There is nothing quite as mystifying as developing a crush on someone, and this can only become more complicated if it is targeted at a person who is deemed way out of your league, or with whom you don’t have the most particularly pleasant relationship. Focusing on the people with whom we develop these relationships can tell us a lot about ourselves and how we see the world, since nothing reveals more about us than our heart’s deepest desires. This is the impetus behind Here the Whole Time (Portuguese: Quinze Dias), a film written and directed by Daniel Lieff, who attempts to adapt the novel of the same title by Vitor Martins, which explores the inner workings of a young man falling madly in love with someone he never expected. The story follows Felipe, an insecure teenager who is eagerly looking forward to his summer break, since it will be fifteen days spent away from school (where he does well academically, but is relentlessly bullied for both his weight and the fact that he is very openly gay), allowing him to occupy his own space for a couple of weeks. This is immediately challenged with the arrival of Caio, the son of their neighbour who, as a consequence of his bad behaviour, is sent to stay with Felipe and his mother for the entirety of the break, which causes immediate tension between the two teenagers, who are not happy to be forced to share the same space. Yet, very soon a friendship emerges once they find common ground, and the sparks of romance gradually make their way into the discussion not long afterwards, causing both boys to question their own desires. It is a promising premise that is almost immediately undone by some of the most heavy-handed, brutally frustrating filmmaking of the past year, turning Here the Whole Time from a potentially revelatory piece of queer storytelling into an overwrought, tacky bundle of tropes and clichés, absolutely none of which contribute anything to this film other than reminding us of the many other superior works that tackle the same subject matter without needing to be so blatantly unimaginative.
It’s a common trope in media to pit two people, who are introduced as adversaries, and have them eventually fall in love with one another, defying the odds and realising that they are a perfect match. The entire enemies-to-lovers storyline is extremely overdone, but it can be effective when constructed properly. Unfortunately, that is not the case with Here the Whole Time, which is about as cliché-riddled as a film of this nature can be, and somehow finds ways to be even more predictable, which is impressive in its own peculiar way. It seems as if Lieff was given a checklist of every trope associated with both coming-of-age stories and queer narratives, and steadily works down the list, ticking them off as he completes them – I can’t remember the last time we witnessed a film that is so singularly uninterested in being original that it ultimately becomes part of its identity that it is overly derivative in a way that simply cannot be forgiven. To its credit, the idea at the heart of the story is solid – a young man is forced to spend time with his neighbour, someone he pretends to despise but in reality has a very deep affection for, and then over the course of a few days, he discovers that the feeling is somewhat mutual. It’s an obvious storyline but one that at least had something to say. Unfortunately, every bit of potential is extinguished when we see the film in practice, since at no point does it seem to be all that interested in actually pushing beyond the most obvious and hackneyed tropes. There are so many potential avenues that Here the Whole Time could’ve explored, ranging from Felipe’s efforts to become more confident, to the budding relationship between two opposites, to simply an in-depth glimpse into young love. None of them goes beyond the surface level, with the film being filled with innumerable loose ends, absolutely none of them going anywhere and ultimately proving to be the result of exceptionally lazy storytelling, which is the first of many problems that define this film.
