An understated little drama that plays out in multiple parts in reverse over the course of a couple of summers, Lucio Castro’s “Drunken Noodles” is the type of film that could easily feel like it would pass you by if you weren’t looking for it.
However, that only makes it all the more valuable to take in as, immersed in a relaxed and unhurried story about a queer art student trying to find connection, very little happens and yet also everything happens. It’s a film that’s interested in relationships, sex, art and connection, as well as the lack of it, without ever once getting bogged down in over-explaining what could be heavy ideas. Instead, it plays out naturalistically with a light touch, teasing out a healthy sense of humor about itself and some unexpected reality-breaking flourishes that gives it a greater heft when you least expect it to.
Premiering at the Cannes Film Festival as part of the fest’s Acid strand, this all begins and ends with Adnan. Played by Laith Khalifeh in his feature debut, he is working at a small gallery in New York while also cat-sitting for his uncle. He spends most of his free time either ordering takeout or going out for sex with relative strangers and doesn’t seem to have much in the way of any close friends. The art that is being shown at the gallery is what can only be described as erotic needlepoint full of elaborate sex acts and, as we come to see, are the works of an older man who Adnan met for what became another intimate sexual encounter.
If this sounds like it could be silly, it very much is and has a lot of fun with the playfulness of sex; though the film also makes time for more somber reflections. As the two get woven together with such confident dexterity that it would make its elderly artist proud, it becomes something greater than the sum of its humble parts.
Where other films at the festival have been surprisingly chaste about sex — looking at you, “The History of Sound” — “Drunken Noodles” doesn’t shy away from it, rather using it as a lens through which to explore character. Adnan doesn’t seem to ever be quite fully satisfied from his nights out cruising and he almost comes alive when he begins talking to a food delivery worker. Though Khalifeh’s performance could be mistaken as a little one-note before this due to how reserved he can be, it only makes the small hints of interest that creep into his voice or the slight smile that begins to form carry that much more weight.
The film is about a relatively lazy summer, but the work put into it is anything but. With each part taking us further back in time, the more we understand what it is that Adnan is struggling with. A series of conversations, some silly and many much more serious, had on a small weekend away in the beauty of the forest establish why it is that he seems to have settled into being alone outside of his work and sexual excursions.
When the film takes some bigger leaps in some of these parts, throwing in what can be best called sexual magical realism, it also remains without any big conflict or real resolution. There are more thorny details that come tumbling out, but Adnan notably never does much about any of them. He’s just sort of drifting and, even when he leaves much of this behind to really push the boundaries of reality in the film, it’s interesting to see how even his magical fantasies still have him ending up alone. Though “Drunken Noodles” is still a film of small scale, it’s a fitting one for a character who is lazing about over summers. It’s all relaxed, but buried deep within it are latent anxieties that you feel the more you sit with it.
