Double Takes: ‘Taekwondo’ (2016) ★★ / ‘Horseplay’ (2022) ★★

Argentinian director Marco Berger
takes his time developing a central
relationship in Taekwondo.

You won’t have to wait long to see naked men in Taekwondo and Horseplay, two very similar movies from Argentinian writer-director Marco Berger. A penis is shown within the first 10 minutes of Taekwondo; within the first 12 of Horseplay. You’ll have to wait considerably longer for a story to present itself.

Both movies are about a group a young, clothing-averse men who spend their school vacation at a friend’s house. All the men are straight. Or are they? Though the movies share the same synopsis, they are not identical. For starters, in Taekwondo Berger’s camera frequently lingers on his cast’s crotches while the director is more into showcasing the asses of his Horseplay cast, particularly the one attached to actor Bruno Giganti (in fairness, Giganti’s ass is almost reason alone to watch Horseplay).

But there are other differences. In Taekwondo, the men are younger (very late teens-very early twenties), slightly less rowdy and a little more likeable. They’re staying at the one-time health spa owned by the family of their host, Fer (Lucas Papa). The place is kind of shabby, but it’s got plenty of room and no parental supervision. Joining the group of mutual friends is one outsider, Germán (Gabriel Epstein), Fer’s friend from his Taekwondo class. Germán is shy, a bit bookish (he’s shown reading Catcher in the Rye and Patrick Suskind’s Perfume) and very cute in a barely legal sort of way. He’s also gay, though he’s only out to his weed dealer, who is also gay. Germán has a crush on Fer (short for Fernando) and thinks Fer might feel the same about him—if Fer is gay, that is. It’ll take Germán (and the audience) the film’s entire runtime to find out.

A story takes even longer to develop in
Marco Berger's 2022 follow-up Horseplay
(a.k.a. Los Agitadores)

Six years later, Berger made Horseplay, in which a group of men in their mid-twenties—almost all of whom are assholes—spend their Christmas break at the more luxurious villa belonging to Artur’s (Iván Masliah) family. This gathering is a lot raunchier, with the guys graphically talking about their sexual exploits, pranking each other, and taking photos of each other in lewd poses. Poli (Franco de la Puente) is the lone gay guy, uncomfortable amongst all this toxic masculinity. Another guy at the villa, Andy (Agustín Machta) knows Poli’s secret, and while he isn’t gay, he’s super horny and not opposed to using Poli’s available orifices to get off. But Andy makes clear he could never be in a relationship with a man. He’d much rather join Nico (Giganti and his scene-stealing ass) for a three-way with woman they met online.

Taekwondo is gentler and ultimately more romantic (and for me, more enjoyable), while Horseplay has a much darker, almost nihilistic tone that nevertheless leaves you unprepared for its shocking ending. I didn’t hate either movie, but both tested my patience. Berger’s slow, elliptical storytelling can work well when he’s focusing on two or three characters, as he did in the far superior film The Blonde One (starring one of Taekwondo’s actors, Gaston Re), but it’s not as easy to appreciate when he’s seemingly unfocused on 10-15. You’ll spend much of Taekwondo’s and Horseplay’s respective runtimes watching guys sleeping (in their skivvies or in the nude), swimming, trimming their toenails, getting high, eating, playing video games, reading, taking showers, sitting on the toilet, watching videos on their phones, and just sitting around shooting the shit, before a narrative—or at least a point—ever presents itself. If that sounds kind of dull, that’s because it is, but at least you’ll have plenty of nice scenery to look at as the two movies slowly approach their respective climaxes.

(Not-So-)Short Takes: ‘Poppers’ (1984) ★★ ½

Poppers’ thumbnail image on Tubi is
 cheesy but at least it accurately
represents the movie.

