Mon Amour Film — 1996

Critic Paul B. Preciado, in his writings on counter-sexual cinema, might argue that Rodrigues weaponizes duration. The film’s long, unbroken takes force the viewer to sit in the discomfort of the chase. We are complicit in this surveillance. By denying catharsis (no kiss, no confrontation, no rejection), Rodrigues rejects the narrative closure of mainstream gay cinema. The desire is not consummated; it is sustained as a pure, aching vector. Cinematographer Rui Poças (a longtime collaborator of Rodrigues) employs a palette of cold blues, sterile whites, and deep blacks. The effect is clinical, reminiscent of Michelangelo Antonioni’s alienation aesthetic but with a queer urgency. The film’s most striking sequence occurs in a moving train car: the protagonist sits across from the worker, and the camera slowly dollies in on the protagonist’s face. The reflection of the worker hovers over his shoulder like a ghost. In this single frame, Rodrigues visualizes desire as both internal projection and external reality.

Abstract: João Pedro Rodrigues’ 1996 short film Mon Amour serves as a vital embryonic work for understanding his later feature films ( O Fantasma , To Die Like a Man ). At a concise fifteen minutes, the film deconstructs the male gaze through a hypnotic, minimalist narrative set within the labyrinthine tunnels of the Lisbon metro. By following a young man’s obsessive pursuit of a stranger, Rodrigues critiques urban alienation, queer desire, and the tension between voyeuristic power and emotional vulnerability. This paper argues that Mon Amour transforms public transport from a mundane backdrop into a charged psychogeographical space where identity is performed, fragmented, and ultimately repossessed. 1. Introduction: The Cinematic Perversion of the Everyday In the canon of queer European cinema, the 1990s were defined by overt political confrontation (e.g., The Hours and Times , The Living End ). However, João Pedro Rodrigues took a subtler, more phenomenological approach in his graduation film from the Escola Superior de Teatro e Cinema. Mon Amour strips narrative to its barest element: a man (played by Rodrigues himself) spots a handsome, unnamed worker on a metro platform and follows him through the city. The film’s genius lies not in what happens—no dialogue, no sexual act, no confession—but in how it looks . Through prolonged takes, reflective surfaces, and a haunting electronic score, Rodrigues interrogates the ethics of desire as a form of silent surveillance. 2. The Metro as Psychogeographical Mirror The Lisbon metro, with its fluorescent lights, tile mosaics, and subterranean anonymity, becomes the film’s true protagonist. Rodrigues frames the protagonist’s journey as a descent into an unconscious landscape. Key shots emphasize symmetry: the subject stands on one escalator, the object on the parallel one, moving in opposite directions—a visual metaphor for the impossibility of connection in a heteronormative public sphere.

The sound design further amplifies the tension. The rumble of the train, the sharp beep of closing doors, and the hiss of pneumatics become a rhythmic score. When the electronic synth finally swells as the worker exits, it is not triumphant but melancholic—a requiem for a connection that never existed except in the protagonist’s imagination. Mon Amour concludes where it begins: on a platform. The worker disappears onto a bus, and the protagonist stands alone, his reflection multiplied across the station’s tiles. He has not acquired a lover; he has acquired a map of his own longing. Rodrigues’ film is a prescient critique of the early internet era’s anonymous cruising culture, yet it remains timeless. It asks a question that 1990s cinema rarely dared: Is the act of looking, when stripped of reciprocity, an act of creation or erasure?