Homosocial bonding and toxic masculinity are put under the microscope in Marco Berger’s playfully erotic and discomforting ensemble drama Horseplay (Los agitadores) which works nicely as a spiritual successor to his earlier film Taekwondo. This is familiar territory for Berger, whose films are always defiantly queer and boldly homoerotic, but there is still something thrillingly subversive about a gay filmmaker who is again focusing his eye on the sexual dynamics of a group of straight men. At the crux of Berger’s films is a fundamental interest in how sexuality works and Horseplay is no different.
Shot in a single location by the director during the pandemic, the set-up is rather basic; a group of young twenty-something men have been invited by their friend Artur (Iván Masliah) to spend time at his luxury villa over the Christmas holidays. We spend a lot of time observing the men sleeping, sunbathing, fooling around and, crucially, engaging in increasingly sexually charged pranks on each other, but all under the guise of heterosexuality.
The men often capture or record these suggestive acts, sharing these ‘homo’ photos and videos in a group chat. The tone of the film in these early scenes feels deceptively light and humorous, but there is a sense that they are continually trying to push each other’s personal limits. One of the men is challenged when he thinks that accepting a follow request from a gay man on social media might implicate him as queer. The masculinity on display is shown to be precarious and fragile. The increasingly sexual game play and homophobic ribbing all adds to a curious and volatile atmosphere of sensuality that has the potential to spill over into violence and the dynamics are further complicated with the arrival of a group of young women.
Berger is fascinated by the boundaries of these men, their gameplay and the notion of sexuality as a liminal space, a vague middle ground where straight and queer desires can sometimes overlap. At first, it is unclear if any of the men are turned on by these games, but it soon becomes apparent that one of them might be. This tension is heightened by the refreshingly uncoy camera, which continuously lingering on the men’s toned and muscular bodies that are often in a state of undress. If cinema is about the act of looking, then Berger is very self-consciously queering the male gaze. It is a steamy but sensual and rapturous approach to filmmaking that recalls both the iconography of gay pornography and Derek Jarmen’s framing of male nudes. There is a classicism in the way Berger often frames these men in romanticised tableaus, like Greco-Roman specimens in a Renaissance painting.
As with Taekwondo, your enjoyment of this film will depend on your tolerance for spending time with this group of testosterone-pumped men, and the loose plotting and slow pacing won’t be to everyone’s taste. There is a tendency for conversations to feel repetitive, often regurgitating the same ideas, and there are stretches of the film where you could easily find yourself either turned on or bored. But more often than not, the slowness works in its favour, emphasising sensuality and giving space for tensions to simmer with the camera capturing every furtive and suggestive glance. The teasing of desire and the buildup is so long that the sour and pessimistic final act seems inevitable and predictable, but this is another sharply observed study of machismo from Berger with the sting of subversion.
