“Provincetown’s Quiet Storm: Love, Loss, and Longing in ‘High Tide'”
Picture Courtesy : IMDB
“High Tide,” the first movie written and directed by Marco Calvani, is set on the beaches and streets of Provincetown. It’s a sincere and touching story about a young gay Brazilian named Lourenço (Marco Pigossi) who is living in the U.S. without papers and counting down the days until he has to leave town and face an uncertain future. It’s full of specific details about a subculture: the wealthy gay or lesbian people who live in Provincetown and the young queer tourists who rent their homes during the summer. Its sensuously vivid storytelling connects it to a pantheon of homoeroticism that includes Claire Denis’ “Beau Travail” and Barry Jenkins’ “Moonlight.” But the movie also shows a more general sadness that sets in when you’ve had a life-changing experience somewhere you’d never been before and then see that the end of the trip is coming up quickly. You have that uneasiness that comes from knowing that something important has happened to you. You know what it was, but you don’t know what to do with that information.
There is a scary scene at the beginning of the movie that turns out to be a flash-forward. Lourenço goes to the beach, takes off all his clothes, swims out into the ocean, and floats in the water. One of the most powerful images in the movie that doesn’t need to be explained is this man whose life and prospects are suspended, floating, and unmoored. When young people come to Provincetown and talk to Lourenço, they are also briefly cut off from their normal lives. Crystal, played by Mya Taylor from Sean Baker’s movie ‘Tangerine’, is kind of like the drug den mom of the group. Maurice, played by James Bland, is a tall, broad-shouldered dreamboat whose experience as a gay Black man in a mostly white neighbourhood is a lot like Lourenço’s feelings of being alone. They are physically drawn to each other and quickly become tangled up. If neither man’s worries got in the way, it could turn into something more. Their sex is hot and beautifully shot, but it’s also short and a bit vague. It tries to be poetic and almost succeeds, with a lot of close-ups of strong hands touching bare skin.
Oscar Ignacio Jiménez shot “High Tide,” which has a beautiful, hushed vibe, especially when it focusses on Maurice and Lourenço. He makes the most of the beautiful seaside scenes without relying too much on them. Their relationship is convincing and moving, even though the breakup in the third act feels a bit forced (though Bland plays it very well; you can feel Maurice taking in the hurt, amplifying it, and pulling away into himself). Also, a lot of Maurice’s dialogue isn’t culturally specific and is sometimes awkwardly phrased, though his lovely “Of course when you’re about to leave, you finally find a reason to stay” is a poster slogan waiting to happen.
There are a lot of great supporting acts, and the movie does a great job of giving you just enough of the supporting characters to fill them out in your mind when Lourenço isn’t there. Steve, the hero’s landlord, is played touchingly by Bill Irwin. Steve is an older man who lost his partner and moved to Provincetown during the height of the AIDS crisis to “heal or die.” He now rents out his guest house to people who need to make extra money during the summer, like Lourenço, who cleans vacation rentals and does other odd jobs around the house. As Bob, Lourenço’s irritable boss, Seán Mahon is just the right amount of rude and disturbing. Bob is cranky because his ex-wife, painter Miriam (Marisa Tomei), left him because she fell in love with another woman. She feels like she can trust Lourenço, which may be because she is ready to risk everything for a feeling while Lourenço is still not there. She says, “You will break someone’s heart on the way to opening your own.” She then adds, “It’s always worth it.” This week, Tomei has been great in two films. The other is ‘Brothers’, a cartoonish slapstick comedy in which she plays a woman who gets a long-distance crush on a prisoner. In both roles, she’s just as persuasive. (Someone should write her another story.)
When Pigossi acts for the camera, he really knows how to make us feel what the character is feeling. He is sure that the information will get across if he fully enters his character and doesn’t feel like he needs to “help” the scene by doing a lot more. During certain scenes, he wisely lets himself be surrounded by other, more overtly colourful characters. Many of these characters, sadly, are not nearly as puckishly delightful as they seem to think they are and are actually trying way too hard to come across as “characters.” This is not a criticism of the actors, who are great, but a compliment to the writing. If you look at these kinds of scenes, you can’t take your eyes off of Lourenço and his beautiful but haunted face as he tries to figure out his often-unstable feelings without showing what he’s going through.
One of the most memorable shots in the movie is a slow zoom in on Lourenço, who is sitting in the middle of the frame at a dinner table with Steve and Todd, Steve’s overly friendly guest played by Bryan Batt of “Mad Men.” Todd was invited over to try to help the hero with his immigration problems and stay in the United States. There’s a lot going on in this in terms of story, setting, and background. There’s also some light satire, like when the older men talk about what all the letters in Provincetown’s “LGBTQIAP+ Museum” mean; Todd doesn’t like the “Q” very much. But there’s also a quiet sadness that this person might decide what will happen to Lourenço, as well as a smart look at anthropologically exact types of people who would never think of themselves as types. Pigossi’s face ties everything together and gives the scene’s journalistic tone a tired reality.
“High Tide” isn’t always clear on what it’s trying to say, and there are times when it reads more like a collection of stories than a complete story—a Picaresque story that stays in one place instead of going somewhere else. But this small sense of unfinishedness is common in first features, which are mostly about showing off the style and themes of the director. They keep their bold promise that the voice is strong enough to carry over into more films, and it works. That’s certainly the case here.