Mar (The Sea): a threesome with tentacles

REVIEW by Drew Rowsome

A gay couple Xavier and Eduardo, still sexually enthralled and affectionate but with an unspoken tension between them, vacation at the seaside  Portuguese town where Xavier grew up. They are staying with Cristovao, a friend from Xavier's childhood with with whom there is an unspoken tension. In Cristovao's mother's house.

All three of the men are stunning, prone to shirtlessness, and have deep expressive eyes that are constantly filled with reticent emotion. The sexual tension, in all directions, is a powderkeg. They frolic on the beach in Sean Cody-esque montages, get drunk, and cast longing and nervous glances at each other. It seems we are in for an arty gay love story or menage à trois. But the lush music layers on a discordant edge, and the mother, Sylvie Rocha, is troubled and seemingly disapproving. And Cristovao has a creepy fascination with an octopus corpse...

Mar, Portuguese for "Sea," takes a subtle turn and becomes an erotic gay horror film. To reveal more would ruin the fun, but it is a taut little twist that is quite cleverly done. Even more enticing is that the horror angle reframes what has come before allowing director/writer William Vitoria to deliver a witty satire on every angst-filled languid art film one has ever endured. Suddenly those long pauses, stares into the distance, and oblique dialogue fragments are filled with portent. A second viewing is delicious fun as all the clues have been carefully laid out as explicit non sequitur macguffins.

I watched a screener and was left with two wishes. Firstly to see it on a large screen because the scenery - the tourist board of wherever it was shot should have provided funding and demanded credit - and the actors are so spectacular. Lourence Seruya, Diogo Taveres (who also co-wrote the script) and Joao Santos Silva are handsome, scruffy and make one fantasize of the potential menage becoming an actual à quatre.

Silva is the main object of desire and the homme fatale, both of which he easily embodies. While his physicality, abundantly on display, is exemplary, it is his emotion-filled liquid eyes that draw one in. Beautiful homoerotic-bait men in horror movies have a long lineage and Silva can proudly take his place among them. Silva's subsequent role was in O Grande Circo Mistico (The Great Mystical Circus) which made a bad impression at Cannes but which I am now even more eager to see.

Secondly, I wish that Mar was longer. A film featuring a handsome trio of gay men romping on the beach and in bed, can hold one's attention for much longer that Mar's 24 and a half minutes. And one is left with an insatiable desire to know what happened next. There is so much subtext and mysterious richness that lingers, begging to be resolved. But maybe that is for the best. Not a moment is wasted and love, sex and horror are all best depicted in short intense doses. And the final image is just what it needs to be, a summation, a mystery and a salute to the classic twist of a good horror short story.

The day after we watched the screener, I got into a long discussion with my other half who had been somewhat disturbed by Mar. He had a quite different interpretation of the film, placing it in solidly in the horror trope of the monster or outsider as a symbol of the predatory homosexual and the struggle to escape the closet. Because the interactions were between gay men, I, living in my gay bubble, had not even considered that as a theme. But, on contemplation, it is a perfectly valid, if quite different from my experience, reading of Mar. He, being born in the Azores and growing up in a Portuguese family, found Sylvie Rocha's performance the pivotal one. He chided me for missing such an obvious analysis, "You just don't know what a Portuguese mother is like . . ."