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I’m a firm believer that cinema is best experienced in grandiose fashion. It’s a privilege I’ve relentlessly reaped since moving to Los Angeles, where showings of all sorts are abundant and varied. On the big screen, minute details rise and tower like mountains in staggering revelation, a feat made possible by the immaculate flicker of 35MM celluloid, sharp and focused as it commands full reverence from the audience. This past weekend I was absorbed into this awe-inspiring collective, one body amongst many.
You see, I had recently missed a limited screening of Y TU MAMÁ TAMBIÉN and couldn’t shake my lingering disappointment. Sure, I could have opted for at-home streaming, but a gnawing intuition steered me against it. It was a film deserving of an audience, one that demanded the dark and distraction free deprivation chamber to be realized in full. In a stroke of perfect kismet, I fortuitously discovered that Braindead Studios was hosting a screening — followed by WITHNAIL AND I, a film with which I was largely unfamiliar but undertook in a bid to expand my horizons, per my friend’s tasteful recommendation. I breezed through the colorful gateway of the newly renovated venue and beelined toward concessions. I was hellbent on grabbing a bag of popcorn despite being stuffed to the brim with latkes and knishes from Canter’s. My reasoning? Better to be prepared in advance for when the craving does inexorably come, so I won’t have to risk interruption. Popcorn spilling out of one arm, I sidled into my assigned seat. A cursory assessment of both films struck me as vexing given the flagrant superficial disparities, yet I was hopelessly intrigued. In what world would a British black comedy connect with a Mexican coming of age epic?
The differences I’d initially inferred revealed themselves to be clever misinterpretations, all of which consolidated to create a sort of trick-room illusion that only fortified the distance I perceived between the two. Four and a half hours later, I’d emerge from the darkness glowing with newfound enlightenment. The two films had worked in fascinating and unexpected tandem, linked by a primitive commonality seldom acknowledged despite its universal value.
Both films depict masculinity in crisis, threatened by curiosity driven deviation that in turn compromises the very tenets of the core male identity. Such a provocation can unravel the self beyond recognition, spilling outward in moribund ruin. Why must masculine virility exist only in pedantry, imprisoned by constructs of fear? Women are encouraged and expected to explore their sexual fluidity; men, on the other hand, are condemned. Y TU MAMÁ blisters with unmistakable sexual tension between its two primary leads in spite of the prominence and participation of a female lover. Julio and Tenoch share an unspoken intimacy, an innate comfortability bristling with mounting homoerotic tension — a bond they justify with the assuaging crutch of having long term girlfriends. They share a natural rhythmic ease that tingles with untapped affection: they play wrestle like a squabbling couple, jack off together by the pool, and hungrily feed off each other’s sexual conquests. There’s a hanging inevitability between the both of them with irreversible consequence: as much as both boys long for one another, they recognize such an encounter would irreparably ruin their friendship.
The arrival of Luisa proves a most tantalizing catalyst as well as an welcomed alibi, abating the concomitant guilt both boys harbor over their stifled longing for one-another. As a threesome, they are fluid and free: and with each day, the boys grow closer and closer by proxy of Luisa, who is well aware of their pining. She encourages it with gentle derision and erotic instigation, eventually succeeding when, during a session of lovemaking, Julio and Tenach finally explore one another through a series of frenzied and hungry kisses. Immediately, they recognize sorrow and regret in each other’s gaze, unable to fully enjoy themselves as the shadow of their future looms overhead. Masculinity has persevered: the film’s epilog will reveal that the two will only see each other one more time before permanently parting ways. Change is abreast as they traverse an uncertain future: their idyllic days of adolescent languor are long past, yet will remain as weighted apparitions of both self and societal doubt.
WITHNAIL AND I takes a far more subtle approach yet offers commentary that is equally resonant and robust. Unlike Y TU MAMÁ, the queer longing between both men is not reciprocal, but rather unrequited and unexpressed. The corollary third is not a woman, but a gay man: though he is unsuccessful in his sexual conquests, he serves as a similar impetus in propelling things forward between Withnail and Marwood (the unnamed “I” in question).
