Hawaii [DVD]

As much about social class as it is about being gay. This is a sweet film. Great if you like happy endings.

Cinema audiences today are bombarded with so much vacuous content – tokenistic action, violence, movement and noise. It is therefore an immense pleasure to find oneself in the hands of a filmmaker who is interested in documenting the quiet, more meaningful moments of human experience. Argentinian director, Marco Berger, has already garnered international acclaim for his first two features – the tentative but original, Plan B, and the poetic, Teddy Award winning, Absent. In Hawaii, he continues to explore a now familiar motif in his work – the developing sexual tension between male protagonists. In Plan B, this concept manifests as an experimental subversion of societal norms. In Absent, he depicts how the transgression of these norms can have dangerous ramifications. In Hawaii, he has produced something quite unique – the cinematic rendering of the male body as object of desire.He achieves this by juxtaposing the lives of two men from completely different socio-economic backgrounds. Eugenio (Mateo Chiarino) is an itinerant labourer, sleeping rough in the small Argentinian town where he lived as a child and to which he has recently returned. When searching for work, he encounters childhood friend Martin (Manuel Vignau) who is living alone at his family’s country home. When Martin offers Eugenio work, and ultimately live-in accommodation, their obvious attraction for each other escalates during the warm, often languid, days of the Argentinian summer.Although Eugenio initially devises a series of harmless conceits to shroud his apparent homelessness, Martin’s status as published writer and inheritor of family property makes it clear that he is in the more economically fortunate position. Thus, Martin bestows Eugenio with gifts of books, clothes, food and various domestic comforts. These seeming acts of charity serve the dual function of allowing Martin to contrive and choreograph situations that will render Euginio naked. What ensues is a kind of homoerotic spectacle where both men use their bodies to compete in a subtle power play.An important ingredient in the aesthetic design of Berger’s vision is Tomas Perez Silva’s cinematography. Silva had already demonstrated an eye for unconventional camera angles and provocative framing in Berger’s earlier films. In Hawaii, he is faithful to the sexually charged point of view by using shots that focus and linger on pivotal parts of the actors’ bodies - a technique rarely seen in mainstream cinema today. Although there is much provocation aroused by shots of, say, Martin’s wet swimming trunks, it is the wider possibilities of how the couples’ accelerating desires will be satiated that we are even more interested in. This is due to the impressive cumulative effects of Berger and Silva’s collaboration and the reason why they are two of the finest talents in world cinema today.Another reason why the film is successful on many levels is the inspired casting of Vignau and Chiarino. Both transcend their obvious heartthrob appeal to turn-in performances that imbue the film with realism and restraint. Vignau, in particular, has the actorly skill of suggesting thought and feelings that breath life into an otherwise deceptively static frame.Perhaps the film’s only limitation is that, by the end, we do not gain a particularly deep comprehension of exactly who these characters are. Therefore, I do feel that it may have been instructive for Berger to have incorporated some additional dialogue that may have provided further psychological insight. Despite this, it is worth acknowledging just what a finely tuned and delicately balanced work Hawaii is. A film that so easily could have been derailed by pseudo-pornographic excess is, in actuality, one of the most evocative mood pieces I have seen.https://paulanthonyburnett.wordpress.com

This film is perfect. It is understated, beautifully acted and beautifully filmed. It is romantic with intelligently realised emotional depth, and in that, it feels like the very best of French cinema. I kept expecting, but hoping desperately, because I was enjoying the easy pace of the narrative and the subtly realised characters of Martin and Eugenio so much, that it wouldn't descend into a formulaic gay romp – be warned, if that's your liking – and it doesn't. The denouement is almost incidental and, no spoilers, it is the kind of intelligent film that doesn't need to pander to expectation. I recommended this film without reservation.

A different slant on the boy meets boy stereotypical film. Very tasteful semi nude scenes, which at times left me wanting more - maybe thats just me. But the storyline was more important. Without spoiling the plot too much a young man returns to where he was brought up, sleeping rough and doing odd jobs around the area. He then reunites with someone from his past, a little older than him. At first does work around his property and then emotions start to appear, on both sides. A gentle tale, yet very watchable.I enjoyed it.

This was a letdown after watching Plan B by the same director. Similar theme but in this film the writer character is simply not endearing, and in fact he is a bit of a perv, as demonstrated by the 'sleeping grope' scene. My advice - invoke Plan B.

