Mario **** (2018, Max Hubacher, Aaron Altaras, Jessy Moravec, Jürg Plüss) – Classic Movie Review 12,352

The heartbreaking 2018 Swiss romantic drama film Mario stars Max Hubacher as an up-coming football star who falls for ‘super-hot’ new striker Leon (Aaron Altaras). What happens when gay footballers fall in love? A shedload of trouble apparently. 

Director Marcel Gisler’s 2018 heartbreaking Swiss romantic drama film Mario stars Max Hubacher as Mario Lüthi, an up-and-coming football star on a fifth-tier league near the town of Thun in the canton of Bern in Switzerland.

Mario is captain of the team and its ace striker, and is working hard with the help of his canny agent (Andreas Matti) and pushy manager, who is his father (Jürg Plüss), to get into the first league next year.

But, during training, another striker Leon (Aaron Altaras), who comes from Hanover, joins the team. Leon is ‘super-hot’. Rather than being competitors, the two men get along from the beginning and soon find themselves sharing a flat near to the football field, and they begin a relationship. This changes everything.

So, what happens when gay footballers fall in love? Well, a shedload of trouble, according to this movie. Claudio, another player in the team, starts to suspect and blows the whistle on them, and Mario and Leon find themselves reluctantly agreeing to deny their relationship and sexuality for the sake of their careers, and to pacify their club make attempts at token public appearances with women.

Mario falls out with his father, does not accept the relationship, and the duo receive abuse from some of their teammates. Leon finds a dildo in his trousers in the locker room and demands to know who on the team challenges his gayness. Mario gets accepted to play in the first league, claiming he is in a relationship with his girlfriend Jenny (Jessy Moravec), though she is his best friend. Angered and upset that Mario continues to deny his homosexuality and their relationship, Leon leaves Mario and the team, and moves back to Germany.

Max Hubacher and Aaron Altaras are very good as the two gay footballers, in natural, appealing and convincing performances, and the other performances are good too, brisk, capable, credible and down-to earth. There is plenty of football atmosphere, both on and off the pitch. It is much more of a character in the film than a mere backdrop, and the human characters inhabit it like it is their whole lives, which is many ways it is.

The story unfolds compellingly, and the film keeps it grip and tension for the full 124 minutes, a long running time but not too long when it is well used like this. The drama is achingly done. It is quite painful to watch, with its series of confusions, upsets and wrong choices. It makes you want to intervene and put it all right for Mario and Leon. They seem pretty much made for each other. But football and more seriously deception and lying are getting in the way. Leon explains that lying every day was giving him severe emotional distress he couldn’t handle. It’s no way to live. Mario is a moral tale, but plays realistically. The footie details seem right, the emotions seem right, the boys seem right. It’s just everything about how Mario runs his life is wrong. He makes himself a victim, but he doesn’t need to be. He seems the strong one of the two, but actually it’s Leon who is strong. He has the bravery and courage that are needed for his survival. Mario might be a wiz on the footie filed for now, but his long-term survival prospects look bleak.

The under-the-radar homophobia the film exposes is carefully detailed. In many ways this is what the film is about. Most of the folks in the film feel it’s not cool to be homophobic, or to be seen to be homophobic, but are anyway.

Screenplay by Thomas Hess, Marcel Gisler and Frédéric Moriette. Story by Thomas Hess. They’ve done a good job, it’s very well written, with the issues sorted out as nicely as the characters and the plot. It is admirable that the film has a hard, tough edge to it, and doesn’t bottle out. It is as irresistible as Mario finds Leon.

The main cast are Max Hubacher as Mario Lüthi, Aaron Altaras as Leon Saldo, Jessy Moravec as Mario’s best friend Jenny Odermatt, Jürg Plüss as Mario’s father Daniel Lüthi, Doro Müggler as Mario’s mother Evelyn Lüthi, and Andreas Matti as sports agent Peter Gehrling.

© Derek Winnert 2022 Classic Movie Review 12,352

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