It is the year 2069, and Alfredo (Joel Branco) is lying on his deathbed in the final moments of his life.  As he prepares to depart, he recalls his time as a youth (Mauro da Costa) when he joined the fire brigade.  Under the tutelage of Afonso (André Cabral), the two young men grew exceptionally close to each other, developing their relationship beyond the very physical nature of their training and into something more. 

Debuting as part of the Director’s Fortnight during the 2022 edition of Cannes, Strand Releasing picked up state-side distribution of writer/director João Pedro Rodrigues’ latest, Will-o’-the-Wisp.  Billed as a musical fantasy through the aisles of memory, and while that is not entirely false, it certainly adds a lofty air to the 67-minute film that is more akin to a vapid parade of nudity than something with any real substance.  The oftentimes polarizing director is not incapable of nuance as seen in To Die Like a Man (2009) and The Ornithologist (2016), but instead, he opted for quick, cheap, and shocking imagery dressed up around an under-utilized framing device. 

The film mostly follows the younger Alfredo as he defies his father to become a firefighter, something seen as an unworthy profession for the crown prince.  The youth is not afraid of ruffling feathers with his elders as, in the midst of massive forest fires, he speaks out with concerns about the environment to a household that is indifferent to the destruction.  If Rodrigues is trying to make a statement about how the ruling class should be good stewards of their environment – both socially and ecologically – as it feels like the film is trying to do, it does not do a good job of conveying that message in a meaningful way.  He goes so far as to have Afonso tease Alfredo when he first comes to the firehouse saying that the rich boy wants his photo-op for the afternoon and then he will skip back off to the palace feeling like a hero.  While it is not an unfound observation – just look through any famous person’s Instagram for all sorts of awareness photo-ops – Rodrigues does not do anything with this idea.  He does not tease it out to its extreme in an act of satire, nor does he really seem all that riled up about it to really point the finger at the ruling class and demand them to do better by crafting a searing drama.  The mere observation is not enough to base the entire film on, even with the brief runtime. 

As for the central romance in the film that develops between Alfredo and Afonso, there is zero chemistry between the two leads so looks of desire, specifically from Cabral, do not translate well on the screen and it seems more like he is stalking his prey than being flirtatious. While not as grossly fetishized as the one Gus Van Sant built in his debut feature, Mala Noche (1986), which follows a white man who stalks a young, Mexican immigrant in search of sex, Rodrigues’ film seems to be handling these themes of colonialism and objectification in a wholly irresponsible way. As for the chemistry between the two, it is not entirely Cabral’s fault, the performance is consistently awkward so it could be that he received poor direction, but Rodrigues does not give them much direction on the page either for character building.  Physically, though, the two men do work well together on screen for the various dance sequences which conjure up memories of Claire Denis’ Beau Travail (1999) or more aptly, Julia Ducournau’s Titane (2021) which won the Palme d’Or when it premiered at Cannes the year prior and also featured scantily clad, dancing firemen. 

While Denis and Ducournau are still very much highlighting the male form of the French soldiers or firefighters by subjecting these men to the female gaze, it is not simply empty sexuality as Rodrigues’ photography is in Will-o’-the-Wisp.  To be clear, the film is competently shot by Rui Poças, but there is very little going on in his frames, and that is the fault of his director. Empty sexuality.  Empty framing.  Empty meaning.  There is, however, a convoluted thread of symbolism at work positing that the body is a work of art, and then the body is later used as a metaphor for the forest, and as such, the forest – because it is a work of art – should be admired and preserved.  It is very blunt in its delivery as the firefighters reenact famous statues and paintings as they are in various stages of undress, and later Alfredo is being quizzed by Afonso on the various kinds of trees, but the pictures on the slideshow are all male genitalia.  It may be well-intentioned, but the entire presentation seems more like an excuse to indulge in voyeurism than anything else.  

When Will-o’-the-Wisp jumps back to 2069, Alfredo has passed and we are at his funeral.  He is made out to be a benevolent man as two women gossip about the Royal Family and what will happen as he has no surviving siblings nor heirs.  It is frustrating that Rodrigues has chosen not to show us any of his time as King, instead opting to dump it in catty dialogue after a time jump back to the of-so-edgy 2069.  With this time jump, audiences are denied the chance to see that Alfredo is actually genuine in his concern for the environment and the community. While the bulk of Rodrigues’ career to date has been in short films, he is no stranger to feature length and even bordering on epics with his To Die Like a Man that also adeptly tackles social issues surrounding gender and sexuality in conservative nations.  This film has none of that same nuance.   

Will-o’-the-Wisp feels like an incredibly elementary student film that is building up shock imagery without much thought or intention behind them, nor care for how these images work together.  There are ideas that are wholly discarded – the children of the forest singing in the beginning, for example – and when it does dive into the story proper, there is not much Rodrigues has to offer his audiences aside from some smut.  It would be a much different reaction had the film actually had something to say and delivered its message in a powerful way, but what it presented feels like a litany of nude images for the simple sake of hedging norms.  In the film’s defense, safe for a few brief scenes, it does not feel like glorified porn, but it certainly is not a work worth audiences’ time, brief as it thankfully is.