Mein Freund aus Faro (My Friend from Faro)

Trailer.

Available Summary:

"Melanie meets Jenny and falls in love. But Jenny thinks she's met Miguel." -IMDb.

Jack's Summary:

My Friend from Faro is set in rural Germany in the early 2000s, where the age of consent is fourteen. The protagonist, known as Mel by family and employers, is a bored catering worker who befriends a new worker by the name of Nuno, mimicking his masculine mannerisms, fascinated by his style and confidence. At home, living with a brother and father, Mel is resisting pressure to get a boyfriend and present/act more femininely.

One night, when Mel is out driving, a fourteen-year-old girl named Jenny jumps in front of Mel's car. Though uninjured, as Mel brakes in time, Jenny suggests that Mel drive her and her friend to a nightclub to make up for the accident. At the nightclub, the three drink alcohol and introduce themselves properly. Jenny lies about her age, saying that she is sixteen-years-old. Mel spontaneously chooses the name Miguel, wanting Jenny to view him as a male. He also lies about his age, saying that he is eighteen when he is actually twenty-two; a fact which is not revealed until the end of the film. Miguel quickly develops feelings for Jenny, believing her to be above the age of consent (while still much younger than him), but cannot bring himself to come out to his family. As for what he would come out as...

...Miguel's gender is never actually labelled. The DVD cover itself features a review from Variety that says, "Imagine Boys Don't Cry with a happy ending... A sweet-natured coming-of-ager." So, the female-to-male themes are certainly present, but with far more ambiguity than the fictional depiction of Brandon Teena's life. The viewer gets to decide whether Mel/Miguel is assuming the male role because it's the only role offered by society which allows her to be her masculine lesbian self or, like Brandon, he is actually a trans male. This could easily be a film about a trans man, a butch lesbian, a transmasculine person of another description, etc.

Back to the plot... To maintain the image of himself as a heterosexual woman, Miguel pays Nuno to pretend to be his boyfriend at a family dinner, and also forces himself to wear feminine clothing which makes him intensely uncomfortable. He works very hard to live a double life. Though the lies quickly unravel, his friendship with Nuno deepens, and he builds a genuine friendship with his coworker.

Miguel tries to develop a relationship with Jenny, much to the amusement and anger of aggressive young men in Jenny's life. These same men call Miguel homophobic slurs when they see Nuno embracing Miguel as they walk, assuming Miguel to be a gay or bisexual cis man. This scene mirrors real-life stories I've heard from gender non-conforming people who accidentally pass as men, and are surprised when platonic affection with men is consequently read as gay, provoking hostility. (Hida, an intersex non-binary person in Gendernauts, described similar experiences.) This in-between place which Miguel is in, viewed as a woman by some and as a man by others, is one aspect of the film that I find very compelling.

While on a date, Miguel has oral sex with Jenny at a public beach. While it was an encounter which would appear lovely and romantic out of context, the scene felt uncomfortable for me to watch. Look, I'll be honest; the age of consent in my country is 18, and the idea of a 14-year-old child having sex with anyone (let alone someone several years older than them, and in a public space) seems gross. That's my cultural context. You are free to form your own opinions.

Inevitably, Miguel finds out that Jenny lied about her age, and he breaks up with her. She pursues him anyway, insisting that she still loves him, literally chasing him into the forest as he tries to make her leave. Desperate for her to understand that their relationship is untenable, he "comes out" to her by undressing and letting her see his naked body (an eye-roll-worthy trope for trans and crossdressing characters), after which she hugs him and then runs away.

Word spreads that Miguel is "Mel". When he meets with Jenny, one final time, the pair are set upon by the afore-mentioned group of aggressive men, one of whom is having sex with Jenny's fourteen-year-old friend, with full awareness of her age. They spray-paint a lesbophobic slur on Miguel's car, verbally call Miguel slurs, physically assault him, and begin to sexually assault him before Miguel fights back and flees.

Though Jenny insists that she still loves Miguel and wants to be with him regardless of his physical sex, he leaves the town and drives meet Nuno, the pair fleeing for Portugal. It isn't a happy ending in the typical sense, and the film is pretty messy, but I did admittedly love Mel/Miguel's explorations of gender and presentation.

But wait, there's more...

When rewatching the film a few years after my first viewing, I read an interview with Nana Neul, director of My Friend from Faro. The following excerpt revealed more about Mel/Miguel's gender:

Interviewer: "Many comparisons have been made with Boys Don't Cry. Had you seen the film before you made My Friend from Faro?"

Neul: "Of course. I really love this film, but with My Friend from Faro I wanted to tell a love story with, at least in some way, an optimistic ending. You could say that My Friend from Faro is a kind of prologue for Boys Don't Cry, because my main character Mel hasn't already found her way in life when the film starts. She doesn't know whether she wants to live as a girl or as a boy, and where her love for Jenny is going to take her."

That really confirms the ambiguity of Mel/Miguel's gender, and captures why aspects of the character may be relatable for a wide spectrum of people.

Another excerpt revealed something which deepened my discomfort with the film:

Interviewer: "Lucie Hollman [who played Jenny] was only thirteen when you made the film, what was it like for her?"

Neul: "She was no beginner on the set! She behaved very professionally. But when I wanted to rehearse the love scene, she said she would only kiss Miguel in front of the rolling camera. So this was exciting, but it worked. It was her first kiss, as she told me! I really loved the pureness of her acting. The love story was something special for Lucie, something new. She was such an angel. And so it's a film about first love, and a first kiss!"

To put it plainly, the romance in this film is portrayed by thirteen-year-old actress and a twenty-four-year-old actress. The "love scene," as Nuel calls it, shows nothing more revealing than an abdomen being kissed (hopefully a body double's abdomen), but the actress' ages place My Friend from Faro firmly in my personal category of films which shouldn't be made today.

My Friend from Faro is not alone in this category, by any means. Mid90s (2018) cast a twelve-year-old boy as the love interest of a twenty-six-year-old actress. My Father the Hero (1994) cast a fourteen-year-old girl as the love interest of a twenty-two-year-old actor. Blank Check (1994) portrays romantic love, and a kiss, between an eleven-year-old boy and a thirty-one-year-old actress. The list, unfortunately, goes on.

One of my favourite films is Mysterious Skin (2004), and a key reason that I adore it is because the filmmakers managed to portray child abuse realistically and movingly, while also protecting the child actors and going to great lengths to shield them from the topics of the movie. Whenever child actors are involved in a production, particularly anything sexual, it feels important to know that they were not exposed to sexual themes... to me, anyway. You are free to make up your own mind about the casting of underage actors. I know that some still view even Pretty Baby (1978) as a wonderful classic which doesn't glorify paedophilia, so perhaps my discomfort may seem quaint!