Papu Curotto | Esteros / 2016

back to the beginning

by Douglas Messerli

 

Andi Nachon (screenwriter), Papu Curotto (director) Esteros / 2016

 

Based on a script by Nachon with direction by Curotto from 2015, a short film titled Matias and Jeronimo, this movie of the following year can’t match the beauty and exquisite-horror of the early short film. The two boys in that film, Rodrigo Coutinho Da Silva and Gabriel Rost, are far more lovely and innocent than the slightly older child actors, Joaquín Parada as the young Matías and Blas Finardi Niz as the child version of Jerónimo in Esteros.

     Yet, the movie as a whole is quite moving and fulfilling, even if one wishes that it might have included the terrifying scene when a lovely gay dancer in the local Carnival Madi Gras is beaten and left for dead at the black the bleachers where the boys sit, an incident which they observe and explains why perhaps the older Matías of the film, Ignacio Rogers, is slightly homophobic and imagines that he is a straight man, now in a relationship with a woman named Rochi (Renata Calmon), whom he has brought back to the Esteros or Tidelands from Brazil, his new homeland. She also seems to know her way around the small Tidelands town.

    His visit, it quickly becomes apparent, is not only because of his love of region, but his particular obsession with the estuaries near the farm where Jerónimo (Esteban Masturini) lived with his family, particularly his wonderful accepting mother Marilú (María Merlino) who endlessly took snapshots of the boys as if she recognized that their simple boyish affection and later adolescent sexual experimentation was far more than just early male bonding.

    We discern quite quickly in this film when we realize that Matías has told Rochi a great deal about his love of the farm near the estuaries without explaining to her that the home was where Jero lived with his parents, not the home of his own family.

     Jerónimo, in the meantime, who has remained in the backland instead moving on to the cities, has abandoned his possible career as a film director and his now happily involved in creating small action figures and creating small scenes of them for actions films. He still occasionally works as a make-up artist, which is how Rochi knows him, and with knowledge of his intimate childhood friendship with her boyfriend, having asked him to help make over Matías as a zombie for a costume party she and he are attending.

     Jeró is now openly gay, and seeing him again after all these years obviously enlivens Matías’ interest, although he strongly resists the pull of the old relationship, now equally impatient with his girlfriend. Immediately we perceive that something’s got to give, particularly when even Rochi, surprised that he has an old friend in the village, encourages him to meet up.

     Matías does so, as the two basically evaluate each other lives, realizing that neither of them have fully lived their potentials. But Matías is also fascinated by the fact that Jeró has remained in his beloved tidelands as an openly gay man, while Matías has chosen a straight life in which he is clearly unhappy. While he once dreamed of becoming a wildlife biologist, he is now employed in researching a new strain of soybeans.

     Jerónimo, on the other hand, has not become the director that dreamed of being, but is somewhat happy just making small movie action figures which are often used as figures in movie scenes. Both realize, without saying so, that there is something missing—and although they cannot yet admit it, they subliminally register that missing element is one another.

     Jerónimo, in particular, does not attempt a full expression of his feelings, going about his daily acts almost as gesture of his separation from his former childhood friend, Matías misunderstanding several of his friend’s hugs and friendly relationships with other males as representing relationships, which finally Jeró makes clear are only friendships; he has not found a companion with whom he wants a relationship.

     If Matías appears to have found the love of his life, we realize, particularly in Rochi’s need to constantly remind him of their love for one another, that something is not quite right, Matías passively accepting her hugs and kisses while yet remaining somehow aloof.

     When Jerónimo tells him that his mother and father still live on the farm in the estuaries where Matías spent so many of his summers, he is totally complicit that two should out a day to revisit it. They arrive to find Jeró’s parents away, due back perhaps that night, but actually the next day.

     Jerónimo suggest they revisit their old playing grounds, the nearby swamps wherein as children they imagined to be infested with alligators and snakes, but nonetheless, stripped off they clothes, jumped into swim, wrestle, and fling mud at one another, later to be forced to shower together in childhood eroticism resulting later in adolescent in masturbatory sessions with one another.

