A Thousand Clouds of Peace is an ode to loss and yearning, an extended fever-dream or hallucination that we share with Gerardo (Juan Carlos Ortuño) as he carries Bruno's letter in his pocket, haunted by the words he used to explain why he can no longer see him. Sometimes he appears to be looking for Bruno (Juan Carlos Torres), for others he meanders and malingers, making contact with friends, clients, and strangers. There is something intuitive and almost preverbal about the way he connects, as if he knows them intimately and not at all, as if they can read each other's minds. It's a familiarity of attraction and repulsion that reminds you of Bergman. Like when you mingle drunk at a party where social conventions have been dropped and there's a kind of jovial, empty intimacy.
It doesn't seem adequate or appropriate to describe Gerardo as a prostitute. He accepts money from the men he engages only grudgingly, as if looking for something else. His urgency is not the kind plied by hustlers who hang out in alleys, abandoned playing fields, and other deserted parts of the city. Most likely he's trying to rekindle the one-time tryst, an affair that was cut short. It may be that Gerardo wanders in search of a lost lover, and while this may be dangerously close to a cliché, A Thousand Clouds of Peace makes it infinitely plausible. In no way does Gerardo seem mercenary or depraved, his compulsive behavior driven by hunger of memory and longing for the lost bliss of intense, exquisite, mythic, sexual love.
We are forever noting the distance between Gerardo and other men, the guarded steps they take before touching, whether affectionate or commercial. We see how men can pass from obfuscation in one another's eyes to clarity. Gerardo approaches women protectively, affably, but without the desire that informs his conquests. A Thousand Clouds of Peace is set in Mexico where we grasp in almost ballet-like body language and movement how queer identity and electricity fit into machismo culture. We see how much information can be transmitted without dialogue. Gerardo acts but doesn't seem audacious or daring; he is who he is. His abuse at the hands of an ambivalent john is almost treated as an occupational hazard, until we witness the effect. His mother is horrified, "You look like a wandering ghost," she remarks, and sure enough, he does.
Along with cinematographer Diego Arizmendi, director Julian Hernandez has crafted a subtle, remarkable liquid visual poem of a film. Shot in black and white and rivaling the visual style of Orson Welle's Touch of Evil, Peter Bogdanovich's The Last Picture Show or Francis Ford Coppola's Rumble Fish, it is crisp and sharp, yet surreal. The lack of color softens the tawdry, squalid streets, the bedrooms, crumbling walls, stairwells, and dilapidated apartments where Gerardo struggles and agonizes through his recollection and loss of flawless ecstasy with Bruno. Arizmendi brings out the raw beauty, visual texture that might normally evade our radar - rocks and dust and steel and posters torn from the sides of buildings. The actors in A Thousand Clouds of Peace are not attractive in the conventional sense, but they are fetching. They might have jug ears or wide mouths or rubbery jowls. But their appeal, their unrefined tragic handsomeness gradually, ineffably soaks in.
Understated eroticism suffuses the film. Though beaten down by desolation and anguish, it's there in the gleam and shadow of Gerardo's recollection. The bodies sometimes glow like the Dada photos of Man Ray in the 20s. When Gerardo rolls his undershirt and drops his jeans and BVDs to masturbate, it's such a quiet, startling, reverent moment. Plain and accessible, powerful without the customary rashness or dirt. We shudder because Hernandez doesn't turn us into voyeurs. It's as if we're participating, sharing in a sacrament. In flashback, Bruno steps behind Gerardo to caress his torso and we only see his arms. It's as if Gerardo's exploring himself. Identities blur as they engage in mutual cherishing and epiphany. We want these scenes to last longer, but I think Hernandez was smart to pull back, to buzz our nerves with this symphony of torture and tantalization.
A Thousand Clouds of Peace compares favorably with Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Querelle and Joaão Pedro Rodrigues' O Fantasma. It has a semiotic confidence and sophistication unlike anything I've seen in a long time. It's strong but doesn't call attention to its shots, many of which are ravishing and eerie. The dialogue, internal, explicative, is mostly scaffolding for the camera, which does 90 percent of the work. It's not extravagant, like Querelle, or explicit, like O Fantasma. But Hernandez's skill at expressing coarse male idolatry, the empathy we feel for Gerardo's ache and disconsolation is a triumph of intuition and manifestation. It's what the best movie making is all about.