Back in 2020, Brazilian actor Marco Pigossi met Italian filmmaker Marco Calvani through mutual friends. It was Calvani’s last day in Los Angeles, but after hitting it off, the pair kept in contact via phone, trading stories about their respective journeys as immigrants now working in America. Ten days later, Calvani invited Pigossi to visit him in Provincetown where the director had been holed up in a friend’s vacant cottage to ride out the COVID-19 lockdown. Pigossi took Calvani up on his offer, and after another ten days of finally getting to know each other in person, the two Marcos fell in love against the backdrop of the beautiful Massachusetts coast. By the time Pigossi was scheduled to return to his newly adopted home of L.A., the couple had decided to move in together — and, eventually, to get married. “Just like two good lesbians,” Pigossi jokes.
Traces of this fairytale love story are sprinkled all over High Tide, a languid new film starring Pigossi as Lourenço, a Brazilian immigrant barely scraping by through odd jobs in Provincetown while counting down the clock on his expiring tourist visa, and James Bland as Maurice, a nurse who develops a fleeting but life-changing romantic connection with him. An impressive directorial debut by Calvani, the new drama, in select New York theaters starting October 18, is, at once, a swooning romance and a heartbreaking meditation on isolation and loneliness, building thematic parallels between queer and immigrant experiences while gently exploring the ways intimacy can connect us all. Filmed on location during a packed 17-day shoot in P-Town, High Tide is a remarkable feat of indie filmmaking that has rightfully won over crowds at several film festivals, including SXSW and the LGBTQ-focused NewFest.
Sitting cross-legged at the Moxy Hotel’s Café d’Avignon in the East Village, Pigossi admits that High Tide feels different than anything he’s done before. Though the actor has been a bona fide celebrity in Brazil for the better part of two decades thanks to a slew of popular telenovela roles, it’s only in the past few years that he feels like he’s broken through with American audiences. He’s already been bitten by the superhero bug as a scene-stealing fan favorite in last year’s Gen V, Prime Video’s spinoff of the superhero satire The Boys, and soon, you’ll be able to see him as an aspiring writer in the erotic thriller Bone Lake and as the titular groom in the Marisa Tomei-starring You’re Dating a Narcissist!
But it’s High Tide, the first project in which he plays a gay man who feels like a “real person,” as he puts it, that seems destined to announce him as a bankable leading man. Ahead of the film’s premiere, the actor talked with Them about discovering parts of himself through his work, the double-edged sword of intimacy coordinators, and why making this film with the love of his life only deepened their connection.
How did you first get involved with the project?
Well, when Marco [Calvani] and I met, we had this long conversation about coming out and finding and accepting yourself through your work. He told me that he was a writer that had never written any gay characters, and I said that I could never really play the gay character because I have a very particular story.
I’ve been closeted my whole life in Brazil. I became extremely famous there when I was 18 years old, and I’d always been told that, if I came out, I wouldn’t be able to work anymore. By the time I reached 30, I had depression and all these panic attacks for living this double life, so I said, “I need to get out of here.” I went to Australia to work, I went to Madrid, I started seeing that different cultures were more open, and I decided to come out. So we spoke a lot about that and about how I wanted to play a [gay] character and talk about all this through my art — and little did I know, Marco was writing a script about a gay immigrant.
When you first read the script, did you feel an immediate affinity with Lourenço?
I saw a lot of me there already because, again, he was working and writing while we were falling in love. For example, the movie opens with a poem, and it’s my favorite poem about Brazil.
And that’s a poem you had talked with him about?
Exactly. It’s a poem that I had shown him, of course.
So the script was almost a love letter in a way.
It was. I cried a lot. I saw a lot of deepness. This film, there’s not a big plot. It’s not a big story. It’s this slice-of-life of a specific moment of this specific person. It’s very intimate, it’s very slow, but it has a lot of heart. You follow this character and feel what he feels. It was emotional.
I want to talk about your performance, specifically the ways in which you telegraph how slightly uncomfortable Lourenço feels in his skin. It’s such a fitting juxtaposition that the film is set in P-Town because it’s a place where queer people are the majority, which is why you find so many people that feel open and free and shameless. And yet, here is Lourenço, who clearly still has all these hang-ups around sex and intimacy, who’s somewhat soft-spoken, who almost feels as if he’s shrinking into himself. Even the way he dresses stands out: He’s wearing knee-length board shorts on a beach where everyone else is completely nude. How did you approach that characterization?
Well, there’s a little bit of me that comes from this Catholic family that understands this process. There’s a little bit of me that is an immigrant who’s always kind of apologizing or asking for excuses to be here. There’s this feeling [I know] of being in a place that’s not yours and having to be aware of that. Of course, I am not soft-spoken like Lourenço. But in that case, it was just about getting all these feelings — my own insecurities, my own fears, my own experiences as an immigrant or as a gay man — and turning up the volume, just dialing everything up.
But also, it’s just from seeing people. I always say that the work of an actor is kind of a mosaic. You get little pieces of things — from other characters, other films, friends you know, experiences you’ve lived — and you put them together. Like, there’s a lot of a friend of mine in Lourenço. This person who was a close friend when I was young had this same naïveness inside of him. But in the end, it’s just a familiar feeling to be a foreigner.
You have incredible chemistry with your co-star, James Bland, and I was shocked to learn that you guys didn’t really meet until right before filming. That feels like a huge risk to take for such a small film, especially since everything hinges on your romantic connection being believable. How did it feel to just jump into it with him like that?