    Not trusting Jeró’s ancient truck, Matías borrows Rochi’s car to travel to the place. This time they boat to their old destination, as somewhat distant adults. For the first time, they along with us as voyeurs, actually take in the full beauty of the estuaries, the natural habitat of so many birds and other wild life. And there, suddenly Matías pulls off his shirt and dives in dressed in his blue jeans, Jeró following where they swim, wrestle, and repeat their childhood pleasures.

   By the time they return home it is raining heavily, and Matías pretends concern for Rochi’s car, both realizing that they cannot drive back to the town in such a tropical downpour.

    Jerónimo pours out scotches, and Matías turns on the music, the two of them briefly dancing together which they also freely did as children, although always with a slight sense of dis-ease.

     He attempts to telephone Rochi, but can’t seen to reach—or perhaps merely pretends to.

    Matías is determined to get some ice for their drinks in the kitchen, delighted to see the very same small fridge from old days. But the door is coming loose, and although he attempts to screw back in the bolts, he fails, Jeró joining him to quickly fix the situation.

    It is as if in Jeró’s easy accomplishment of the task that Matías suddenly realizes his complete ineptness at attempting to live as a straight macho male who might “take care” of his female lover. He realizes that he is indeed inept, passive, perhaps not even interested in heterosexual sex. The shock of realization terrifies him, and he suddenly charges out back into the rain to sit out a long period in the car, while the startled Jerónimo awaits he return.

   When he finally does come back into the house, something earthshattering has happened. For now when he enters, he suddenly kisses his old friend and two begin to engage is glorious sex, even when they hear Jeró’s parents have returned home, simply relocating to Jeró’s bedroom where they continue to fuck.

   In the morning they appear without shame to Jerónimo’s mother, who seems to accept the fact that they slept together now as full adults. She even offers a photograph on her cadenza she has taken of two boys laying together as children. But Matías does not take it. He now knows that he must face a future that he is not at all reader to accept. He returns to town, cautiously returning to their apartment. Roschi, smart woman that she is, has perceived what has occurred, and refuses, as they later sit of the staircase to hash it out, for him to even touch her. She demands that he listen to her, always the dominant one in their relationship. Her statement is not one of devastation or even disappointment. She simply insists that Matías return to his true love.

    Unlike so many thousands of unhappy movies where the male is still unable to overcome his learned homophobia, or to release himself from his myth of his heterosexuality, Matías immediately seeks out Jerónimo in the small shop where he sells many of his models of action heroes. The two kiss, and it is clear they have found themselves to their utter delight in love with the person they had always hoped to become their lovers. As in a fairytale, we know these two will continue to live happily together until the end of their lives.

 

Los Angeles, May 26, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (May 2026).

 

 

 

 

Tyler Rabinowitz | Catalina / 2022

a kiss in the night

by Douglas Messerli

 

Sam DiGiovanni (screenplay), Tyler Rabinowitz (director) Catalina / 2022 [16 minutes]

 

Like the film I reviewed above, Hard, Tyler Rabinowitz’s beautiful short film of 2022, Catalina, explores the territory where friendship and sexuality cross over, particularly between a gay man and two who at least who describe themselves as heterosexual.

      In this case we are presented with three young men in their late 20s, high school friends getting together for what may be the very last time before they turn 30. Gus (played by the film’s screenwriter Sam DiGiovanni) is gay and a writer who has moved on to New York, while Brian (Ben Holtzmuller) and Will (Ronald Peet) remain in their hometown, presumably in or near Los Angeles, meeting up on Catalina Island, a place where they often vacationed together in their youths. When the movie opens, Gus has evidently arrived and rented a speed boat and is waiting for the other two to come in by ferry.

      Moments later, they arrive, deeply hug one another and set off to parts of the island where most tourists never visit. Throughout the film they search out strange outcroppings as they camp  overnight, go snorkeling with some of the best deep water photography I’ve ever seen in a short gay film, and sit around the campfire simply catching up on their lives. Nothing much happens, yet a hidden facts and deeply felt emotions are shared.