The obscure 1984 Spanish-made thriller Poppers is not a gay-themed movie, but it is most definitely queer, in both senses of the word. For starters, there’s the title, which suggests amyl nitrate use figures into the story, except it doesn’t. Not once does anyone use poppers, even in a scene set in a gay bar. Maybe “poppers” has a different meaning in Spanish slang? According to my own Google search, it does not (drugs: the universal language). The movie’s alternate title, Hunting, makes a lot more sense, though the poster bearing that title is even more gay.

 This poster has little to do with the
movie I saw, but I very much wish it did.

And then there is the movie’s opening scene:

I could find nothing online to confirm definitively that Poppers’ writer-director José María Castellví (not that one) was in fact gay, but it’s hard to resist speculating. Opening your trashy thriller with a gratuitous shower scene featuring a sexy actress would be just another Tuesday in the world of exploitation cinema, but putting your male lead in a gratuitous shower scene suggests someone behind the camera is more interested in catering to male gays than the male gaze. Regardless of whether that someone was Castellví or maybe a producer, bless them.

Our well-washed male lead is Miguel Ortiz, who plays Santos, the lead singer-guitarist of a New Wave band. During a performance in a small club, he notices a guy hitting on his girlfriend. The power cuts out just as Santos lunges off stage. When the lights come back on the man flirting with Santos’s girlfriend has been stabbed to death. Given that we never actually see Santos kill the guy, I assumed that Santos was framed and finding the real killer would drive the story, but no, he did it. Santos is quickly convicted and sent to prison.

Santos doesn’t spend much time behind bars, however, paroled a mere two years later. Supposedly his early release is for good behavior, but it was actually arranged by Pablo Jordan (Alfredo Mayo), the very rich father of Santos’s victim. One of Jordan’s quirks is keeping horses in the living room of his castle so he can watch birth of a foal and play with the afterbirth. So, really, should we be surprised he is hosting a hunting party in which Santos is the prey? Said hunting party includes a gay couple, prominent theater director Dan (Manuel de Blas) and his producer/boyfriend Max (José Luis de Vilallonga). Here are a couple scenes from one of Dan’s plays:

Again, this is not a gay movie.

Santos is given a bag of gems worth $1 million that’s his to keep if he escapes death, though members of the hunting party make it clear that they don’t intend to let that happen. They also make it clear that Santos doesn’t have a choice in participating, which makes one wonder why Jordan went to the trouble to pay a beautiful club dancer named Lola (Giannina Facio, a.k.a. Mrs. Ridley Scott, in her film debut) to seduce Santos the night before to put him in a more agreeable mood. The answer: to provide the movie with an explicit-as-an-R-rating-will-allow sex scene.

That R rating doesn’t permit Miguel Ortiz to go full-frontal,
but he still shows plenty.

Remarkably, Santos successfully escapes with the gems, though we’re never shown exactly how he eludes the hunters. Just accept that he does. Santos reconnects with Lola after an extended scene of her dancing for an all-male audience of skinheads in a club that includes a pen full of goats as part of the ambiance. (Goddamn, this place must reek; no wonder Lola doesn’t care that her dressing room is in the men’s room). Santos calls Lola a cunt, and she immediately offers to help him exact revenge on the remaining old Fascists. Romance blooms as the couple systematically kill off the old men, sometimes cross-dressing to gain their confidence (Ortiz makes a fairly convincing, if matronly, woman, but no one with eyes would mistake Facio for a leather boy).

Max (José Luis de Vilallonga) is about to get impaled,
but not in the way he hopes.

Though Poppers has plenty of WTF moments, it never quite delivers as a movie. It’s a toss-up which viewers will hate more, the characters (assholes all) or the persistent synthpop soundtrack that’s at odds with the movie’s punk aesthetic. There is not enough tension in the Most Dangerous Game first half, and there’s virtually none at all in the second half, with Castellví favoring bloody/kinky set pieces over suspense. Still, the movie is well shot (Castellví was an established photographer before directing Poppers) and I’m a sucker for WTF moments, to say nothing of well-built men in gratuitous shower scenes. I wouldn’t recommend it to everyone, but for a specific type of audience (you know who you are) Poppers is a must-see. Happy Pride!