Sex, and some gay truths, found in Bathroom Stalls & Parking Lots
16 Aug 2019.

Bathroom Stalls & Parking Lots is a new comedy from Breaking Glass Pictures about two friends, both Brazilian emigres. Leo lives in Los Angeles and Donatello lives in San Francisco. Leo is all hung up on some hot dude and goes to SF to track him down. As his best friend, Don’s job is to help him find the guy, so they go out on the town in hot pursuit. Don is one of those obnoxious types who books a VIP table with bottle service and then doesn’t use it, and Leo is one of those lovable losers whose phone dies just as he waits for an important message from his beloved. 

Their quest takes them literally to both a bathroom stall (where Don blows a straight guy and then gets tossed from the club) and a parking lot, where they meet a guy with coke. Then they go to an underwear party where Don meets an old trick who genuinely likes him, but Don is more interested in partying than dating. Later, Leo and Don hook up with some guys on Grindr, but it gets ugly when Leo refuses to do meth, so they get tossed from there, too. All in all, a typical gay evening. 

The film takes place in one night. There are some subtitles, but most of the dialogue is in English. The director Thales Correa plays Leo. The dilemma seems to be that true love is elusive in a world where you can always find hot sex. “We have so many options you forget how good it feels to have only one,” claims Leo. In the end, Leo decides that he needs to get his priorities in order, and leaves Donatello standing on the street at 4:30 in the morning. 

Bathroom Stalls & Parking Lots, though plot-wise not much different from your average porn, is a comedy of manners, and the behaviour of the characters reveals the complex moral code of a unique subculture. In that respect, the movie is no different from, say, La Dolce Vita. This is the way we live now, and we need filmmakers like Thales Correa to help us understand what the fuck we are doing with our lives. Every time one of the characters seems to find someone who is compatible, he moves on, relentlessly looking for better. The protagonists may be Brazilian, but the refreshing thing about gay male behaviour is that it is mostly the same in every country on the map. We is what we is, as Popeye might say, and Bathroom Stalls is what it is. We’ve all seen better movies, and it really could have used a less gimmicky title, but this one really does speak to us.