In a society where it isn’t always safe to be out and meet partners in person, dating apps are a foundational part of the modern LGBTQ community. This is a concept that A Few Feet Away explores in-depth, showing not only the breadth of potential connections on offer, but also the associated risks and emotional drought they can come with.
The film follows Santiago (Max Suen), a 20-year-old gay man living in Buenos Aires, Argentina. While the film coyly skirts around specific branding, he’s obsessed with a Grindr-style hookup app. Every moment he seems to be checking it, refreshing his messages, or pining for pseudonymous suitors to reply. It’s a life that director Tadeo Pestaña Caro weaves intrinsically into Santiago’s life – he’s enamoured by it, constantly looking for someone new to speak to. The film cleverly weaves the app’s notification sound into its score, even further establishing that to Santiago, his online activity is just as – if not more – important than what’s going on in the real world.
There’s both a tender honesty and unfettered risk to Santiago’s life, and A Few Feet Away doesn’t shy away from showing the fallacy of hook-up app culture. Occasionally, Santiago perpetuates this behaviour: he leers and follows men, tracking them based on their location on the app, and slinks around nightclubs and bars with a reptilian quality.
But equally, he’s a 20-year-old boy navigating a world where he isn’t always in control, and at some points he’s portrayed as incredibly vulnerable. It’s testament to the quality of Suen’s performance that despite his embellishment of stories to friends, and his occasionally dehumanising treatment of the men he vies for, we worry for him when he’s out of his depth.
This is what makes A Few Feet Away more complex than a deification of dating apps in the LGBTQ community: it’s willing to show the inherent concerns around them. Santiago ends up practically isolated from the real world, not engaging in social situations and constantly sneaking away to check his phone – and the impersonality of his hook-ups even begins to bother him at the end. It culminates in quite a powerful scene of self-realisation towards the end, at which point the film becomes incredibly introspective and almost dialogue-free.
There are some really interesting ideas in A Few Feet Away that could’ve used more exploration, often proving slightly more engaging than its fairly straightforward message. The age politics of Buenos Aires’ gay community are particularly interesting, as is the fact that Santiago often lies outright about his hook-ups to friends. It’s clear that we’ve got an unreliable protagonist on our hands, but aside from a few flourishes the film doesn’t explore that further.
Regardless, it’s a film that carefully toes the line between vilifying the impersonality of hook-up culture and its risks while also portraying the choice it gives its users to love freely and openly. Rather than outright falling on one side of the argument over the other, Pestaña Caro presents the reality in a very frank manner and lets you make your mind up. It’s a style of direction that’s often reminiscent of Scorsese’s early work, particularly Mean Streets, marking them as a director to watch.
While viewers may take issue with its broadly neutral tone and lack of introspective voice, A Few Feet Away is a unique film that peers behind the curtain of an especially interesting facet of the modern generation of LGBTQ digital natives. What it lacks in substance and thrust it makes up for in the sheer novelty of its depiction – though it’s hard not to lament the further issues it could’ve explored.
★★★
A Few Feet Away has its world premiere at the BFI Flare Festival on March 20, 2025.
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