24FPS @ BFI Flare 2021: Boy Meets Boy

Dir: Daniel Sanchez Lopez

On Harry’s (Matthew James Morrison) last day in Berlin, he meets Johannes (Alexis Koutsoulis) and they end up spending the day together, walking around the city, talking and connecting.

There are many great brief encounter movies—the Before series, Weekend, Brief Encounter itself—and Boy Meets Boy isn’t afraid of wearing the influence of all of them on its sleeve, but it cleaves closest to Before Sunrise and Sunset. There is a real sense of time being limited, and we know that at a certain point Harry has to move on, physically at least, to go home on an evening flight. As with those films, the time Harry and Johannes have together is largely filled with moments that might otherwise be mundane, but become meaningful both because of who they are with and the truncated timeline.

The most important thing with a film like this is to find two actors who have chemistry. From the first moment we see them together, dancing in a club and making out soon after, that’s not a problem, but it also carries over into the conversational scenes. There is an ease between Morrison and Koutsoulis that gives the film a loose, relaxed, flow. This certainly helps the chemistry in the sex scene (another where director Daniel Sanchez Lopez makes his influences, in this case Don’t Look Now and Out of Sight, obvious), but it’s felt just as much in the long series of conversations as the two wander around Berlin. The two talk about general life stuff, but things are most interesting when they get a bit deeper, where in a lighthearted way (Johannes’ assertion that “Everyone’s a cheese”) or in deeper conversations about sex and relationships, and what each is really looking for.

It’s easy to be swept along with this film, almost as if you’re tagging along with Harry and Johannes, the issue with it as a brief encounter film is that the stakes never feel especially high. For all the chemistry, the film seems to acknowledge immediately, and never change its mind about, what this is. The sense of longing that we are primed to feel both from the characters and in ourselves for them to be together, or the sadness that they can’t be, just never comes through. In some ways, perhaps this is more of an honest approach to the Tinder/Grindr age of relationships, but as drama it ends up feeling a little flat and meaning that, for all its fun and promising qualities, Boy Meets Boy doesn’t linger that long in the memory.

★★★