Marwood and Withnail stand as a near perfect foils to Julio and Tenoch in that they’re involuntarily coupled. Withnail is arrogant and pretentious; in one of his many intermittent narrations, Marwood remarks he has no friends. The two are both aspiring actors who share a flat in the London theatre scene speeding in opposite directions. Withnail is too drunk off his own deluded importance to recognize his faltering career. Marwood, on the other hand, is presented with increasing opportunities. The two embark on an impromptu sojourn to the English countryside, taking residence at a threadbare cottage that belongs to Withnail’s uncle.
Withnail struggles to acclimate to the rugged conditions; in his unease he is especially susceptible to histrionic outbursts, during which he subliminally conveys his quiescent affection for Marwood. When spooked, he makes multiple attempts to sleep next to Marwood and eventually succeeds, despite Marwood’s explicit discomfort and disapproval. Tensions further rise when Withnail’s uncle, Monty, unexpectedly arrives. He harasses and propositions Marwood in flamboyant fashion while Withnail remains disengaged and heedless. Monty finally corners Marwood, claiming Withnail told him Marwood was secretly closeted. Marwood realizes he has no other out than to go along with Withnail’s claims, but instead insists that Withnail is the one who is closeted. Monty relents and takes off, leaving a disgruntled Marwood alone to confront Withnail: it is the beginning of the end.
Withnail begins to display an increasing openness toward Marwood despite his rampant self destruction, expressing gratitude and enjoyment for his companionship. As the conditions of Withnail’s solipsistic world continue to crumble, Marwood lands a gig in Manchester and consequently his ticket to freedom. As he leaves, a distraught Withnail pleads to come with him to the station, joyous at first but increasingly hysterical. Marwood refutes him firmly but calmly and stands his ground, pointedly stating that he doesn’t want Withnail to come along; as he walks out of view, Withnail lapses into a pathetic rendition of a Shakespearean soliloquy, his subconscious held hostage by his unrealized affection for Marwood. The camera lingers as if to let us absorb this magnificent scene ripe with symbolism: his countenance partially obscured by a black threshold, the rain pouring in divine derision and pity.
Marwood’s narration also provides an interesting window into his personal convictions and biases, revealing his own conditioned homophobia in the way he seemingly characterizes both Monty and Withnail even despite their own shortcomings. Most telling is his rigid aversion to having physical proximity with other men, regardless of whether or not their intention is platonic.
The mutual underpinnings shared by both films equate sexual discovery with distance and death in specific reference to manhood, serbing to highlight the pervasive danger and damage imposed by toxic masculinity. They wistfully lament its rigid adherence, presenting and isolating these unnecessary repercussions perpetuated by our fanatical devotion to gendered performance. The resolution of these very antithetical expositions affirm that awareness is neither a helper nor a hindrance in addressing these issues: the egocentric Withnail is naive to his own persuasion but still suffers, struggling to remedy the indiscernible through substance abuse. Julio and Tenoch conversely ail from their hyperawareness, unable to continue their friendship holding the intractable knowledge of their impassioned tryst.
Another shared similarity is the temporal backdrop of change and forward motion. Both scenarios are liminal in existence, a window of flux that grants a potent invincibility given a clear and finite start and end. Thus, these characters are ephemerally liberated and stranded in limbo, and will remain so until a binding commitment materializes. What isn’t realized until after the fact is that the absence of repercussions within the space is just as fleeting, and that they will return and linger like residual phantoms to sully the rose-colored sanctity of nostalgia.
Though radically different, both Y TU MAMÁ and WITHNAIL venture into territory that is seldom discussed or explored, striking a stringent chord of fear in their cerebral assessments of gender, performance, and sexuality through the male lens. Within their subtext burns a progressive and necessary desire to dismantle traditional masculinity and reconfigure it to be malleable and open — a message we should all be championing.
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