It generated a lot of attention at Sundance this year because of its frontal nudity and graphic gay sex, but eventually patrons recognized that Sebastián Silva’s new “Rotting in the Sun” is a bold, triumphant film that works on unexpected levels.
Silva stars as a depressed director who meets fan Jordan Firstman, an Instagram influencer, on a nude gay beach in Mexico City. The two agree to work on a project together, but Silva disappears before they can begin.
Both men basically play themselves here. Silva had been living in Mexico City, in the area that the film takes place, when he got the initial drive.
“A lot of the elements were there, and they were so colorful,” he told Georgia Voice. “The building where I was at was under construction and felt very picturesque. Everything started feeling very cinematic and I started toying with the idea of making a movie about class and social disparity, a misanthropic comedy. That was the beginning.” He started to write soon after and through coincidence met Firstman. “The week after I offered him [the chance] to play himself and humiliate himself in this movie and he was very willing.”
It was tricky to play himself, according to Firstman.
“The lines are very blurred on how much to play it up and how much to play it down,” he said. “Sebastian said from the beginning we are all playing the worst versions of ourselves, so I had that to go on. But I’ve always been very open to self-criticism and self-examination. I took it as an opportunity.”
The previous year, he recalls “blowing up” on the Internet. Fame and attention were happening at such a rapid pace he didn’t have time to examine what was happening. Being directed by Silva intrigued him.
“It felt like a way to look at myself through the lens of someone who I knew thought I was super annoying and was critical of what I did,” he said. “I thought that was interesting. You have to take a leap of faith. It was challenging, but you have to trust your instincts and trust that the person making the movie knows what the fuck he’s doing. Thankfully, he did. I always said, if this movie sucks and I am sucking cock on camera and making fun of myself, I am going to kill myself.”
In the film, the relationship between the men is very complicated.
“It is very uneven,” Silva said. “I despise him, and I need his money. I am all about the money. I hate him because I hate myself too. The character is such a self-deprecating, disenchanted man. He hates the beach, the people at the beach, life. Jordan’s flaw is how naive and possible he is, how enthusiastic about this newfound fame and the project he is being offered. They are on completely different spectrums of mental health; coming together is calling for absolute chaos.”
While Firstman agrees that the men are two polar opposites, he does think there’s more than money involved.
“Sebastian keeps responding to texts,” he said. “There is something inside of the character that wants to be saved by positivity and maybe some of that can rub off. He wants to feel as good as me, although he’d never admit that.”
One goal for Silva was to create three-dimensional characters and tell a new kind of story.
“I appreciate movies about gay stories and coming out, but it feels like they seem so apologetic in a way, or so related to the drama or struggle,” he said. “In this case we are way past that.”
A lot of the early attention was paid to the sexuality portrayed in the film, but “Rotting in the Sun” deals with many issues and features an extraordinary performance by Catalina Saavedra as a maid.
“I think we saw immediately that [the nudity] was what people were talking about,” Firstman said. “We were frustrated by it because we knew the movie was so much more. It felt very American, very repressed, the obsession with the dicks. And when we started talking about the marketing of the movie, we just decided to lean in and pretend it’s a movie about dicks to get people to theaters and they will be shocked that it’s about so much more. It’s putting the joke on the audience.”
In the new film “Cassandro,” Gael Garcia Bencal plays gay wrestler Saúl Armendáriz who fights in the Lucha Libra World Cup in Mexico before he begins competing as an exotico (in drag) as the titular character. Director Roger Ross Williams (in his feature debut) made a short film on the subject and fell in love with the real-life character.
“His story was super inspiring and is a hero’s journey,” Williams said. “You don’t see a lot of queer stories about heroes. They are usually really depressing or about coming out or being beaten up, something horrible. This was the story of an openly gay man overcoming adversity who became a star.”
Williams knew nothing about the subject before he made the initial documentary. He was introduced to the world and thought it was an important story to tell. Yet he had to learn all about the whole lucha libra environment, but as a documentarian, it was his job to explain it to the world.
Authenticity was important in casting.
“It was important that [the lead] was a Mexican actor but really important that it was a great actor to pull off the complexity and depth to pull off the emotional and physical demands,” Williams said. “Gael is one of the great Mexican actors. He is a revered actor and I had no one else in mind to play this role.”
Williams pursued Bencal for a year before he eventually got a meeting with the actor’s agent and worked it all out.
“Rotting in the Sun” is now available on MUBI
“Cassandro” is now available on Prime
Jim Farmer has written about queer arts for Southern Voice/ The Georgia Voice for the last 25 years. He’s an editor-at-large for ArtsATL and also contributes to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. His writing has been awarded by both the NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ+ Journalists and the National Arts and Entertainment Journalism Awards, and he was also nominated for the Online Journalist of the Year Award by the latter. Farmer serves as the festival director of Out On Film, Atlanta’s Oscar® qualifying LGBTQIA+ film festival. Named as the 2019 Business Man of the Year from the Out Georgia Business Alliance, he has been named to Atlanta Magazine’s Atlanta 500 Most Powerful City Leaders list in 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023. He is also an ambassador for the Out Georgia Business Alliance and was on the Atlanta Hawks LGBTQIA+ Pride Council. He lives in Avondale Estates with his husband Craig and dog Douglas.