the murder has occurred. Was he set up? Danish director Jannik Splidsboel isn’t really interested in these issues.

       When Oscar returns home, he finds Tony sitting on the steps waiting for him. Oscar feeds him, and finally asks, “Do you want to talk about what happened?” a question to which he receives no answer. The camera catches them in the kitchen after, Tony washing the dishes, and Oscar drying.

       The following day Oscar takes Tony to one of his favorite places in Copenhagen, a cemetery. Don’t laugh, in Europe I often enjoy visiting cemeteries as well, and have seen nearly all the burial places of Paris.

     They do finally return to Tony’s hotel and cavort in the pool, after returning to Tony’s room where, for the first time in the film, they finally make love, perhaps the first truly relaxing and enjoyable moment of Tony’s visit to the Danish capitol. We sense his pent-up emotions in the intensity of his fuck.

       Like so very many gay films, it is a “love’em-and-live‘em” scenario. When Oscar awakes, Tony has already left, presumably returning home to Italy. Evidently, so that he doesn’t have to face the desk clerk on his way, Oscar takes the long walk down the back hotel staircase as the credits come into view.

 

Los Angeles, July 2, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (July 2023).

Erick Salas Kirchhausen | El amigo (The Good Friend) / 2017

one night of passion

by Douglas Messerli

 

Erick Salas Kirchhausen (screenwriter and director) El amigo (The Good Friend) / 2017 [19 minutes]

 

This short Peruvian film is from its first frame forward with homoerotic longing and desire. Esteban (Óscar Meza) and Marcos (Sebastián Rubio) have long been best friends. And apparently Marcos realizes that his “amigo” is now gay. But that doesn’t stop him from often sleeping over on Marcos’ couch.

     Marcos has a girlfriend, whom he talks to somewhat lovingly on his phone, but later admits to Esteban that they no longer have good sex, since, in particular, she now finds fellatio disgusting.

      Throughout, Esteban looks at his friend with a deep sexual desire that might as well be represented as electrical waves transmitted throughout the room as the camera scans Marcos’ body when the two put out the sheet on the couch. As Marcos sits on the couch in his underwear almost exuding his bodily allure to Esteban, it is as if the two men are destined that night to have sex.

     The event begins with Marcos entering his friend’s bedroom to ask if he has any weed left, which he enjoys through a bong. The host suggests he look in his bottom drawer, wherein Marcos discovers a large dildo, teasing him about his private enjoyments. He returns with a fresh bag of the drug. But soon after he returns to having gotten a splitter in his foot, sitting at the side of the bed, like a teenager gradually inching his hand over to touch the leg of his friend, Esteban motionless and almost stunned that it is all happening so quickly. Their hands finally meet, Esteban grabbing his with full force as he kisses him, not sure what will happen in response. When Marcos responds with his own kiss, an outpouring of love follows that is, quite frankly, one of the hottest non-porn sexual scenes in a regular gay film that I have ever witnessed.

      Esteban not only sucks his friend off, but they go further, although the film does not show their full activity, we can imagine that they even fuck. And they wake up in bed together like two gay lovers.

     But all of that quickly changes as Marcos dresses to leave, refusing even to discuss to incident. He cannot admit to this night of special passion without betraying his own attempt to retain his heterosexual status. Like so many “macho” men he is a true coward who simply cannot break the confines taught to him by his culture. Surely, he will be trapped in an unfulfilling sexual relationship trying for the rest of his life to forget how joyfully sex can be experienced as a gay man.

     Esteban realizes, in fact, that he may now has lost his friend permanently for the one wonderful transgressive night.

     This story has been often told in films scattered throughout the My Queer Cinema volumes, but perhaps never so passionately and clearly.

 

Los Angeles, October 15, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (October 2026).