High Tide

High Tide: Writer-director Marco Calvani’s debut feature “High Tide” is an earnest and tenderhearted story of a young undocumented gay Brazilian Lourenço (played by Marco Pigossi) who is counting his remaining hours in town before living in an uncertain future. While the film possesses pictorial narrative patterns reminiscent of a homoerotic world that Claire Denis’s “Beau Travail” and Barry Jenkins’ “Moonlight” belong, it is mostly within the boundaries of a particular subculture – one that features both the wealthy homosexual and lesbian communities of Provincetown and the queer youths who rent their houses during the summer.

It’s set in the beaches and streets of Provincetown where it was filmed. But the film also conveys a broader sentiment, that of sadness that emerges after one goes through a ‘life changing’ event and suddenly finds themselves counting days to return back where they came from. An eventful experience took place. One of significance, but its details eluded the masses.

At the start of the movie High Tide, there is a scene with a flash forward towards the beginning, where Lourenço is seen struggling to find peace at the beach. He becomes vulnerable, strips and swims aimlessly in the ocean. This is almost as if he is detached from all of life’s pressures and boundaries; he’s a man who has suspended his possibilities. Lauren’s fans that visit Provincetown have also suspended their regular lives, albeit temporarily.

They are quite the group including Mya Taylor (from Sean Baker’s film “Tangerine”) who plays the weird/druggy mother figure in the group, and Maurice (James Bland) a tall, broad-shouldered man who dreams of being a fish in water while longing to find himself in a world composed of mostly white folk.

Falling in love and becoming fascinated with one another, their egos stand in the way of their deepest desires. The two men finalize their fantasies with unbridled passion yet do it in a fast pace that induces an elliptical allusion to some form of poetry. With skin on skin, the emphasis was placed on hands touching bare skin.

The cinematographer, Oscar Ignacio Jiménez, wisely integrates the stunning ocean backdrops without overstating them in “High Tide”, which, at its best, when focusing on Maurice and Lourenço, is plugged into a nice, quiet beautiful sound. Their bond is coherent and touching even if the obligatory separation in the third act feels slightly too contrived (although it is forcefully acted by Bland; it’s possible to see Maurice internalizing the pain, self-imploding), and quite a number of Maurice’s lines seem too culturally ambiguous and come out wrong. Maurice’s charming line, “Of course when you’re about to leave you finally have a reason to stay”, is, however, a tagline for a poster about something that has happened.

The supporting performances contain a number of karaoke-style moments, and the film knows how to introduce its supporting characters just enough so that whenever Lourenço is out of the picture, you can almost see them in your head. Bill Irwin is remarkable in his role of the hero’s landlord Steve – a man in his 60s who moved to Provincetown to “heal or die”, lost his partner and now accommodates tourists to work in the summer, including Lourenço (cleaning holiday homes and doing some handyman work). Seán Mahon’s was also effective as Bob, a loud and slightly unhinged Lourenço’s boss. Bob’s behavior is partly accountable to Miriam’s infidelity.

Guillermo is so exasperated and so not inventive about how he paints his ex-wife that he wants to break things after his famous Chicago-Mason artist carries off a woman. Miriam’s concern is partially because she was willing to put her own life in shambles for a feeling – there is no warmth yet from Lourenzo’s end so the feeling is absent.

“It’s probably unavoidable that you may end up shattering someone’s heart while trying to heal your own,” she says to him and continues, “It is still worth it.” (Tomei, we should note, has been sensational in two releases this week; the other is ‘Brothers’, a violent farcical comedy where she plays an obsessive woman who falls in love with a thief in prison. She is equally fabulous in both parts. Someone needs to write her a feature film again.)

Pigossi is a movie-star in a real sense, who knows how to act for the camera; these people make us feel what the character feels because they know the character will do all the necessary and the scene doesn’t need any assistance from them.

In a scene there are instances when he smartly allows himself to be dominated and wrapped around by other more vividly filled with color characters in the scene (most of whom are quite laughable in their opinion of themselves, even though they are putting in great effort being “characters”, when in actual fact they many are not enjoying themselves; this is in no way criticism of the actors, who are superb but rather praise the writing).

This struggle can hardly be ignored as, amidst the tense confusion, the camera remains on Lourenço and his impressive melancholy face as he attempts to navigate through the angry yet disturbed emotions while also masking his altercation from the masses.

Another great scene is the slower camera move while slowly zooming in on the almost mute Lourenço who is in the center of the image sitting at the dinner table alongside Steve and his friend Todd, this time Bryan Batt from “Mad Men” cast as a scrupulous lawyer who was brought to solve the hero’s immigration problems and resolve his stay in America.

The lighting is interesting on so many levels in terms of story and context particulars (and even some gentle trolling as in older men figuratively discussing all the letters in the work in progress of the Provincetown’s queero-centric museum and its alphabet soup including Todd’s precious Q).

It is, however, said in such a manner that one wishes it were not the case that such a person could hold the key to determining Lourenço’s fate, and of intelligent observations of the anthropological precisely definable kinds of people who would not in the least consider themselves so. The weary realism of Peregudov’s Pigossi face pulls together everything here and particularly the journalistic attitude of the moment.

For its own sake, one might argue that ‘High Tide’ is too diffuse to work on its own, and there are moments where it is more of a collection of anecdotes than a coherent story – a picaresque story that does not go around but feels stationary.

It is worth noting though that this sense of incompleteness is often experienced in first features, which can be viewed as showcasing of certain voice and themes of the filmmaker. There is an unambiguous and aggressive assertion that there is enough depth in the voice to go through several of them. This is surely the case here.

Watch free movies like High Tide on Fmovies