By Robert St. Martin
One film at San Francisco’s Frameline 48 Film Festival that explores the complexities of the LGBTQIA+ community in a microcosm is Marco Calvani’s High Tide (2024). It follows Brazilian émigré Lourenço (Marco Pigossi) as he anticipates the return of his American lover in Provincetown – Massachusetts’ queer summer mecca – while running out the clock on his visa. This intimate drama about a gay immigrant left adrift in a gay beach resort town is held together by the stunning performance of Pigossi as Lourenço although the story is a bit scattered as a romantic drama set in a beautiful location. What I found most interesting about High Tide brings a unique perspective to the intersectionality of racial and sexual identity, although its the theme of immigration is not explored in any depth.
While the first two acts are incredibly patient and measured, the final third feels like it was rushed to tie everything together. At a certain point, it just feels like things are happening to the protagonist, and any sense of naturalism that the rest of the movie has is replaced by melodrama. Although the film feels a bit similar to other queer romantic dramas, Marco Calvani has made his first feature movie feel incredibly lived-in and authentic.
Steeped in melancholy and raw pain but also in moments of openness, optimism and even joy, helps make High Tide an affecting portrait of untethered gay men seeking meaningful connections. draws parallels between the isolation of an undocumented Brazilian, nearing the end of his visa and disinclined to return home, and that of a Black American, secure in his tight friendship circle but very much aware he’s the minority in a predominantly white queer tourist mecca – and in the country at large.
Lourenço is staying in a rustic guest cottage across the lane from the kindly owner Scott (Bill Irwin), who is always eager for company. The Brazilian funds his Ptown stay by cleaning vacation rentals and doing temporary jobs for the brusquely unfriendly Bob (Seán Mahon). Lourenço’s heartache is apparent every time his calls to an unseen Joe (his former lover) go to voicemail; we gradually learn that he was dumped earlier in the summer and has been trying, without much success, to figure out his next steps ever since.
The thematic core of High Tide, which takes place over just a few days, is Lourenço, whose sensible nature wanders between despair and hope. He finds hope for a brief period of time in a friendship that sparks up on the beach with Maurice (James Bland), a nurse in town for the week from New York with his posse of druggy queer friends – which includes Mya Taylor, the revelation from Sean Baker’s Tangerine, as Crystal. Calvani lets the mutual attraction between Lourenço and Maurice evolve gently into romance and sex.
Lourenço’s house-cleaning job with Bob keeps him afloat financially. A house-painting job in nearby Truro brings Lourenço in contact with a mellow artist Miriam (Marisa Tomei), but also friction with Bob, who still angry because she broke his heart. Kind-hearted Scott, an older man, is one of a vanishing generation of gay men who went to Provincetown “to heal or to die” during the AIDS crisis, which took the life of his partner.
Longtime residents like him have little in common with moneyed power gays like the lawyer Todd (Bryan Batt) who have jacked up the price of real estate, buying multimillion dollar homes that sit unoccupied for all but a week or two a year. Scott’s efforts to connect Lourenço with Todd that might be able to help with his immigration status leaves Lourenço wondering about the obnoxious sense of privilege of well-off gay Americans who can afford to live in all white gay bubble.
While the narrative is lean but always engaging, Calvani perhaps overstretches by attempting to touch on the shifting economics altering the fabric of Provincetown life. The movie’s real highlight is Marco Pigossi as Lourenço, despite the fact that the narrative has the protagonist encounter too many supporting characters. From the moment High Tide opens, Calvani demands his audience’s attention through the contrast of gentle waves caressing the shore and the stark image of Lourenço stripping off his clothes and lunging towards the ocean in a moment of emotional crisis. This scene returns later in the film, bolstered by more narrative context, but dangling it before the viewer this way conjures images of undocumented migrants taking desperately to the water in search of refuge.
This well-acted drama benefits substantially from its full immersion in this very specific milieu. Also lending texture to the film is the characteristic Brazilian feeling of longing known as suadade, present not only in the sorrowful introspection of Pigossi’s Lourenço but also in the poetry of Oswald de Andrade, heard over the opening shots of a distressed Lourenço plunging naked into the waters of Cape Cod Bay. Pigossi takes this idea of impermanence and transforms it so deftly into a sense of instability – of shifting sand beneath one’s feet – that he warps the film around himself, making it feel unpredictable even as familiar romantic beats and gestures play out on-screen. It’s a radiant, heartfelt performance that not only keeps High Tide interesting, but makes it feel exuberant on occasion too.
Marco Pigossi is one of Brazil’s brightest stars. Most recently, he appeared in the Amazon hit Gen V, the spin-off of the smash hit series The Boys. For Netflix, he starred in three international shows: Tidelands, High Seas, and Invisible City created by Carlos Saldhana, which just returned for a second season. In Brazil, he starred on twelve series for Rede Globo and two feature films, including 492: A Man called Death, for which he received a Best Actor nomination at Rio Film Festival. High Tide screens at Frameline on June 28 at 8:30 PM in the Herbst Theatre in San Francisco. Director Marco Calvani and Marco Pigossi will be in attendance.
For tickets, go to: https://www.frameline.org/films/frameline48/high-tide.
