To Have and to Hold Up
FILM: Nico and Dani (PG-13)
DIRECTOR: Directed by David Mirkin
STARRING: Jordi Vilches, Fernando Ramallo
WHERE: Canal Place
GRADE: B-
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Dani (Fernando Ramallo, right) starts to question his own sexuality when best friend Nico (Jordi Vilches) discovers girls in Nico and Dani.
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In my ancient boyhood, I remember hearing the teens in my neighborhood speak in whispers about Delmer Daves’ A Summer Place, a film considered risque at the time because it dealt fairly openly with issues of adultery and teen lust. Which just goes to show you how much times have changed. Years later, I saw A Summer Place on the late, late show and could hardly imagine the original fuss. No nudity, no bad words. Thanks to the Farrelly Brothers and their clones, today we have movies in which young men perform oral sex on barnyard animals and make love with baked goods.
When I was a teen, having sex meant heavy petting and lying to your friends. The girls lied about the heavy petting, and the boys lied and claimed to have “gone all the way,” which is what we called intercourse then. Monica Lewinsky defined oral-genital contact as something other than sex. We called it “even better than going all the way.” Not that any of us knew from first-hand experience. I bring up my deprived youth to contrast it with the casual way in which films depict teen sexual activity today. Kids know so much about sex and engage in sexual contact so casually that the mystery and romance goes wanting. Or at least that’s one conclusion you can draw from Cesc Gay’s Nico and Dani, a contemporary story of summer lust.
Written by director Gay with Tomas Aragay and based on the play Krampack by Jordi Sanchez, Nico and Dani is the story of two Spanish teenage boys who are left alone at a beach resort with their dreams of losing their virginity. Given how the kids in this movie act, I have to conclude that Nico (Jordi Vilches) and Dani (Fernando Ramallo) haven’t been trying very hard. Nico and Dani have been friends for a while. They engage in the typical roughhouse with lots of pointless punching and wrestling. In summers past, they have enjoyed bike riding, fishing and hunting. Evidently, they have also enjoyed something they call “krampack,” which means taking turns masturbating each other. This current summer, however, Nico wants to move on from the buddy system of self help and begin to explore the wonderful world of girls. At first, Dani seems ready to join in. And pretty soon the boys are hosting un-chaperoned parties with lots of booze, marijuana, empty bedrooms and two promising girls named Elena (Marieta Orozco) and Berta (Esther Nubiola). Only as Nico begins to make some sexual headway with Elena, Dani finds himself profoundly jealous. Perhaps he hadn’t quite realized it before, but he wants Nico all to himself. And so we have a story of dawning sexual consciousness and hunger abruptly drawing two friends in opposite directions. They have heretofore been pals (with the occasional krampack thrown in). But they won’t become lovers, as Dani desires, because despite the krampacks, Nico is heterosexual.
I find this film inordinately difficult to analyze. I know that today’s teens are far more experienced than were young people in my own teen years. But I’ve never heard of krampack, nor did I realize that the social taboo against homosexual contact had eroded to the point that this film suggests. Nor, I guess, am I convinced that it has. As open a society as we have become, gays still frequently feel the need to live closeted lives, and even those many who live openly gay lives still feel the need to be guarded as to whom they reveal their true natures. But that’s not the case here. The taboo seems absent from both teens’ lives. Nico isn’t repelled by the idea of sexual contact with Dani. He just doesn’t want any. This feels too uncomplicated to me.
I might also fault this film for failing to make its protagonist more sympathetic. The picture focuses on Dani, and it is he, of course, who has his erotic hopes dashed. I accept Dani’s uncontrollable urges, and might be saddened that his romantic ambitions are unrequited. Ultimately, I can forgive his desperately ironic attempt to hold on to Nico by telling Elena that Nico is “queer.” That calculated lie, however, is critically revealing of Dani’s fatal self-centeredness. And his selfishness is driven home when Dani gets Berta stoned on Valium and sangria and then coldly rapes her when she passes out. Then, having violated an innocent girl, Dani interrupts Nico’s tryst with Elena before his friend can “go all the way” with a willing partner.
I will say that I found the young actors in this film quite compelling. Ramallo is a rising star of Spanish cinema, and he’s quite memorable. I was even more impressed, however, with Vilches in his debut performance. Vilches is amazingly good with his eyes, and over the course of the film he transforms Nico from a slump-shouldered naif to a confident young man of the world. In the scene where the boys throw a party for four of the girls, Vilches almost miraculously manages to make Nico look handsome and sophisticated. In the final analysis, though, the script doesn’t give its characters adequate definition. Yes, they discover their sexual identities. But we remain, I hope, more than just our preference for sexual partners. And in the end, we haven’t a clue as to whether Nico is trapped in his blue-collar roots or whether Dani’s literary dreams have any hope of realization. That’s the story this film never bothers trying to tell.
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