Horseplay

I thought of Marco Berger in quite a positive light after seeing two of his films, The Blonde One (2019), and Hawaii (2013). Both were excellent. Both were mature works, and visually interesting, with very engaging plot lines.

Having since watched The Carnival (2021), Young Hunter (2020), Taekwondo (2016), and this film, I've pretty much changed my mind about this director.

I thought Taekwondo was extremely slow moving and boring, with little to no discernible plot. Horseplay follows in the footsteps of Taekwondo, but with a bit more sexy visual confection (which is really the only reason I even assigned it the extra star.). There are definitely some sexy guys, and sexy scenes. But it doesn't offer much more.

Okay, actually, the vacation house where all this horseplay takes place is pretty to look at too.

But the movie seems to go on and on, magically making 1 hour 40 minutes seem like about 6 hours. The dialog is vapid, and repetitive.

It's filled with testosterone, but has virtually no substance.

There might almost be a couple of plots hidden in this film, but they're so well hidden that they cannot be seen. When you think there might be a story line starting to materialize, it invariably turns out to be a red herring that goes nowhere. A quiet gay man amongst a group of rambunctious young friends who constantly insult each other by calling each other "homo," while taking endless pictures of themselves engaging in gay sex (horseplay, I guess)? The sexual violation of a girl visiting the house, against her will, by one of the guys? Nope. The leaking of an embarrassing "homo" image of one of the guys whose wife sees it and worries her family will be defamed on social media? Those didn't go anywhere.

There is one searing moment at the end of the film that might hint at a story line. But hey, everyone's gone home, and the credits are rolling.

If all you're looking for are some glimpses of young guys at their sexual summit, you might enjoy this. But even there, there's just so much boredom in between that it's not really worth it.

One of the worst movies I've ever seen. There is zero plot. The characters aren't believable and frankly it's just boring from beginning to end. It could have been so much better if the perspective of Poli and his (maybe unrequited) relationship with his friend had been explored. Instead Poli is mostly mute and we get no sense of how he thinks about himself and his sexuality in this setting and friend group.

The dialogue is extremely repetitive and not credible. Almost half the movie is just the characters calling each other 'homo'. I think even homophobes would get bored of this chat pretty quickly.

I really don't understand why this is being considered a queer movie. It's a movie about straight men. It's not even homoerotic, the nudity is sterile and not sexy. Much of it is actually disgusting (one character vomiting on another in a shower). I found it to be deeply unsexy. Ultimately it's a movie about a group of unpleasant straight men with one closeted character who barely speaks.

Do yourself a favour and avoid this.

Usually I like Marco Berger's films, especially the ones where there are just a few characters, and the story is about the subtle, sexual tension between two guys (like "Hawaii" or "The Blond One"); these are often extremely slow-paced, with sparse dialogue and an almost dreamy atmosphere. In this "Horseplay" however the atmosphere is everything but dreamy: a large group of loud, basically heterosexual guys gathers in a sun drenched villa for the holidays, doing nothing but yelling and boozing and bickering and fooling around; the latter for some reason constantly in the vein of imitating gay situations (riding each others back, touching and fondling, walking around naked) and then roaring with laughter about it. Hence probably the English title "Horseplay".

The original Spanish title "Agitadores" means by the way something slightly different: "troublemakers", so apparently Berger intended not so much to picture careless playfulness, but a deliberate stirring of the emotions. Such an intention could have resulted in an interesting movie, maybe if there had been fewer characters and longer, more serious dialogues and interchanges. But now the whole movie is made up by very short bits of conversations, with only vague hints of interesting topics, all ending as blank as they are started and leading nowhere. Sure, there are some innuendo's of greater issues: homophobia, machismo, promiscuity, fear of coming out as gay, but they never come to anything conclusive and stay dangling in mid-air, overblown by all the juvenile pranks and tiresome fooling around. There is, as usual in a Berger movie, lots of naked male skin to enjoy (if you're into that, and I humbly plead guilty), but that doesn't help making it a good movie. In fact it impressed me at many times as redundant and just added to titillate or provoke the viewers.

So summing up all the above: a disappointing experiece.

The eye candy is fantastic! However there was no movement in the plot in the first 90% of the film. Random talking, silly conversations that go nowhere. Need to do more character development and movement of the plot line. The last 5 minutes were the best, and many of the actors have potential to show their depth, such as in the ending, but the entire movie was overrun by useless conversation of a bunch of tough guys. These are honestly talented actors, and some are extremely good looking, but need to show more one-on-one interactions, thoughts, feelings etc. They are there but in very minute quantities.

The first temptation is to see it as a kind of Taekwondo II. And to appreciate more the first part.

Many guys, nude , talking, wasting time, gay, hetero, looking for love or define their sexual identity, girls, a lot of photos and a beautiful house.

Some homoerotism.

Real good looking guys.

And a very - very-very gentle suggested story if you have not impression of self illusion.

I can not be very critic about this film but its basic virtue is to send the thoughts to Taekwondo , working just as precious kick to see that , again.

Is it enough ?

I suppose so. I appreciate Marco Berger job and I respect his perspective about a theme who seems very closed by him. Cinema represents experiments and Los agitatores is one of them.