Esteros *** (2016, Ignacio Rogers, Esteban Masturini, Joaquín Parada, Blas Finardi Niz, Renata Calmon) – Classic Movie Review 12,363

Director Papu Curotto’s charming, positive 2016 Argentinian gay romantic drama film Esteros stars Ignacio Rogers as Matías {Mati} and Esteban Masturini as Jerónimo (Jero), boyhood friends separated by chance and reunited by chance ten years later. They discover they have a second chance but it looks as though history is going to repeat itself.

Childhood friends Matías (Ignacio Rogers as an adult, Joaquín Parada as a boy) and Jerónimo (Esteban Masturini as an adult, Blas Finardi Niz as a boy) experience sexual attraction as they reach adolescence but are separated when Matías’s family moves to Brazil where his father takes a job. Ten years later, Matías returns for a visit to Argentina with his Brazilian girlfriend Rochi (Renata Calmon) for a carnival and he meets Jerónimo again by chance when the girlfriend decides to hire a makeup artist to turn Matías into a zombie for a party.

Matías and his girlfriend are not happy together. She’s fun-loving and out-going, he’s dour and introspective. If their bond is weak, there’s obviously still a bond between the two men, a much better match. But Matías is settled and comfortable as a successful biologist, and sort of comfortable with his girlfriend as a closet gay, while Jerónimo is drifting making FX models, and doing makeup for party goers, having a few encounters with other men.

When the girlfriend decides to take off for an evening of fun with her friends, the men take the opportunity return to Jerónimo’s farm home down in the estuaries, where his parents live and want to preserve the beautiful natural area, and where the boys played back in the day.

The film moves smoothly back and forth through the present and past as it diligently follows its themes of complicated relationships and sexual tensions in a subtle, detailed way. There’s plenty of chemistry between the two male adult actors, who give appealing performances, with Rogers strong in the more difficult role of the indecisive, inwardly quietly agonised character and Masturini alluringly explaining the magnetic connection as the more liberated, left-behind Jerónimo.

Jero’s mother understands the bond between the two boys, compulsively taking photos of them, including their previous last happy time sleeping together on a hammock. She is over the moon when Matías returns as an adult, telling her husband: ‘our two boys, we must have done something right’ and offering Matías a framed old photo of the two boys as he leaves, a photo which he accepts but quietly puts back on the shelf. Jero’s father is also a benign, accepting presence, but Matías’s father looks upset and angry when he sees the two boys dancing together. Is this the real reason he takes a job away in Brazil?

The key song that plays on the soundtrack both when the kids dance together and when they dance again as men has the lyrics ‘Love like ours should never die’. It’s a gentle, warm-hearted, hopeful, highly romantic love story film, with a sweet vibe, yet it feels honest and true.

© Derek Winnert 2022 Classic Movie Review 12,363

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com