      Brian, the least fascinating of these figures, is about to be married and spends time on the telephone having to talk about what wedding flowers she prefers, something which he admittedly knows little about and jokes to Gus that it is something he will never have to worry about. Gus reminds him, a just a little miffed by his insensitive remark, that gay marriage is now legal, even if he doesn’t seem to have a potential hubby on the horizon or apparently even a boyfriend—although DiGiovanni’s good looks make that he nearly inconceivable. Brian attempts to explain it away, shifting the conversation to the subject of the woman behind the choice of flowers, something which Gus will surely never have to worry about, but also suggesting a bit of sexism even in that remark.

    But otherwise, we learn little more about Brian and wonder what role he played in the friendship of long ago.

   Will and Gus, on the other hand, seem to share a deeper relationship. And when it is revealed that Will has dropped out of law school, something to which apparently he has long been devoted, it is Gus who keeps asking questions while Brian seems to smooth over it, while Will himself dismisses it. Evidently he didn’t have the intellect or the nature for studying law, something a great many would-lawyers discover in the process of working toward the bar. But although he washes over the meaning of his action, it is apparent that he has no other immediate future plans and is lost in the process, with unspoken feelings that draws the two closer as they share the two days and nights of their group campout.

      As night falls we see Gus in the tent apparently sleeping between the two of his buddies, but while we can generally spot Will on is left, Brian remains out of view, and when we do spot him he’s marching around the tent speaking on his phone.

      During their underwater adventures, Will accidently scrapes his foot, and Gus takes out the medical supplies and mends the cut, while Brian offers the solace of alcohol.  After hamburgers and lighter entertainment, we observe Gus and Will sitting up late, talking once again. This time Will asks the questions, “Did you always know you wanted to write?

      Gus answers, “It was the only thing I loved doing.”

     And the response helps to answer how Will feels about himself and his life at this moment in time, when they are all supposedly at their prolific stage of their lives. “You’re actually doing the thing you wanted to do. I don’t have a single clue what makes me happy.”

      Gus has to admit that he is happy in life, while Brian seems at edge even with his “happy” occasion soon coming up. And Will is lost, removed from the flow of life that his other friends seem to be participating in, for better or worse.

    Gus suggests that he come to New York and live an unemployed life for a while until he finds himself—frankly a rather unthinking comment given the enormous costs of the city today, no longer the world in which a young person might have gotten on with little financial means. Yet I think perhaps writer DiGiovanni meant that as a kind a hyperbole, not a reality; and in any event Gus offers him the possibility of living with him until he finds his way. More importantly, it is the only honest concern that friends and, from we hear, family seem to really have proffered. And Gus’ open concern is clearly appreciated.

       This time in the middle of the night when Gus awakes, Will’s arm has been draped over him, and he whispers to Gus, wondering if he’s cold. When Gus meekly responds, Will snuggles up even closer, almost like a lover, and a few moments later Gus turns to him and kisses him on the lips.

       Clearly, he immediately feels he has perhaps gone too far. And in the morning as they prepare for their final swim, both men are quiet and removed.

       Will and Brian go into the water, while Gus hangs back. Finally, he enters as well, Will inching closer, eventually putting his arm around him and keeping it there firmly in place to assure him, perhaps, that love of any kind is always permitted between such good friends, or perhaps hinting that Gus’ love, sexual or otherwise, is not something that he would necessarily reject.

        Of course, gay men will innately wonder does might it mean if Will does show up on Gus’ New York doorstep in the near future? But as in D’Oench’s Hard, that isn’t truly the issue. For the two are already lovers in the deeper sense.

        As DiGiovanni has written about his own work: “Underneath the labels and rigid definitions of sexuality and gender lies a deep desire to be intimate and to be understood, especially by those closest to us. We are creating a film that speaks directly to that desire.”

        I truly admired director Tyler Rabinowitz’s sophomore film work See You Soon (2020), and equally respected this movie. He is most certainly a filmmaker to be watched.

 

Los Angeles, October 18, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (October 2022).

