Cinema of Disobedience: Homophobia!

Original title: Homofobia!

72 Min. | AR | 2024

Language: OmeU | Original language: spanish

Director: Goyo Anchou

It’s fascinating how much of a fool an insecure man, cornered and touched by his pride, can be. Throwing himself at the feet of his beloved girlfriend, crying for forgiveness, getting angry over a supposed betrayal, feeling like Christ on the cross, slamming a door, wanting to kill himself and then wanting to kill everyone else, are just some of his outbursts. The repertoire of the pathetic man is endless. And the protagonist of “Homophobia!” follows this path to the fullest, allergic to shame. So thoroughly, that he plans a possible solution: having sex with a gay guy from college and then beating him up, or making a porn movie with him. That’ll be decided later. Because they, the gays, according to his latent homophobia, are there for that.

Between pathos and repression, a thesis emerges: the frustration of being closeted is a double-edged sword that always ends up cutting the person who wears it. The logline “They’re all faggots…” on the poster for “Homophobia!” sheds light on this issue that hovers throughout the film. The idea of transparency is everywhere in Anchou. A concept sometimes associated with comfort, laziness, or a lack of flair for disguise. But the avant-garde (the aesthetic and political avant-garde that obsesses the director) fails if it dissolves into total opacity. And Anchou, a rabid and libidinous artisan of the margins, is very clear about this: breaking away from standards implies proudly and head-on embracing one’s own dissidence.

Text originally published in the CONTRACAMPO catalogue. Tomás Guarnaccia / Copyleft 2024