It was so risky. When I saw James’ tape, I was like, “Oh, he’s just brilliant,” but I had no idea what to expect [from him] as a person. But we got along immediately. He’s by far one of the most incredible actors I’ve worked with. So generous, so sweet, and so into it. He was always there, always present.
It’s funny about actors, but we have to fall in love with our scene partners somehow. I remember us just looking at each other and saying, “Okay, let’s find one thing about your face that I absolutely love and we can cling to that.” For me, it was his nose. I was always going to his nose. And for him, I think it was my dimples. So, immediately, we created this bond trying to find this intimacy. We also had an incredible intimacy coordinator, which helps. But that can be very dangerous. It can go either way. I’ve had bad experiences where it just made it more awkward.
You’ve had bad experiences with intimacy coordinators?
It just made it more awkward. Something that was supposed to be very simple became too big and it was awkward for everyone. But in this case, it was amazing. She knew how to destroy those physical barriers, and we felt very comfortable with each other. Also, there was a lot of trust in Marco, because my first thought was like, “Oh my god, I’m doing this [in front of my new boyfriend].” But I really trust him as a director, and he really trusted me as an actor.
Speaking of intimacy coordinators, I wanted to ask about the sex scenes because, beyond being steamy and hot, they also feel so integral to Lourenço’s development as a character. We go from an uncomfortable one that shows how much Lourenço doesn’t value himself, to another one that’s more intimate but slightly awkward because Lourenço is still figuring it out, to, finally, an extremely passionate one that acutely reflects the ways he’s found new confidence in his body. It’s an entire arc in itself.
Totally. I think this film is a celebration of intimacy, and sometimes intimacy gets lost. Especially in gay modern life, it’s all a swipe thing. It’s like, I don’t know, he likes red and I like blue, so you just swipe over. But then you’ve missed an amazing opportunity to get to know someone and discover this intimacy. This is a fundamental part of this story.
I think 90% of gay men discover sex in a way that’s too much; it’s too aggressive, they’re not ready. It happens because you have this desire, but you don’t know how to do it. You go to places where everybody’s doing it, and doing it a lot. But after, when you’re faced with the moment of intimacy because you’re feeling something, you block. And that’s exactly what happens to Lourenço. He’s like, “This is too much. I don’t know how to do this.” But then, there’s a full intimacy moment, where they touch, where they kiss, there’s eyes, there’s body contact.
It’s super funny because, as an actor watching the film, [during] the first sex scene, I hide, I try to go to the bathroom. But the last one, where I’m much more naked and you see more of the body, is not embarrassing at all because it’s so beautiful. It’s like a Raphael painting. That’s because there’s intimacy, and I’m all about intimacy. I think that’s what makes us different from animals. That’s where the beauty is because that’s when you get to reach inside, not just outside.
I know that you came out publicly later in life, around 2021, when you and Marco were already together. Was there something about this project in particular that motivated that decision or was it just pure coincidence that the timing aligned like that?
Well, I came out publicly before I started shooting, but, yes, I was already with Marco. I think it’s the power of love, of having someone that you feel is going to be your partner for life and is going to be there to support you no matter what, that gave me strength to do it.
But I was already in the process. When I left Brazil, I produced a documentary about queer people in politics where we followed four candidates to municipal elections in 2020. Then, I gave an interview in Brazil for a very popular magazine with a gay journalist where I told my whole story. This was during the time when [Jair] Bolsonaro was running for elections, so it was also a political thing because this guy was on television saying that he’d rather have a dead son than a gay son and instigating violence against queer bodies.
But having Marco gave me even more strength to do it. And having Lourenço was also informational to remember all I’ve been through. So I think it’s all part of one big thing. The documentary, High Tide, that interview, my marriage with Marco, it was all a cycle.
Some people say it’s never smart to work with a partner, but obviously you and Marco did it with seemingly no problems. Did working together bring you guys even closer?
Yes.
Would you do it again?
Look, we didn’t know what it was going to be. The only thing we’d done together was Marco directing me on self-tapes, and most of the time, I was like, “Nah, you’re wrong. This is supposed to be like this.” But at the same time, we’d been with this project for two years. This became our baby. So when I got to set, I knew Lourenço so deeply and I knew what Marco wanted from him. It was a lot of trust and it made us even closer. We joke that if we survived the film together and we survived the pandemic together, then we’re going to make it.
Did filming this ignite any passion in you for more queer storytelling?
Right now I’m doing a new documentary about queer refugees in Brazil because we have a very modern legislation of embracing these people and bringing them into Brazil, but nobody knows about that. And we’re still the country with the highest violence cases against queer people, so there’s a lot of ambiguity there. But I definitely do want to tell more queer stories, not necessarily just as an actor, but also as a producer. I’m just so curious about everything.
As of now, you’ve done telenovelas, you’ve done stuff in Brazil and Australia, small indie films in America, and a big-budget superhero project. You have a thriller and then a comedy coming out soon. Are there any other genres you’d like to explore next?
When I moved to America in 2020, it was like a new beginning. My career in Brazil doesn’t translate here. Americans don’t consume Brazilian products at all, so it was like starting over. But it’s a beautiful feeling to have that opportunity to start over when you’re 30 and you’re more mature and you know what you want.
I have the chance to curate my career better, and I’m definitely focused on independent films more than ever, even though they’re almost a dying product. But that’s where we bring art to its essence, which is to make people think, to feel, to touch, to question. I’m not necessarily focused on a genre, like comedy or horror. It’s whatever touches me and whatever I feel has something beautiful to say.
This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
High Tide is in select theaters in New York City on October 18 and expands to Los Angeles on October 25, with additional cities added in November.
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