Kristina Arjona | Max / 2020

a balm to help the bad to pass

by Douglas Messerli

 

Jono Mitchell (screenplay), Kristina Arjona (director) Max / 2020 [10 minutes]

 

In Kristina Arjona’s short film Max we get to meet a character who doesn’t turn up that often in contemporary LGBTQ films: an overweight, very recently divorced figure, Jeremy (played by the film’s writer Jono Mitchell) who, even before things grow hot with the call boy he’s ordered up— Max (Gregory Piccirilli)—he wants slow things down a bit.

     Fortunately, Max is an accommodating sort, who offers himself as being open to Jeremy’s seeming whims. But Max does observe that it’s Jeremy’s first time with a call boy, which Jeremy at first denies, but then wittily comments about Max’s surefire observations: “So tonight’s going to be magical whether I like it or not?”

     We recognize suddenly that we are in somewhat different territory from the usual confrontation between such types, that Arjona’s film is not going to be about a man coming to terms with his sexuality, but rather one struggling to come to terms with why his relationship has not worked and perhaps, given his personal problems, he may never find another person to replace the one he’s lost.

     But Max doesn’t back down easily. In response to the comment about magic, he replies: “Depends, what’s your budget?”

     Jeremy admits he could afford a little magic.

     He continues, “My husband took half of it in the divorce.”

     The divorce took place, so Jeremy admits, only this morning. And he wonders whether Max might not perceive him as a bad person for signing the papers and calling up someone immediately after to have sex.

     But Max, now perceiving the situation, wonders, “Who says we have to have sex?”

     The metaphoric “ball” is now Jeremy’s court. He undresses.

     “So what do you think?

     “About what?

     “About me.”

     Max smiles. “I like you. I think you’re cute.”

    “That’s bullshit. Tell me. Nothing you can say can be worse than what my husband’s said or what I’ve said to myself. …They call me a monster.”

     There’s little else to be said, as Jeremy’s self-loathing and exhaustion becomes so apparent that all he really does need is someone there for him to lay his head upon his chest and reconsider some of the years of turmoil he’s just suffered.

     True, there were good times, but as Max points out, we mostly remember the worst. And the worst memories for the overweight, not terribly attractive Jeremy are nearly overwhelming. To summarize: “We reached this point when we’d just sit in silence cut off from the outside world. Because hating each other at home was more convenient than doing in the company of others. Marriage became this void that we wanted to fill with anything other than love and appreciation of the other person.”

     Yet, when Max suggests he never wants to get married, Jeremy strangely shifts, asking “Why…because the good times can be some of the best moments of your life.

      “And what about the bad?”

      “They pass. No one can feel this awful forever.”

      Max kisses him, but Jeremy finally asks him to stop. “Will you hold me? …Just lie here quietly and don’t hate me.”

      And so Max does, Jeremy finally finding a sense of comfort his arms, still throwing out names that imagines might be Max’s real name, since no one these days names their son Max.

   This short film, so very well acted, is remarkable for what it doesn’t do—to become a large confessional cry fest or a drama of pain and regret. The gentle arms of max, rather, represents a new commitment to possible love and life after the void he has endured—a balm that helps the bad to pass.

 

Los Angeles, June 25, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (June 2023).

Percy Aldon | Salmonberries / 1991

kotzebue

by Douglas Messerli

 

Percy Aldon and Felix Aldon (screenplay), Percy Aldon (director) Salmonberries / 1991

 

Like the German husband and wife team, the Aldon’s 1987 film, Bagdad Café, Salmonberries was also filmed primarily in the US in a world on the outskirts of the American society. The small Alaskan village of Kotzebue is a sorry mess of small houses and squalor where it is even hard to imagine any excitement outside of the electronic snowmobiles and the truly overheated and smelly Bingo Parlor run nightly by Bingo Chuck (Chuck Connors).

      Yet this village also contains, when “he” is working the mines, a young androgynous character named after the village, Kotzebue (k.d. lang) who claims a Russian heritage and, the greatest surprise of all, a small comfy library run by a German immigrant, Roswitha (Rosel Zech).

      At first, the young miner seemingly threatens the librarian but staying beyond closing time and demanding a book, although it is clear that “he” cannot even read. Roswitha is ready to call the local policeman, but somehow resists, even when the “boy” tosses several of her precious books to the floor in a kind of mad rage.