A film being filled to the brim with clichés is not solely grounds to dismiss it as a complete failure, and Here the Whole Time is by no means the first film to run into this problem. However, we’d at least expect one element to be at least partially effective, which would normally be the performances. Needless to say, the two leads are just as bad as the film that surrounds them, which I attribute less to their lack of talent and more to the fact that they were under the direction of someone who simply did not know how to use them. Miguel Lallo and Diego Lira are not bad actors – they may not be particularly strong or all that memorable as performers, but they do have distinct qualities that you would imagine a better filmmaker would’ve been able to harness effectively. Lallo in particular had so much potential, since Felipe is a fascinating character – a young man who appears insecure and shy on the surface, but the moment he feels comfortable and in his own space, he becomes effortlessly charismatic. Lallo does try to work through the dismal script to find a unique angle for this character, but he ultimately struggles to do anything particularly memorable, instead becoming just as bad as the film that surrounds him. The problem is that the character is so badly conceived that he bears no realistic traits, just being a bundle of quirks without an ounce of substance, which makes some of the bold swings Lallo is made to take even more inexplicable. Lira is similar in how he is made to play a generic attractive character who also lacks any real nuance, and instead just exists to move the plot along. It certainly doesn’t help that the two leads do not have any chemistry, and at no point in this film do we realistically believe that these two characters are deeply in love with one another, or that they could ever actively be a couple, not because of their mismatch, but rather that the film just does not do any work to connect them beyond simply telling the audience that they have feelings for each other. It’s exceptionally poor writing and forces these actors to seem complicit by association, which is almost unforgivable considering every problem with their performances has its origins in the screenplay.
Yet, despite the mediocre performances that do nothing to elevate the dismal story, we can at least overlook them for the most part, since they’re bad but inoffensive. Instead, the fury should be targeted at the director, who makes it very clear that he had no interest in putting in any effort into making this film even marginally original, or anything more than the most frustrating collection of clichés imaginable. There are some decisions Lieff makes here that are so boldly insulting that we have to admire the sheer gall and gumption it took to actually make this film. Everything about this film is in disarray – the rapid-fire editing only highlights the dismal writing more, the choice to include the most random diversions is beyond deranged (such as the decision to rewrite the lyrics to “Good Morning Baltimore” from Hairspray in a fantasy sequence where the protagonist sings about being in love, despite the rewritten lyrics still referring to Baltimore, and ignoring the fact that the musical already has a song about falling in love) and the overall experience plunges the viewer into a state of total and unbridled confusion. There’s very little that can redeem this film, and whatever specks of potential are scattered widely throughout it, we find that it falls apart at the seams. It takes a lot of work to actively make such a simple premise seem this outrageously bad, but somehow Lieff proves to be the perfect candidate to squander the already paltry amount of promise embedded in this film, which feels like a complete waste of everyone’s time, lacking even the slightest amount of consistency and relying far too heavily on the most trite conventions. A film of this nature should not be this disorienting and unsettling, but somehow everyone involved manages to unite under the belief that abandoning the core purpose of this film (to be a tender, moving story of young love) and instead embracing every trope known to the genre, to the point where it becomes a hodgepodge of misplaced emotions and strange directorial flourishes that serve no purpose other than to proclaim that Lieff had resources to burn, only emphasises what a total misfire this film is from start to finish.
It is certainly not lost on me that being too harsh on a film like Here the Whole Time does not serve much purpose, since this is an undeniably well-meaning film that only intended to entertain and tell a resonant story. However, we are also in an era where we fortunately no longer have to pretend that any representation is better than no representation at all, and this film is a prime example of the kind of low-stakes, borderline lazy approach to filmmaking that we see in a lot of contemporary queer media, where filmmakers can get away with doing the bare minimum and then hide behind the veneer of simply wanting to tell a joyful story. Considering the popularity of work like Love, Simon and Heartstopper, there are many examples of stories in which the coming-of-age genre interweaves with queer narratives to create positive, heartwarming storytelling that doesn’t need to aim for the low-hanging fruit consistently, as is the case here. We should demand more from films that want to represent a specific community, and making a film about something as fascinating and moving as a relationship between two young men finding their footing in a hostile world should not be an invitation to throw absolutely every cliché at the wall and hope that something sticks, especially since the result is just a garbled mess collected at the bottom and allowed to fester without any desire to actually be anything all that interesting. Here, The Whole Time is a film that everyone can agree has its heart in the right place, but where that is simply not enough to excuse the lazy directorial choices that turn it from a potentially lovely story of two people developing feelings for each other into a frustrating jumble of heavy-handed emotions that serves no purpose other than to remind us of the countless versions of the same story that do it not only better, but also make sure to say something of value.
