Movie Review - Boy Meets Boy (Outfest)

This is not to be confused with the 2003 dating show or reality-competition program that used to be on Bravo. It's also not to be confused with the 2003 novel of the same name by David Levithan. I doubt many people would remember or would have seen the off-Broadway musical in 1975, also with this exact title, but this film by Daniel Sánchez López in his feature debut isn't that musical either. It's a film he directed and co-wrote with Hannah Renton. After its premiere at BFI Flare, it was already garnering comparisons to Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise (1995) and Andrew Haigh's Weekend (2011). The comparison to Linklater's film is more apt because both are about two people who meet in a European city and spend the day together, walking and talking the whole time, with a ticking clock of one having to get on a plane by the end of the day, and that's all the film is. The comparison to Haigh's film is slight in that both are about a same-sex male couple that spend a finite time together before one has to leave. Haigh's film doesn't isolate the two characters as Linklater who limited the whole film to the two of them talking. Haigh had the characters interacting with others and even separating throughout the narrative.

Here, López pulls more from Linklater than from Haigh. Here, he renders a same-sex male couple in a European city with the ticking clock of one having to catch a plane. The whole thing consists mostly of their extended conversations as they do a lot of walking and talking. Instead of Budapest, as in that 1995 Linklater flick, the city in question here is Berlin, Germany. When a film is doing something akin to Before Sunrise, the only thing to criticize is the conversation and the chemistry between the two characters. Like any romantic film, the tension comes from whether or not the two will decide to engage in a relationship with each other.

Alexandros "Alexis" Koutsoulis stars as Johannes Müller, a white German, delivery driver who aspires to become a dancer. The opening of the film is Johannes practicing moves alone in a dance studio. When asked to show off his dance moves later, Johannes is reluctant to do so, which might indicate a lack of confidence in his abilities or a general frustration that he isn't doing more dancing professionally. There's another indication at the beginning that Johannes is perhaps frustrated, if not bored with how things are in his life.

Matthew James Morrison co-stars as Harry Monroe, a Black British citizen who is vacationing in Berlin. He's young or looks young like he could still be a college student. Yet, Harry is actually a doctor, a junior doctor but a doctor nonetheless. Through things he says and some indications at the beginning of the film, we get the sense that Harry is also frustrated and possibly bored with his life. The fact that both Johannes and Harry seem frustrated and bored with their lives, despite being so young and seemingly having the world as their oyster, is indicative of this film being more than just a Before Sunrise clone.

The filmmakers on their website refer to this film as being "mumblecore." Mumblecore is a film sub-genre that Amy Taubin for Film Comment magazine said was influenced from the films of Linklater, so it makes sense that the filmmakers would refer to their work as mumblecore. There's several definitions for mumblecore, but, as I described it in a review for Tiny Furniture (2010), mumblecore is films about people having a quarter-life crisis or people not knowing what direction their lives will take or losing sight of what they truly want. That's what both Johannes and Harry nakedly present in their conversations in this film.

At first, the thrust of their ennui comes from their sex lives or how they want their sex lives to be. Johannes basically believes in monogamy. Harry basically believes in promiscuity. They get into somewhat of a debate about the pros and cons of both. It's probably not as fleshed out a debate as Linklater would have done. At the core of their debate is nature versus nurture, what we feel we want or need as opposed to societal expectations of what we should want or need. There's no reckoning between the differences or distinctions. There's also a debate about what love is and what love is supposed to feel like. Johannes believes in the strong and powerful kind of love. Harry doesn't. The question is if this experience with each other will change each other's minds.

If one is familiar with films and TV that are about LGBTQ characters, particularly gay men, then one has seen this debate between monogamy and promiscuity. It goes into the conversations in queer cinema or queer media in regards to polyamorous or open relationships. Boy Culture (2007), which is getting a sequel at this year's Outfest Los Angeles had a bit of that debate. The final episode in the second season of HBO's Looking (2014) had that debate. Recently, the debate was had in Anthony Meindl's Where Do We Go From Here (2019), which also played at Outfest. The debate of monogamy vs. polyamory was had in Rodney Evans' The Happy Sad (2013) and Marcelo Briem Stamm's We Are Thr3e (2019). If you subscribe to the streaming service Dekkoo, you're also bound to find content where this debate arises, such as Joris van den Berg's Cas (2018).

The film seems to make a distinction between guys who use Grindr as opposed to guys who like to meet people in the so-called "old-fashioned way" meaning in-person at bars or clubs or any public space. It's a rather easy line to draw between the two camps. Meindl's film drew the line at age. In Meindl's film, the older man believed in monogamy, whereas the younger man was the polyamorous one. I suppose it's easy to draw the kinds of lines, those obvious lines. The problem here is that López's film can only draw those obvious lines because it doesn't have the time to dig deeper. Linklater's film was about 100 minutes. This one is barely 70 minutes. That extra time could've been used to develop the characters more and helped to pull more on the emotional heartstrings.

But, if you like films where gay men walk and talk in some city, this one is a compelling one to check out. Others to add to that list include Naz & Maalik (2016) or Paris 05:59: Théo & Hugo (2017).

Not Rated but contains language and sexual situations.
Running Time: 1 hr. and 9 mins.

Playing at Outfest Los Angeles, in-person and virtually.