     But when he shows up again, she intuits his needs, particularly when he cuts down the sign greeting visitors to the village in order to make clear that he himself is Kotzebue, the town founded by the German Kotzebue, and drags it into the library. She brilliant recites an entire history of the Russian- German founder and his family, making it clear to the young “boy” that it has nothing at all to do with him.

     Furious for her dismissal once again, he brings in the wrap in which he was discovered as an abandoned child in the cold on which is scrawled the word: “Kotzebue.” Roswitha knows the history of abandoned Eskimo children, but none before have been so protected in order to survive, and clearly this child was intended to be delivered up to this very village. Moreover, in another yet stranger moment, the boy entirely strips and appears naked in the library stacks, revealing that he is actually a female by gender, even if he has primarily gone through his life so far as a young man.

    Roswitha realizes that this individual is desperate simply the learn who she is and why she has been given the name and location of where she lives, all questions that she cannot possibly answer.

    Despite her fear and distrust of the insistent library-goer, Roswitha, herself a town mystery, begins to find herself interested in the young androgyne, particularly when Kotzebue goes ice-fishing and brings her a large fresh salmon for dinner.

    What Kotzebue discovers her Roswitha’s home is even stranger perhaps that his itinerant life. All the walls of her bedroom are filled with shelves with various pink and yellowing colors of bottles filled with salmonberry jellies which she has preserved over the years. She explains that she at first attempted to give them away, but when she found no one interest, she began to date collect them, providing her room with a beautiful glow of gleaming pinkish hues to color the harsh white-and-dark blue landscape which dominates.

     She hands a bottle to Kotzebue, who begins to spoon them into her mouth, but suddenly falls into a deep sleep upon the bed, Roswitha, upon smelling the bottle, realizing that the berries have fermented, turning into a kind of alcohol that has simply forced the young miner to pass out. Hours later, Kotzebue awakens, still tottering after the drunken episode.

     On another occasion, Kotzebue, who is clearly developing a crush on the beautiful librarian, attempts to pick her up near the library to offer her a ride home. He offers her the backseat, but she stubbornly stands at the back of the machine as if she were sledding with dogs. Instead of taking her immediately home, Kotzebue takes her on a long ride through the truly beautiful natural world surrounding the dirty settlement. And she, it is clear, is lost in a kind of snowscape dream world which she has never before quite experienced.

     Before the day is over Roswitha, almost inexplicably, but perhaps simply because she has never before been able to share her story, tells Kotzebue the story of her life, how both she and her husband were born in Communist Eastern Germany, and, at first, were happy with the Communist occupation. But quickly both her mother, who realized that her world was now again closed off and delimited as it had been under Hitler, become unhappy in their lives. Roswitha marries a young man, and together they attempt to buy an escape, moving through an East German safe house into the West. But at the very last moment, they were challenged by the East German police, and her husband as shot and killed at the very instant she set foot in the West. Now alien and alone in the free Berlin, she left Germany permanently for the isolated world where she now exists.

     As Kotzebue attempts to start up the machine again so that they might return home, it explodes. Roswitha, angry for the young boy-girl’s negligence and stupidity takes off her shoes and begins to trek back in the cold snow to town. Kotzebue, apologizing, unhooks the carriage part of the mobile, takes up the rope and pulls the sled after her, attempting the encourage her to ride with herself as the beast bearing the sled back, but she, at first refuses, offering up the opportunity for the beautiful Bob Telson and k.d. lang theme song, “Barefoot,” sung evocatively by Lang—a work almost as impressive as Telson’s moving “Calling You,” with lyrics by dramatist/director Lee Breuer* from Bagdad Café.

     Eventually, as her feet nearly freeze she allows herself to be sledded back to the town by Kotzebue, greeted with great mockery. Instead of immediately returning home, even then, Roswitha joins with an indigenous group of women who together perform tribal songs.

     The event, however, has caused a serious breach between the two women, and Roswitha has clearly cut her ties with the young woman whose only possible way to find identity has been through the knowledge and research of the librarian.

