El cielo dividido

Like João Pedro Rodrigues (Two Drifters), Mexican filmmaker Julián Hernández makes obsessively gay films – unlike Almodóvar, whose outlook may be gay but who has achieved almost universal acceptance through his varied milieus, intricately amusing plots and use of women in prominent roles (not to mention his general brilliance as a filmmaker, which neither Rodrigues nor Hernández has yet established). Hernández's sphere is even more narrow than Rodrigues', but more emotionally accessible and less odd. Influences include Cocteau, Pasolini, Wong Kar Wai and the Duras/Resnais collaboration of' Hiroshima mon amour, a line from which is quoted as an epigraph. Unlike Rodrigues', this filmmaker's few characters are not oddballs or obsessives but simply prettier-than-average middle-class Mexico City young men oppressed by love-longing. Like Hernández's previous feature A Thousand Clouds of Peace (2003) in its preoccupations but with higher production values, the subject is a young man whose love object eludes him. Two female characters are barely more than glimpsed in passing. We're examining a gay love affair and nothing else. These are students, but don't ask what their majors are. They spend more time in discos than in classrooms.

As in the previous Hernández feature, plot and dialogue are minimized. There are voiceovers but the characters rarely speak. We get used to their miming their feelings. Gerardo (Miguel Angel Hoppe) picks up Jonas (Fernando Arroyo) in a playing field at the university and the passionate kisses and embraces and the sex begin right away. Then Jonas starts averting his face when Gerardo tries to caress or kiss him. And yet they're still regularly sleeping together. Gradually a third person enters the picture – Sergio (Alejandro Rojo), a slightly older man, a tall, dark, brooding fellow, even easier on the eyes than the other two. He has already watched the pair play hide and seek in the library stacks when he was installing a light bulb. Sergio has wanted Gerardo for a long time, or so he says when they finally get together after one of several encounters in a gay-friendly club – in this film, everywhere is gay friendly. Scenes take place either around the university, in the guy's rooms, or in a club; all problems other than love are minimized or eliminated. Except for some yellow filters, the photography is pretty, but straightforward. None of Wong Kar Wai's richly grungy pads here: the rooms are conventional middle-class housing, with tasteful prints on the walls and textbooks on the shelves, not palatial but posh for students' digs. The guys only have a few pairs of jeans, but they sure have lots of shirts.

The message that the film conveys – and though it is too long, it's basic idea works; the scenes convey the desired feelings and the editing is seamless – at first is that two people never seem to love each other at the same time to the same degree in the same way.

But the ending is a happy and romantic one. Once Sergio and Gerardo are a couple, Jonas begins to long for Gerardo again, and in the final scene, they've gotten back together.

Broken Sky is more like a poem or an opera – or most of all, a dance – than a conventional film. It's a different experience. The mainstream audience would never put up with all this gay sex without dialogue or plot. Not every gay man will have the patience to watch these amorous comings and goings for the full 140 minutes, either. I'm not sure that the poetic voiceovers were necessary; and a third of them are lost to non Spanish-speakers because the white-on-white subtitles are illegible. They are a bit too poetic and general. The boys are too specific to be so generalized by the language. Needless to say, "the real world" is beyond the range of Broken Sky. But there's no denying that Broken Sky in its own way is unique and beautiful. The director achieves what he was clumsily groping for in his first one. He is using cinematic language in a way that it rarely is any more – he achieves the instinctive identification and emotional directness of the silent film. Broken Sky makes you think about the unspoken element in any relationship, the things that can never be communicated in words: in short, the world of eroticism and feelings. Hernández contributes to the effectiveness of his visual poem through excellent use of various musical accompaniments, a few notes on a clavicord, a string quartet – above all, a sweet pop love song – the lyrics of each lovingly translated in subtitles. It's as if Gerardo and Jonas were trying to live a pop song. And I guess that's what moony young gay guys do a lot of the time. There's even a coloratura operatic aria; considering the operatic tone of things, the filmmakers exercise great forbearance in using only one. Maybe this is "a new cinematic language," as was said of Antonioni's L'Avventura. For a while one can savor it, admire the naive sweetness of it. But can anyone read it? And can it say more than one thing?

In Mexico this movie, presented as part of the Muestra International de Cine 2006, a cinema tour that goes to every state nationwide, was really disappointing. The director seems to understand the dilemma surrounding gay relationships but fails in the use of an expressive formal language to communicate the narrative elements. Movements and gestures were the basic conductors in this story but in order to keep intensity of emotions within the public actors seem to have troubles while expressing them due to whether a bad direction or lack of experience. At some point, the film appeared to me as a choreography set up for stage and to be performed by dancers. It lasts more than 2 hours which I consider very long and exhausting for people to keep attention on it.

The unique film "Broken Sky" is an invitation to a different world, a quiet and dreamlike place where only love seems to hold any importance. The characters Gerardo and Jonas inhabit this private world, and no one else matters. Filmed in beautiful gold and brown shades, the two Mexican boys fall in love at first sight. The two are so in sync with each other that they barely need words to communicate their feelings. It seems things could not be more ideal for these two guys, until outside influences and doubt threaten to destroy their perfect, untainted love. "El Cielo Dividido" is not really a mainstream film; there is virtually no dialog, and the production moves along like a slow, hypnotic dance, rather than the typical fast pace of todays cinema. There has rarely been a film that so effectively creates it's own world, and it is a world filled with beauty and romance and sadness, a world that i personally was reluctant to leave at the film's end. Actors Miguel Angel Hoppe and Fernando Arroyo are both beautiful and utterly believable as the confused lovers, overwhelmed by intense feelings that are so new to them. Unique especially for "gay cinema" is this film's subtlety. The nudity and sexuality is not aggressively splashed across the screen to shock or titillate the viewer. It is simply there, and it is all a part of this private world of the two lovers. Best of all, "Broken sky" manages to recreate the feelings of first time love and sexual awakening like few films have managed. This is far from the typically flashy and garishly silly style of most gay films. Thankfully, there are no gay stereotypes to be found here; this is a film about love, and nothing more. "Broken Sky" is a unique and beautiful film.

"Broken Sky" is an art film with great performances, visually entertaining (stills/photography shots during credits are superbly done!), and plot treatment not usually seen in any gay films. Some people may find scenes excruciatingly long, but I've enjoyed every moment of it and the journey the director wants to convey in this movie. You must know that you need this arduous shots to feel the emotions of the characters in the movie. The sex scenes are tastefully done, not vulgar, and the gratuitous frontal nudity is significant (in one scene, main actor examines his body/self on the mirror). I've always admired Latin cinema movie-making as mostly they always get the right texture and lighting for their 35 mm. movie. In totality, it's one of the best films I've seen during L.A. OUTFEST 2006 (next to movies: "A Love to Hide," "Boy Culture" and "The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros"). -- Oliver Carnay

The film is a bit tedious. It's mostly a silent film, with the bulk o the story provided through a series of voice-overs. While making a silent film like this is not such a bad idea, this is one of those films where the lack of dialog and the repetitive early scenes make it simply tedious. You don't understand the reason for the tedium until well into the picture, and by then it's too late. The first 40 minutes of film is something of a slow piece of Mexican soft porn, and unimaginative soft porn at that. Later in the film the style of the first 40 minutes starts to makes sense, but it's too late, because by then the audience is lost. There is some nice location shooting at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. I've often wondered why more films aren't shot there. The campus is built on the edge of lava fields that lend the campus a very otherworldly feel. My biggest problem with the film is that the director/writer has made the film the way he wanted to see it without regard for how a viewer who doesn't know the story will view it. You can't ignore the audience when you tell a story.