NewFest Review: Mario

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There are gay players in all of the world's sports, just as there are gays in all of the world's everything. But it's taken more time for that world, so masculine in its terror towards anything but the showy theatrics of hyper-masculinity, the chest thumps and guttural man-cries, to chisel itself off a little nook for something slightly other than. Slowly it's happening though, and Mario, Swiss director Marcel Gisler's gay soccer picture, imagines a moment seemingly adjacent to now. a what-if situation. What if two soccer players fell in love?

It's not a crazy idea, in that it has no doubt already happened and we just haven't been told about it yet. And Mario isn't a crazy movie - it's a simple and straight-forward take on how this has probably already played out under our noses. The most revolutionary thing is probably how practically the film plays all of this out. Career counseling with agents, the whole wacky "bearding" experience, coming out to one's Mum (who gets the best line in the whole movie in that moment), all rendered with a degree of matter-of-fact. It's less of a lightning bolt than it is the necessary stage of acceptance.

Thankfully for something that can feel a little dry in its realism Mario's center-stage men give us a two-some to care about - it's hard not to root for Max Hubacher to help get Mario's shit together, so sweet and nerdy and terribly conflicted does he seem at times. When him and totally casual sex-bomb Leon (Aaron Altaras, who we gave some gratuitous mention to earlier today worth a look-see) bond it remains adorably low-key, gentle even. Like their romance we've got to lean into it. But it's worth a lean.
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Mario plays NewFest tomorrow - there are still some tickets, it looks like! Click here for all of our NewFest reviews, and check out the whole schedule for the fest, running thru Monday, right here.
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