J Paul Johnson
From the moment when young dancers Aeneas and Alex meet, there’s a palpable energy between them. Both may be nervous, both cautious—and one of them committed to a monogamous heterosexual relationship—but it’s hard to imagine their connection taking them anywhere other than closer to intimacy. Their developing relationship, and the ability of both of them as individuals to grow as dancers and as young men, is the subject of the independent gay dance drama Aligned, the first feature from writer-director Apollo Bakopoulos.
Aeneas (Panagiotis Malakos) is the film’s primary point-of-view character, whose voice-over narration from his private journals we hear at the narrative’s start and on occasion throughout the film. He is handsome, exuberant, and talented, part of a modern dance troupe in Hellas. Committed to his art but unsure of his self-worth, he finds in dance not only a place for his professional development but also a measure of solace and direction.
Another modern dancer, Alex (Dimitris Fritzelas), a Greek-American who has been living and studying in New York City, joins Aeneas’ troupe, flying across the Atlantic to Hellas to perform his thesis under the direction of Aeneas’ teacher. Alex, in contrast to Aeneas, is more comfortable and self-confident, if less self-reflective, has a steady girlfriend in Diane (Mantalena Papadatou) and embraces his art with an exuberant passion.
When the two are randomly paired to collaborate, Aeneas is immediately struck by Alex’s self-confidence and winning charm. Tousled and toned with a sly smile, Alex is in turn attracted to—though he resists, at least for a while—Aeneas. Alex is in Greece to perform, not to find love, and not to explore the unexplored with regards to his sexuality; although his relationship with Diane registers as something short of perfectly harmonious, on more than one occasion Alex defends his commitment to it.
That Aeneas is hosting Alex in his apartment, the two of them spending all their time together, either at rehearsals, where their performances tether them together in an intimate bond, or exploring Athens, where Alex learns from Aeneas more about a cultural heritage he is just coming to understand, brings the two young men even closer together. But their developing relationship will have its consequences: for Aeneas’ journey towards self-love, for Alex’s personal development and sexual identity, and for Diane and Alex’s fragile if committed relationship.
Director Bakopoulos invests a great deal of care and time in the scenes depicting Aeneas and Alex’s rehearsals and performances, which are shot in handheld and close-up with the choreography focusing primarily on the intensity and intimacy of their artistry. The commitment to a kinetic, fluid, and artistic portrayal of their performance is a clear strength of the film, as is the dance performance of leads Malakos and Fritzelas, who both bring the necessary talent—as well as more-than-sufficient sexual energy—to their roles. Their explorations of Athens (with Aeneas as guide) and later New York City (with Alex) are shot largely in montage sequences that register largely as an asynchronous travelogue of settings.
Aligned convinces both in the dance studio and as a fragile love story between two young men coming to terms with themselves as artistic and sexual beings. Its narrative is on slightly less firm ground in terms of some elements of characterization. At 77 minutes, a good deal of Aligned‘s running time depicts montage sequences of dance and travel. These are shot handsomely and often edited to Aeneas’ voice-over, whose character is given to frequent expressions of self-doubt.
Aeneas’ character is young, handsome, talented, affable, able to live his life to its fullest. He lives in a pleasantly appointed two-bedroom apartment with a coastline view of the Parthenon. He does not suffer the indignities of a day job, like so many talented but aspiring artists, nor does there appear to be any identifiable source of his constant self-doubt—though one imagines that in Greece, where inclusivity is at best evolving and same-sex marriage is only now on the cusp of approval—those may exist. Aeneas’ journey towards self-acceptance is an important one, but it exists cinematically only in the words spoken from his journal. On the surface he seems already to have it all. Were his self-doubt less dependent on his narration and more so on other means of characterization, perhaps through a day job, a rival, a parent, a tangible obstacle, overt or implicit discrimination, or any other means of exposition, viewers might find Aeneas’s quest more motivated.
Good dramas that like Aligned explore intimacy between young men are too few and far between. And that’s not to say a romance between gay men need focus on their being gay; their characters can, as does every straight character in almost every other romance, simply be, without any coming-out clichés or tired tropes. And that’s where Aligned shines, in the budding, burgeoning relationship between its two charismatic, professionally competent leads, giving us two young men about to fall in love, with all of the messiness, giddiness, passion, and problems that doing so entails.
