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| Two university students, Gerardo (Miguel Ángel Hoppe) and Jonás (Fernando Arroyo), meet on campus and fall passionately in love. They enjoy an idyllic romance until Jonás becomes obsessed with another boy and drives Gerardo into the arms of Sérgio (Alejandro Rojo). The young men become entangled in a hypnotic dance of love, longing, rejection, validation and sexual expression. Although Gerardo and Jonás are still in love, they are now faced with the challenge of defining and accepting the next stage of their relationship. Written and directed by Julián Hernández (A Thousand Clouds of Peace). |
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Broken Sky
I wanted to make a film about desire.
After years of searching, everything began with a small book, less than 50 pages long: The Malady of Death by Marguerite Duras, about two people who love each other without being ready. Though they don’t know how to love each other, they live this romance by night and most of the time through their dreams. They don’t do anything, they don’t make love. They are always in the darkness, waiting for the other to say “I love you,” or “I desire you,” but the words never pass their lips.
At each step the book exceeded me, it was beyond my intellectual understanding of love; my illumination was mainly on an emotional level.
Thus, I felt compelled to make a film about love.
Years earlier, I had come across another Duras book called The Lover. To be honest, the book didn’t excite me. It didn’t seem revealing, like some other books I’d read in the past. The first pages were confusing. I couldn’t understand the style of the writing; it disappointed me terribly. I could have put the book down without getting to the end and I’m sure I would never have returned to it. Not only that, I wouldn’t have read another one. But I’m glad I did finish it, for surely my life would have been different without Duras at my side, in my head, in my whole body and especially in my soul.
After finishing that first book I continued reading: Moderato Cantabile, The Man Sitting in the Corridor, Practicalities. I was entranced by the suffering, desperation, fear and fury in the lives of her characters. Later on, I read The Ravishing of Lol Stein, La Douleur, India Song, Emily L.
Marguerite Duras helped me to live—she was a true inspiration. I discovered Blue Eyes, Black Hair and perhaps I projected too much of my own problems and anguishes onto the work. The story of two human beings who love each other but don’t have the courage to recognize that there is something mysterious that unites them, something that goes beyond the intellect and into the spiritual.
Reading her books helps me to carry on, to support my desires and not to sink into bleak depression.
Now I have a film that is an intimate picture of a couple, a photograph that places them in their reality, and shows us its dimensions and perspectives. They are characters who wish, who desire to move towards a spiritual intangible beyond the body, but for which sex is a perfect conduit.
Gerardo and Jonás, the protagonists of the film, slide through silence exploring the hidden mysteries in each other’s flesh, depending on each other in order to exist, feeling the confusion of their lives together, experiencing their emotions turning upside-down, growing and evolving.
Today, I know that love defies explanation because it is as subjective as one’s individual experience. I wanted to believe that I had found the solution, that I would take risks. But I find my doubts firmly entrenched. I thought that at the right moment all of it would be clear to me, but I discover myself sunk in the deepest anguish because I don’t have any answers…only questions.
And all thanks to Marguerite Duras.
