"Yo, Adolescente": Do All Gay Stories End with Coffins?

 

Yo, Adolescente  (Memories of a Teenager) is advertised on Netflix as a LGBTQ movie.  So why  is the trailer a nonstop description of the boy's girlfriend's eyes?

"She has the most wonderful, amazing, fascinating eyes that I've ever seen.  I can't describe them.  When she looks at you, it's like nothing else in the universe matters.  All you want is tor her to smile at you forever."

Does that sound like a gay kid? Bisexual, maybe.  

Scene 1: A rock concert in Argentina: "Life is hard, I won't lie."   Cut to Nico, coming home to discover that four of his friends died in a fire at that concert.  Or just one.  It's not clear.

He goes up to his room and looks through his memorabilia.  Lots of depressing statements: "I feel empty inside."

Cut to a party. Nico tells a boy "Nice t-shirt," and the boy responds: "The word teenager has nothing to do with suffering."

Is this magic realism?  I have no idea whether this is real life, or in Nico's mind.

Now Nico is named Zabo. He tells us: "I met Pol two years ago.  He was the same age then as I am now." 

Geeze, kid, just say "He was two years older than me."

They hang out, go to concerts, do outdoor things, hug.  Then Pol killed himself.

One friend kills himself, another dies in a fire.  This kid can't cut a break.

Cut to graffiti coming out of Nico//Zabo's head as he writes a blog; "What is a teenager?"

A swirling mass of darkness and despair?

"We're raw urgency in the flesh.  We don't think  about the future.  At least not the future of a house, a car, a dog, a wife.  I'd rather kill myself than have such a future."

I felt the same way growing up with the heterosexist trajectory of house, job, wife, kids being pushed at me day after day.

"Alone, alone, alone!  Somewhere, someone must be going through the same as me."

Scene 2:  Ok, his parents call him Nico, but he prefers Zabo.  He lives in a gray, lifeless suburb of Buenos Aires called Parque Chambuco, and he's in his fourth year of high school (junior year in America), studying construction, which is dreadful.  He doesn't make friends easily because he's "rustic," but he has a group of homies: Luco, Camila, Checho, and Tomas (who is two years older).

Everyone is concilaitory about the sucide of Zabo's friend Pol, but he shrugs it off.  

Ok, they all assume that Zabo is gay, but he doesn't think so.

Maria arrives.  We get the five-minute description of her eyes.

The boy is obviously in love with he -- deeply passionately, Girl of His Dreams, Spend Your Life Kissing the Ground She Walks On in love.  He's obviously straight.  Straight people can have best friends, you know.

Scene 3: Nico is playing video games with his friend Fran (wait -- how many friends does this "loner" have?)..  He wants to have sex with Maria, but he is unfortunately stuck in the friend zone.  Fran dosn't believe that she really exists -- no girl could be so perfect.  So Nico offers to throw a party, and invite them both.

I'm sick of this.  I fast forward.

I come to this.

And this.

And this.

And Pol's suicide note.  "Am I in love with you?  I was afraid to tell you."

And the last scene.  

Did Nico feel guilty because Pol killed himself due to unrequited love?  Or did he feel guilty because he never told Pol that he was in love with him?  Or because his girlfriend got pregnant?  Or...

Do all gay stories have to end with coffins?