Raging Sun, Raging Sky (Julián Hernández, 2009)

Raging Sun, Raging Sky (Julián Hernández, 2009)

Cast: Jorge Becerra, Javier Oliván, Guillermo Villegas, Giovanna Zacharías, Joaquin Rodríguez, Juan Carlos Torres, Fabian Storniolo, Harold Torres, Clarissa Rendón, Baltimore Beltran, Rubén Santiago, Rubén Ángel. Screenplay: Julián Hernández. Cinematography: Alejandro Cantú. Production design: Carolina Jiménez, Jesús Torres Torres. Film editing: Emiliano Arenales Osorio. Music: Arturo Villela.

Desire is not enough. That seems to be the motivating force behind Julián Hernández's extraordinary, sometimes exhilarating, often exasperating Raging Sun, Raging Sky. In the world of the film, gay men have achieved liberation of desire, but its currents flow through the old channels: cruising, hustling, casual pickups, phone sex, and encounters in porno theaters and public restrooms. It's a world that lacks a central love myth, a story of commitment, sacrifice, and redemption analogous to the legends of Héloïse and Abelard, Antony and Cleopatra, Tristan and Isolde. And so Hernández sets out to provide one in the story of Ryo, Kieri, and Tari -- a triad rather than a duo, reflective perhaps of the more open relationships common in the gay world. But he chooses to tell their story in a tantalizing fashion, beginning his film with a woman who wanders through Mexico City, seemingly in search of something and distressed when she fails to find it. She seems to have, like the angels of Wim Wenders's great Wings of Desire (1987), the ability to overhear the thoughts of people she passes on the street and in a streetcar. Once she senses something from a young man on a motorbike, but he speeds away before she can talk to him. Finally, as it grows dark, she stops and leans on the parapet of a bridge, and a young man approaches her. It begins to rain, and he lends her his coat as they run back to his apartment where they make love. While he sleeps, she whispers to him, calling him Ryo, telling him that he will find someone to love, then dresses and goes to the window where she fades from sight. We will learn that she is Tatei, perhaps el corazón del cielo, the Mayan Heart of the Sky. But we won't learn that for two hours more, until after we meet the present-day protagonists, not only Ryo but also Kieri and Tari, the former a worker in a call center, the latter a boxer, both of whom lust after Ryo. When Ryo chooses to sleep with Kieri, Tari is enraged. And then the film begins to shift into fantasy, as the sleeping men begin to be covered with dust and a menacing Tari appears, his face painted. And finally the title credits appear, two hours into the film, as the story shifts into a mythic past in which Kieri, guided by Tatei, must conquer Tari and rescue Ryo. The section opens with a striking image of a dry riverbed from which Kieri literally rises, caked in dry mud, to begin his quest. Yes, it's more than three hours long, and probably shouldn't be. And yes, Hernández's vision is often derivative -- his work has been likened to that of any number of filmmakers, from Cocteau to Antonioni to Tarkovsky. But it's a film of powerful imagination and striking beauty, with a story told mostly through images -- there is scarcely any dialogue -- and the commitment of its young actors.  Is it the love myth that gay men need? That's not for me to say. But it's an honorable attempt at one.