Maspterpiece. One of the most beautiful movie ever made in the lgbt world . Congratulations for the Diretor and the actors.Finally a movie about LOVE between 2 human being. Finally a diferent movie that represent my GAY world .I thought gay movies was only abou it : Drugs, murders and STDS and parties. Gladdly from this movie its not.Thank you again for a MASTERPIECE movie.

Realmente disfruté esta película positiva sobre la amistad y el amor masculinos. Los dos actores son atractivos de forma normal. Sí, algunos dirían que es lento, pero en realidad ese era su encanto. Estoy muy feliz de haber comprado esta película.

Consegna veloce e in perfette condizione... Ho scoperto questo film per caso ed è stata una sorpresa. In lingua originale con sottotitoli in inglese ma basta per capire questo straordinario gioiello.

I can't say enough about this movie! Actors perfectly chosen. Storyline was heart warming and thoughtful. You can't help but root for the characters. Marco Berger makes intelligent films that are beautiful and enjoyable to watch.

Part of the exceptional beauty of Marco Berger's Hawaii is its rhythm, the slow, deliberate, observant pace of its story. But that rhythm finds a counter rhythm in the frequent cuts from shot to shot. Some linger, some come and go quickly. Watching it, both in the experience of it at the moment and later in reflection, you become increasingly aware how much is being shown, how much you are witnessing. The film is remarkable, among many other reasons, for the acuity of its eye, not only how much it sees, but how much detail is brought forth to ponder and feel. Its clarity, in a profound sense, means something.The setting evokes in its light something of a pastoral world. Only the two main characters really matter. It is like a world elsewhere, where the outside world need not intrude. What this isolation allows for is enormous concentration.It is a two person film, with three other characters very briefly in it, only two of whom speak. What the movie unfolds is the complexity of two men's falling in love. But that complexity includes more than who they are. It embraces the world in which they find themselves, the house, its pool, its lawns, trees, and flowers, the river near by. It means that their pasts, who they once were together, also must be relived and revived. As they work, together or separately, as they eat, as they talk, as they relax or compete or play, their feelings, their sensual responses to the world around them and to each other, are changing, intensifying.When such emotions are being aroused, slowly, often quietly, unsurely, deeply, perhaps surprisingly, the whole world matters. It becomes more present. The "island" of a sort where they find themselves together becomes more and more part of who they are. That, I suppose, is one of the meanings of lyricism in film.Each shot in the movie has its own beauty. Marco Berger is a film maker whose work is informed by a painterliness, not in the slightest bit arty or self-conscious, but clear, attentive, intense, where the whole composition enlightens the totality of its details.Desire makes the whole world around you more keenly present. So it is in this film. The story of these two men's becoming lovers involves all that surrounds them as well, especially memory which, more than in Berger's earlier work, plays a vital part in this movie and, in one instance, gives it its title. Memory, among other values, is here restorative. It becomes, in many senses, the means to return, the way to spare love the failures of loss.Sometimes, when a character is speaking, the movie goes silent. You do not hear him. Why that is so is as important as the dialogue you do hear. How silence and words interplay in the film is nowhere more astonishing than in the significance of the word 'pineapple.' Only a filmmaker of great sophistication and depth could have imagined this image and how it becomes so important to the movie, not only to its conclusion, but to the whole of it as you think back upon it or watch it again. Both in words and in gestures much of the film resonates with what is not being said, in glances, in glimpses, in looking away, in looking back.The actors are as fine as the film in which they appear. This is a great work. That it is also a great act of gay film making is not incidental. I think this might be one of the finest films about two men's falling in love ever made. But there is no need to categorize. It is a work of art that resists categorization. That is part of its brilliance as an astonishingly beautiful and perfectly crafted movie.But it is also an unusually generous film, generous in its vision. Its two men behave decently, are good, and act to one another's benefit as much as or even more than for their own. It is a film about gift-giving. One character almost loses what he longs for, hopes for because he doesn't what to risk the other's happiness or future to get it. The word 'good' can too easily collapse into moralism. But the moral vision in this movie, its spirit of generosity, is at once both serious and elating. This is an unusually fine movie, rare for its illuminations, its sensitivity to detail, its attention to the nuances of silence and gesture and to the richness of simple conversation, its sensual allure, and its ethical depth. I felt, after watching it, elated.

J' ai été bouleversé par ce film remarquable , empreint de sensibilité extrême , qui fait tant écho à la manière tragique dont j' ai vécu et continue à vivre mon homosexualité .Je recommande vivement ce DVD à ceux qui s' assument mal en raison , entre autres , de leur éducation ...