Nico And Dani

Film Reviews DVD
Nico And Dani

Because adolescents already have enough trouble fumbling through their incipient sexuality, they shouldn't have to suffer the additional humiliation of putting their experiments into words. So the Spanish have come up with "krámpack," a remarkably succinct and practical term for mutual masturbation, and the original title of Cesc Gay's frank and disarmingly casual coming-of-age tale Nico And Dani. When the eponymous 17-year-old heroes, best friends since grade school and both still virgins, wind down the first night of their summer vacation together with a spirited krámpack, neither thinks anything of it. They even share helpful autoerotic tips, such as sitting on your stroke hand until the feeling is gone and then imagining you're getting a hand job from the local TV anchorwoman. Innocent at first, their playful groping raises inevitable questions about sexual orientation, not because they're told that krámpacks could be interpreted as gay, but because their friendship is suddenly clouded by unfamiliar, discomfiting emotions. Set over 10 days on the sun-touched Mediterranean coast of Spain, Nico And Dani sorts through their confusion with humor, sensitivity, and insight, muddying the assumed border between homo and hetero proclivities. Jordi Vilches and Fernando Ramallo play the respective title characters, typically lustful teenagers who have the run of Ramallo's spacious home when his parents leave on a trip to Egypt. Free to do as they please, a typical day includes flirting with like-aged girls (Marieta Orozco and Esther Nubiola) on the beach, smoking cigarettes, spiking sangria with valium swiped from the medicine cabinet, and fooling around before bed. When Ramallo, the quieter and less confident of the two, finds himself more interested in his friend than the girls they're chasing, their relationship grows strained and awkward, and they begin to drift apart before they can even recognize what's happening. In the current glut of gay coming-of-age films, Nico And Dani is distinguished by its relaxed, diffident tone and its refusal to iron out the ambiguities between the characters. Over the space of 10 days, they grow to understand themselves and each other a little better—if they didn't, it wouldn't be a coming-of-age story—but it's unrealistic to imply, as so many other films would, that all their problems are magically resolved before the credits roll. If the ending seems abrupt, it's only because Gay has written characters that are vivid enough to have a future, no matter how happily ever after.

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