“The Kiss on the Asphalt” still bothers in 2024

Nelson Rodrigues’ current situation is bleak. The freshness of the surprises he caused by opening the curtains on private life in the last century is unsettling. In the Brazil of 2024, any of his works remain relevant, with “O Beijo no Asfalto” is no different. We are still the same society that points out, judges, is guided by prejudice and criticizes before knowing exactly what to say.

There is a wonderful profusion of montages in the work, but let’s take the 2018 film as our guide because it also brings a rich material of comments, addenda and interpretations of lines (including with Queen Fernanda Montenegro). The group gathered around the table goes beyond dramatic reading and does something similar to what is now called an extended version.

In the version directed by Murilo Benício, Lázaro Ramos is the poorly spoken Arandir, who falls into the people’s mouth after kissing a man on the mouth who was in agony after being run over. Married to Selminha (Débora Falabella) and brother-in-law of Dália (Luiza Tiso), he is the son-in-law of Aprígio (Stênio Garcia) – responsible for giving his daughter the news that her husband may be more than he appears, that is, he may be fag.

Everything could be explained calmly if it weren’t for the voracity of the press portrayed by reporter Amado Ribeiro (Otávio Müller), who should be called Armado, since he doesn’t spare any ammunition against Arandir. He wants to turn the kiss on the asphalt in downtown Rio de Janeiro into a scandal to cover up other matters.

With the help of the police, he promotes a real witch hunt, an extremely homophobic persecution at a time (1960) when this name did not even exist. The merit of “The Kiss on the Asphalt” is that it doesn’t lose anything over time: homophobia manifests itself in the most diverse and subtle ways; There are many layers where this violence occurs; few care about the explanation.

A simple kiss from a dying man becomes the beginning of hell in Arandir’s life – like so many other everyday facts that are used by intolerant people to argue their unreasonable reason. Every LGBT+ person is a little Arandir because they have already been questioned, interrogated, scrutinized, turned inside out to say something that someone wants to hear.

But Arandir does not surrender to the psychological manipulation of the police supported by the Press. He doesn’t want to follow the version created by the police officers that he and the man killed in the hit-and-run knew each other, in fact they were lovers. He insists he is telling the truth. But who believes in the fagot?

With dynamic and rich editing by Pablo Ribeiro and photography by Walter Carvalho, “O Beijo no Asfalto” from 2018 (third film version) easily jumps from 1960, when it was written, to 2022. Because we still need to interrupt the eternal loop of hypocrisy – Nelson Rodrigues does this at the end of this Story. Which is so international to the point that its rights were recently acquired by the powerful Viola Davis.

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