When Juan Pablo Di Pace is asked about the inspirations for his coming-of-age drama “Before We Forget,” he doesn’t cite specific films or directors.
Instead, the Argentinean actor, writer and director points to “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun,” one of French composer Claude Debussy’s most beloved symphonic works, written in 1894 and featured in the movie.
“I’m a huge fan of ballet, opera and classical music, so the structure of the film is quite symphonic,” Di Pace told HuffPost in an interview. “There’s something in the music that’s tense and beautiful, and then it gets to a crescendo and it’s ecstasy.”
Emotions run high in “Before We Forget,” which expanded to select theaters nationwide Friday after its New York and Los Angeles release earlier this month. The film, which marks Di Pace’s screenwriting and feature directorial debut, is a dreamy and wistful take on his real-life experiences with first love and heartbreak.
Originally titled “Duino,” the film follows Matias (played by Santiago Madrussan), an Argentinean student and aspiring filmmaker who enrolls in an arts-focused boarding school in Italy in 1997.
Matias soon finds himself enticed by the bravado of Alex (Oscar Morgan), a free-spirited Swedish classmate. After a prank goes awry, Alex gets expelled from school but maintains a long-distance friendship with Matias. When Matias is invited to join Alex and his family for Christmas at their palatial estate, he starts to wonder if his new pal’s gestures are indicative of deeper, non-platonic feelings about their relationship.
Early reviews of “Before We Forget” have compared it favorably to the 2017 romantic drama “Call Me by Your Name,” starring Timothée Chalamet. Scenes in the film also recall Netflix’s queer-themed teen series “Heartstopper,” as well as the lighter half of the 2023 dark comedy “Saltburn.”
Di Pace, best known to U.S. audiences for his role on “Fuller House” and his stint on “Dancing with the Stars,” began developing “Before We Forget” after viewing home videos of his days as a student at United World College of the Adriatic. He teamed up with co-director Andrés Pepe Estrada, a longtime friend, and shot much of the film on location at the school’s Trieste, Italy campus.
He also appears in the film as the middle-aged Matias, who in the present day is a Buenos Aires movie director struggling to find a satisfying ending for the romantic film he’s working on. Matias’ adolescent memories are triggered when he receives an unexpected opportunity to return to reunite with Alex (played by August Wittgenstein as an adult) after 25 years.
Though Di Pace drew heavily from his lived experience, he hopes viewers won’t view “Before We Forget” solely as an autobiographical endeavor. His willingness to self-reflect, however, is refreshingly relatable and gives the film an intimate charm many of its mainstream predecessors lack.
“This idea of falling in love for the first time at an international school and having a traumatic experience around it, and there being a record of it in VHS felt like the perfect storm ― or, you could say, the perfect mosaic ― by which to build a film,” Di Pace said.
Though Madrussan and Morgan turn in nuanced performances, the climax of “Before We Forget” is a chilling monologue delivered by Argentinean actor Araceli González who, as Matias’ mother Roma, reassures her son that she accepts him as his true self without using words like “gay” or “queer.”
“If that scene didn’t work, the whole movie wouldn’t work,” Di Pace said. “It’s something that happened to me with my parents, and I chose to almost replicate what I heard, word by word. I’m very proud of it.”
Paul Archuleta via Getty Images
Though Di Pace hasn’t turned his back on acting, he’s eager to focus heavily on writing and directing moving forward. He’s currently at work on two scripts he says are “completely different” from “Before We Forget,” including at least one that embraces themes of “magical realism.”
“I love people, I love human relationships, and I also love clashes of culture and personalities,” he said.
As for aspects of LGBTQ+ life he’d like to showcase on-screen, he added, “I love films that have a very strong queer element, and yet they’re about something else. People are so present, so moved, so hungry for these kinds of stories. I’d like the lines to blur and not have it be a niche thing.”
Watch the trailer for “Before We Forget” below.