     It is now October 3, 1990 (I remember the day well, since I sat at my favorite Frankfurt restaurant on that day, sharing a table with a skeptical German journalist). Even in Alaska, sleeping on a couch at Bingo Chuck’s house, whose wife Noayak (Jane Lind) helps out in the library, Kotzebue catches the news of the German reunification on TV. And soon after, she enters the house when Bingo Chuck is downstairs at the Bingo parlor, to rob him. He returns, catching her in the act, as she pulls out a knife and threatens him. He is not so appalled by the robbery as he is by the fact that she is wearing a necklace of turquoise beads.

     Soon after, Kotzebue knocks on Roswitha’s door with an envelope in hand: two return plane tickets to Germany. It is her gift to the woman who now can return home to find the grave, if there is one, of her lover, a voyage on which Kotzebue intends to accompany her.

     The movie now shifts to Berlin, a modern day world that is almost as different to Roswitha as it is to the total stranger to any urban society, let along one that does not even speak her language.

   Yet, just as previously Roswitha seemed to intuit Kotzebue’s needs, so does the ex-miner now perceive that Roswitha needs to find her husband’s grave. Yet Roswitha is more than leery to contact her brother, given that she realizes it was probably he who reported their attempt to escape, causing her husband’s death.

     Together the two women explore the 1990 world of Berlin, at one point Roswitha also noticing Kotzebue’s necklace, which she recognizes as Eskimo in origin, Noayak also processing just such a pair of beads. At a party later that evening, as the German’s celebrate and dance, Kotzebue stands up on a game machine announcing that she is an Eskimo. The Germans, momentarily confused, all laugh eventually, declaring themselves to also be Eskimos, obviously not comprehending the true significance of Kotzebue’s discovery, since the necklace was included in the container in which she was discovered as a baby.

    Roswitha eventually finds the address and meets up with her brother. She forgives him, in a cold manner, knowing that he believed in the East Berlin Communist system and did not want to lose his sister. And he explains that he was able to place her husband’s body in a cemetery and provide him with a decent burial. The wife, meanwhile, hurries to make a grand dinner, but once Roswitha is provided with the burial location, she and Kotzebue make a quick escape.

      They find the gravesite covered over with leaves, which she removes to see the grave. But before she leaves, she recovers it with leaves as if it is better hidden in a past to which she can no longer return.

     Back in the hotel room, finally, as they chat, they find a moment of deep rapport, Kotzebue discovering a moment to attempt to deliver a serious kiss. But Roswitha immediately backs off. In a series of half-hearted refusals, she attempts to convey that such a relationship is not for her, that she is not ready for such a relationship, or simply that she needs more time.

      By the end, Kotzebue simply explains that she cannot remain in Germany any longer, and the two return to Alaska.

      There they immediately hook up with Noayak, and confront Bingo Chuck. The truth is obvious to Noayak, who recalls his occasional travels years before to indigenous villages. At first, Chuck will not admit to the incidents because of his embarrassment of his past, but finally admits to having sex with young Eskimo women, awarding them just such necklaces as a prize. We now realize that Kotzebue’s mother, having become pregnant, was forced

to kill her baby, and instead wrapped her up with beads and a name to where she should be returned. Kotzebue is not the child’s name but the location to where she should be sent if found.

     We see in the new few frames the young miner sitting in the cold landscape thinking all she has discovered through. And we already know to whose door she is headed after. She knocks once again on Roswitha’s door. Perhaps this time the woman is ready to love the other with whom both have discovered the sad truths of their lives.

     Although this film is truly very loosely constructed, in the end I find it far more believable and moving that even the wonderful and unexpected female bonding of Bagdad Café. In both cases unlikely couples from entirely different cultures come together in an unexpected manner, bringing new meaning to both women’s lives. In Bagdad Café it remains just a deep female bonding; Jasmin will likely marry the artist Rudi Cox. But in Salmonberries there is at least the possibility of a lesbian love affair.

 

*I have a rather interesting acquaintance with both Percy Aldon and Bob Telson, having met them through my friend Lee Breuer and spent several long hours with them as they attempted to pitch a stage version of Bagdad Café to a group of New York investors in Breuer’s Mabou Mines studio.

 

Los Angeles, May 25, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (May 2026).