[Movie] Hawaii

Directed by	Marco Berger
Starring	Manuel Vignau Mateo Chiarino

The third feature of Argentinian director Marco Berger, a two-hander starring Manuel Vignau and Mateo Chiarino, is a solid home run.

The agony of unspoken same-sex desire is impressively prolonged to feature length in Hawaii, the third and by far most mature feature of Argentinian director Marco Berger.

Though it’s a two-hander set primarily in one location for over 90 percent of its running time -- much like Berger’s debut, the low-budget, fluid sexuality-themed talkathon Plan B -- the 36-year-old filmmaker here displays a newfound finesse and confidence as a writer-director. The seemingly off-the-cuff conversations between a house-sitting hipster novelist and the handsome drifter he hires to do odd jobs around the house benefit from a razor-sharp sense of direction and purpose, illuminating character and queer yearning as well as class and other socio-political issues. The increasingly erotically charged atmosphere, which never seems to translate into any action, practically becomes an inverted coitus interruptus, where the actual doing of the deed would interrupt the joy and innocence of the games of almost-foreplay, which is prolonged to almost unbearable length.

Beyond the attention of the LGTB niche circuit of festivals and distribution, which is virtually guaranteed after Berger's Plan B and its follow-up, the Berlinale Teddy award winner, Absent, this is also a good fit for indie-loving festivals such as Thessaloniki, where Hawaii recently played as part of its focus on contemporary cinema from Argentina.