'High Tide' Movie Has Roots In A Real-Life Gay Love Story
Those who associate Provincetown, Massachusetts, with drag shows and late-night dance parties may be surprised by the LGBTQ+ resort community's subdued appearance in " High Tide ," filmmaker Marco Calvani 's new romantic drama.
Though Calvani always wanted to set his film in Provincetown, known colloquially as "P-Town" and located on the northernmost tip of Cape Cod, he was adamant that it take place at summer's end, when the crowds of out-of-town visitors have begun to dwindle.
"Provincetown is a privileged place, even geographically. You need to be able to get there, and you need to have money to stay there," he told HuffPost ahead of his movie's Monday screening at NewFest, New York's LGBTQ+ film festival . "We're living in vulnerable times for our communities [and] this is a story about two people on the margins who feel lost in today's America. So it's very melancholic."
Opening in theaters Friday in New York and next week in Los Angeles, "High Tide" centers on Brazilian emigrant Lourenço (played by Marco Pigossi , Calvani's real-life husband), who is grappling with a recent breakup and the uncertainty of his future in Provincetown and the U.S., with his tourist visa set to expire.
Growing despondent, Lourenço crashes in a shabby cottage owned by his ex's pal, Scott (Bill Irwin), and takes on under-the-table jobs that include assisting Miriam ( Marisa Tomei ), a local artist who's divorced, with home repairs. And though he's content with casual hookups at first, he finds himself at an emotional crossroads after a chance meeting with Maurice ( James Bland ), a Black doctor from New York, on the beach.
"High Tide," which had its world premiere at South by Southwest in March and later screened at the Provincetown International Film Festival , is Calvani's directorial feature debut. The Italian-born writer-director has a well-established career in theater, and in 2017, he adapted his play, "The View from Up Here," as a short film starring Melissa Leo, an Oscar winner for "The Fighter."
Calvani started writing "High Tide" in 2020, just as COVID-19 shut down live performance venues around the world. His theatrical background came in handy for securing the film's supporting cast, which also includes "Mad Men" actor Bryan Batt in a memorable cameo, while his relationship with Pigossi, then in its early days, became a source of inspiration for the movie.
"The pandemic sort of obliged me to look at things in a different way," Calvani said. "I saw myself as a gay man who was never comfortable with his own sexuality, no matter how free I'd been all my life, and as an artist who was an immigrant in a country that didn't feel that welcoming anymore."
Pigossi, who grew up in Brazil, said he and Calvani found common ground in their life experiences, despite hailing from different parts of the world.
"There's a love story behind the love story," he said. "We talked about the process of coming out, of accepting yourself, of embracing your sexuality, and what it meant to be a gay man in the world right now. I've been gay my whole life, but I was in the closet until I was 30 for many reasons — my safety in Brazil, and I wasn't sure if I'd be able to work as an actor if I was out."
Though "High Tide" isn't meant to be biographical, Pigossi said some very specific anecdotes made their way into the screenplay. Calvani, he recalled, "was always asking me things like, 'What's your favorite poem? What kind of city do you think would be very conservative in Brazil?' And after a month, he handed me the script and said, 'I think I wrote this for you.' It was a beautiful process in that sense."
Calvani and Pigossi, who married last year, are enjoying a boost in their Hollywood profiles just as "High Tide" is making its way to theaters. In August, it was announced that Calvani would return to his acting roots by joining the cast of Netflix 's upcoming series " The Four Seasons ," also starring Steve Carrell and Tina Fey.
Pigossi, meanwhile, can currently be seen in the horror movie " Bone Lake ," now on the film festival circuit, and will soon reunite with Tomei in a new comedy, " You're Dating A Narcissist! "
Even though "High Tide" is a collaboration between newlyweds, the film ends on a bittersweet note. Whether Lourenço and Maurice get what they want (or deserve) by the end credits is open to interpretation.
Calvani, for his part, believes the finale of "High Tide" is "the happiest I've ever written."
"[Lourenço] has been living a life full of lies out of necessity, and he's letting it go for once," he said. "And that's love in the end. It's a romance with himself."
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