Although the title A Thousand Clouds of Peace Fence the Sky; Love: Your Being Loved Will Never End suggests a euphoric, pleasant story, in fact Mexican director Julián Hernández presents a noir film in black and white. The title is from a poem by Pier Paolo Pasolini. Whereas John Rechy describes angst among reasonably mature gays in his City of Night (1963), the movie A Thousand Clouds of Peace focuses on Gerardo (played by Juan Carlos Ortuño), a seventeen-year-old hustler who tries desperately to find male companionship in the daytime. Gerardo evidently was reared by a single mother (played by Perla de la Rosa) whom he left to ply his trade; he never graduated from high school, so he has no other marketable skill, though he has a part-time job at a pool hall, where he meets some of his johns. When the film begins, he is providing oral sex in an automobile alongside a road near his residence. When the man whom he services extends a payment, Gerardo at first declines, hoping that a relationship has begun, but the man instead interprets his hesitation as a request for more pesos. Gerardo then pockets the currency and walks home to an apartment in a rundown part of México City. Subsequently, he has several other encounters. One in particular is with Bruno (played by Juan Carlos Torres), who pretends to be in love with him and later rejects him, even after Gerardo buys him an LP record as a gift. Gerardo is a very loving person, and he is obviously looking for an older man to be his husband. Later encounters do not ease the pain of rejection. On one occasion, he is attracted to a very masculine guy, who takes advantage of his sensitive nature by roughing him up. On another occasion, he is penetrated without a condom and thus may carry the HIV virus. Gerardo, in short, falls victim to unrequited romantic love, something that many younger gays experience. Whether Gerardo will become hardened by the reality that he is not being taken seriously as a male prostitute is up to the imagination of filmviewers, who may leave the cinema with a better appreciation for the life of young runaway hustlers--but not uplifted by peaceful clouds. MH
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