When Juan Pablo Di Tempo is requested in regards to the inspirations for his coming-of-age drama “Before We Forget,” he doesn’t cite particular movies or administrators.
As an alternative, the Argentinean actor, author and director factors to “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun,” one among French composer Claude Debussy’s most beloved symphonic works, written in 1894 and featured within the film.
“I’m a huge fan of ballet, opera and classical music, so the structure of the film is quite symphonic,” Di Tempo instructed HuffPost in an interview. “There’s something in the music that’s tense and beautiful, and then it gets to a crescendo and it’s ecstasy.”
Feelings run excessive in “Before We Forget,” which expanded to pick theaters nationwide Friday after its New York and Los Angeles launch earlier this month. The movie, which marks Di Tempo’s screenwriting and have directorial debut, is a dreamy and wistful tackle his real-life experiences with past love and heartbreak.
Initially titled “Duino,” the movie follows Matias (performed by Santiago Madrussan), an Argentinean pupil and aspiring filmmaker who enrolls in an arts-focused boarding faculty in Italy in 1997.
Matias quickly finds himself enticed by the bravado of Alex (Oscar Morgan), a free-spirited Swedish classmate. After a prank goes awry, Alex will get expelled from faculty however maintains a long-distance friendship with Matias. When Matias is invited to hitch Alex and his household for Christmas at their palatial property, he begins to surprise if his new pal’s gestures are indicative of deeper, non-platonic emotions about their relationship.
Early critiques of “Before We Forget” have in contrast it favorably to the 2017 romantic drama “Call Me by Your Name,” starring Timothée Chalamet. Scenes within the movie additionally recall Netflix’s queer-themed teen sequence “Heartstopper,” in addition to the lighter half of the 2023 darkish comedy “Saltburn.”
Di Tempo, greatest recognized to U.S. audiences for his function on “Fuller House” and his stint on “Dancing with the Stars,” started creating “Before We Forget” after viewing house movies of his days as a pupil at United World Faculty of the Adriatic. He teamed up with co-director Andrés Pepe Estrada, a longtime buddy, and shot a lot of the movie on location on the faculty’s Trieste, Italy campus.
He additionally seems within the movie because the middle-aged Matias, who within the current day is a Buenos Aires film director struggling to discover a satisfying ending for the romantic movie he’s engaged on. Matias’ adolescent recollections are triggered when he receives an surprising alternative to return to reunite with Alex (performed by August Wittgenstein as an grownup) after 25 years.
Although Di Tempo drew closely from his lived expertise, he hopes viewers gained’t view “Before We Forget” solely as an autobiographical endeavor. His willingness to self-reflect, nevertheless, is refreshingly relatable and provides the movie an intimate allure lots of its mainstream predecessors lack.
“This idea of falling in love for the first time at an international school and having a traumatic experience around it, and there being a record of it in VHS felt like the perfect storm ― or, you could say, the perfect mosaic ― by which to build a film,” Di Tempo mentioned.
Although Madrussan and Morgan flip in nuanced performances, the climax of “Before We Forget” is a chilling monologue delivered by Argentinean actor Araceli González who, as Matias’ mom Roma, reassures her son that she accepts him as his true self with out utilizing phrases like “gay” or “queer.”
“If that scene didn’t work, the whole movie wouldn’t work,” Di Tempo mentioned. “It’s something that happened to me with my parents, and I chose to almost replicate what I heard, word by word. I’m very proud of it.”
Paul Archuleta by way of Getty Pictures
Although Di Tempo hasn’t turned his again on appearing, he’s desirous to focus closely on writing and directing transferring ahead. He’s presently at work on two scripts he says are “completely different” from “Before We Forget,” together with at the very least one which embraces themes of “magical realism.”
“I love people, I love human relationships, and I also love clashes of culture and personalities,” he mentioned.
As for features of LGBTQ+ life he’d prefer to showcase on-screen, he added, “I love films that have a very strong queer element, and yet they’re about something else. People are so present, so moved, so hungry for these kinds of stories. I’d like the lines to blur and not have it be a niche thing.”
Watch the trailer for “Before We Forget” under.
