In the Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel, a couple try to stay in touch despite various barriers. But after a time, the main female character realizes she barely knows the boy and breaks off their engagement. Perhaps if Romeo and Juliet had lived long enough, they would have come to the same conclusion; that their love was perhaps really more of an infatuation that was doomed to fizzle out before too long. In the age of Covid, is it possible that couples who would otherwise have had a fun fling that would have died a natural death are now forced to put much more weight on their relationships than they can bear? In many cases, it seems like casual dating these days is pushed much too quickly into the ‘commitment’ zone. This is because in order to continue seeing other, couples have to carry on their relationship on zoom. And anyone who’s ever had a zoom date knows that it isn’t really a date. It’s really closer to relationship maintenance. Or relationship life support. And if both parties aren’t sure they want a major commitment, this pushes them to make a decision much more quickly.
In the short film, Love in the Age of Covid, directed and produced by Juan Francisco Calero Hueso, we meet just such a couple. They’ve made an appointment to talk on zoom, and we quickly get the sense that this is a daily or close to daily routine for them. The situation has put a terrible strain on what seems to be a pretty new relationship. But things aren’t going well. And one of the big reasons things aren’t going well is that things are not happening at all in the bedroom. And today, it turns out, they’ve both come up with a solution to their predicament. Only they’ve both come up with quite different and incompatible solutions. The film is taken up almost entirely with the ensuing conversation.
The acting here is very convincing. So much of our communication is non-verbal and at least in the age of high speed internet, we’re permitted to see these non-verbal cues in a way that would have been difficult over a landline. The boyfriend, played by Noamam Rahim, conveys a lot by the way he slouches and keeps touching his face. He doesn’t seem to have any confidence and it’s not a good look. For the character, I mean. Rahim does a fantastic job of the boyfriend who’s lucky he found someone. The character of the girlfriend, played by Paz Jurado, is more put together. She’s got options and she knows it. She’s taken a good hard look at her computer screen and she’s not satisfied with the sloucher she sees there. In fact, her boyfriend isn’t able to satisfy her in even the very limited way he could over the internet. She, it turns out in an upending of the usual stereotypes, likes to watch, and he doesn’t like to show.
Even before the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, a surprisingly large amount of sexual activity had moved online. Younger generations are, it turns out, having far less sex than previous generations. The pandemic has very likely accelerated this phenomenon.
What I found especially interesting in the film is that beneath the surface, there is a theme of honesty. The couple are having trouble because they can’t be together in person. They can’t be together in person because of the pandemic. But the girlfriend has actually found a solution: she will just flout the rules and have someone over to her place anyways! We only catch a glimpse of a lingerie wearing girl in the background. But the girlfriend is certainly not being honest with her boyfriend. So, like the fiancée in Love in the Time of Cholera, there is perhaps a lot of infidelity going on in the age of Covid as well. In fact, the ending could be interpreted to indicate that the boyfriend too is not as faithful as he at first seemed.
From a visual point of view, Love in the age of Covid is surprisingly good at keeping the eye entertained considering most of the film follows an online conversation.
© 2021. UniversalCinema Mag.