Neil BakerBoy Meets Boy is released on DVD and digital on the 6th of September through Peccadillo Pictures.
Ever since Richard Linklater’s brilliant Before Sunrise (1995) and Andrew Haigh’s groundbreaking Weekend (2011), there has been no shortage of minimalist one-night or one-day relationship movies. These movies play with the power of conversation and the random meetings that spark an instant relationship. Daniel Sanchez Lopez’s debut feature, Boy Meets Boy, inhabits the same intimate space of Haigh’s Weekend but wraps this intimacy in Berlin’s vibrant colours and sounds.
Johannes (Alexis Kotsoulis) is a keen dancer, with his Berlin studio a bolt-hole from a complicated home life where his long-term partner no longer offers much care, love or support. But Johannes passionately believes in love and companionship, even if they may not always be perfect. Meanwhile, across town, a British tourist, Harry (Matthew James Morrison), is enjoying his final night in Berlin with a casual hookup from Grindr. His journey to Berlin has sought to take in the freedom, liberation and joy of a city that never sleeps, and as his hookup leaves the hotel, Harry is already thinking about the night ahead. Arriving at the same club on the same night, Harry and Johannes lock eyes across the crowded dance floor, and a spark of sexual interest draws them closer and closer as the heat builds. When dawn breaks and they enter the bright sunlight outside, a whole day faces them before Harry’s evening flight home – a day that will find them exploring Berlin together.
Cinematographer Hanna Marie Biørnstad creates a deep sense of intimacy in the journey that ensues through hand-held work that follows the couple through Berlin’s streets and parks. Here, Lopez and Biørnstad capture the fragility and intensity of a new connection and the feelings of uncertainty that surround our first tentative steps alongside a potential new love interest as the daylight slowly becomes twilight. Morrison and Kotsoulis shine, their performances rooted in a natural honesty that often feels unscripted while their chemistry pulls the viewer into Harry and Johannes’ intimate yet fleeting world. It may not tread new ground, but Boy Meets Boy does hold a candle to all those meetings, love affairs and connections we know won’t last beyond a day or a night, and in a world only just recovering from lockdowns and separation, there is something truly special in this tale of a brief but powerful bond.
