The wonderful "El Destello de la Luna" is a beautifully layered relationship drama exploring the fraught machinations of a gay couple from different generations, and at a critical crossroads in their romantic partnership. Director Gustavo Letelier has brought to the screen a deeply revealing melodrama, tinged with all the real-world nuances of decaying love and its reflective impacts on the human condition.
As a talented, accomplished, yet rarely-working theater actor, the older Renato (portrayed with a visceral saltiness by Ricardo Herrea) is proud of his rarefied gifts and the journey it took to acquire them. And like many of us who are proud (and perhaps too proud), work of sporadic quality is offered to him that he can't reconcile with his sense of his own accomplishments and his mounting insecurities. His younger partner Ivan -- also an actor, and played with a comparative looseness by Pablo Sotomayor Prat -- has little empathy for his older love interest's refusal to accept roles, prodding his partner to step beyond his self-imposed confines and embrace the work for all it might offer. Their crumbling friction has induced a behind-the-scenes affair between Ivan and Danilo (Nicolas Anjle), and when a young theater director (Maximiliano Meneses) with an engaging new vision offers Ivan and Renato the two lead roles as transvestite lovers in his new production, Renato is initially put off; his antiquated definitions can't reconcile the drag role with his prejudicial fears and his waning sense of self-esteem. Yet he accepts the role, and together with Ivan, the lovers play Lola and Ana. Their deep emotional investments in their respective roles allow for the possibility of a greater depth of understanding in their own shared relationship.
"El Destello de la Luna" detangles thread upon thread of nuance to transcend the uniqueness of its own great storyline, eventually yielding universal truths exposing the true nature of our doubts, our fears, and our urgent need to recognize and confront them before they collapse the lives we've built for ourselves. This is a richly layered human drama, and expertly brought to life on screen. Highly, highly recommended. - (Was this review of use to you? If so, let me know by clicking "Helpful." Cheers!)
