Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Felipe Gómez Aparicio
Starring: Umbra Colombo, Mauricio di Yorio, Antonella Ferrari, Diego Starosta, José Luis Sain
Much like tattooing, bodybuilding is something that was once the sole
province of sailors and convicts, but which has exploded into the
mainstream in recent decades, a hobby now enjoyed by men and women from
all walks of life.
In movies however, bodybuilding is still joined at the hip to a certain
male stereotype, the 'roided up dude-bros of Michael Bay's
Pain & Gain
or the recent British thriller
Muscle. Traditionally in cinema, bodybuilding has been something practiced by
men with a damaged psyche – see Robert De Niro in
Taxi Driver and Sal Mineo in
Who Killed Teddy Bear.
Building an enviable physique has rarely been portrayed as darkly as in
Argentinean director Felipe Gómez Aparicio's
The Perfect David, a character study of a troubled teen bodybuilder.
High schooler David (Mauricio Di Yorio) has the body of a man
twice his age, thanks to his obsessive fitness regime. This is all
overseen by his creepily controlling mother, Juana (Umbra Colombo), who is currently preparing him for an upcoming show. Every day Juana
checks her son's physical prowess, her hands resting on his bulging
biceps and pecs a little longer than seems necessary.
It's unclear whether David actually enjoys this lifestyle or if he's
simply indulging his mother's borderline incestuous fantasies. Perhaps
he likes to spend time at the gym to indulge his own homosexual
longings. David seems confused about his sexuality, masturbating to gay
porn one night while indulging in a tryst with a female classmate (Antonella Ferrari) that ends in embarrassment when he fails to get aroused by her
feminine touch the following night. At school he grows quiet when the
other boys spark up homophobic discussions, asking ridiculous yet
inventive questions like "Would you rather bang your mother's body with your
father's head or vice versa?"
Like his body, it seems as though David's sexuality is being moulded by
others to fit an ideal. In a twist that seems inspired by Neil Labute,
we realise the full horror of why David's mother is so obsessive about
her son's physique.
Aparicio's film plays a lot like one of those sports dramas about an
aging athlete coming to the end of their career and reckoning with their
changing body. The difference here of course is that David is only
starting out in the world of bodybuilding, yet it feels like he's
already burnt out, drained psychologically if not exhausted
physically.
So heavily reliant is The Perfect David on its twist
ending that it might have worked more efficiently as a short. It runs a
brief 77 minutes, but much of that consists of endless shots of David
working out and practicing posing for an invisible audience. Di Yorio
certainly looks the part, but he's not exactly the most engaging screen
presence, unlike Colombo, who has something of Joan Crawford about her
and enlivens the film every time she pops up for a bit of suspect
fondling of her boy's biceps.
The real stars might be cinematographer Adolpho Veloso, whose
diffuse, smoky lighting recalls early Ridley Scott, and composer
Ezequiel Flehner, whose propulsive score goes a long way to
creating the unsettling mood his director is aiming for here.
The Perfect David played at the
2021 Tribeca Film Festival. A release has yet to be announced.
