The Distance Between Us and the Sky is a 2019 short film (very short, 8 1/2 minutes) from Greece, directed by Vasilis Kekatos.
A young gay man is loitering at a gas station. After fielding an X-rated phone call from an older man, the young man approaches another young man. Young man #2 is a biker who has stopped at the gas station to fill his bike. The first young man approaches the second young man and asks him for €22.50 for a bus ticket to Athens. The second man demurs. The first man continues his advances, offering to sell drugs for the €22.50, then paper origami birds—and all the while the sexual tension rises as the two young men flirt.
Tropes:
- Male Frontal Nudity: The film opens with the first young man having a conversation with an older man via video phone. The older man brags about the size of his penis, which he does in fact reveal on the video call as shown in the film.
- Minimalist Cast: There are only three parts in the movie: the two young men, and the older man that is video chatting with the first young man at the beginning of the film.
- Nameless Narrative: None of the three characters are named.
- Real Time: Except for the coda, showing the two young men riding away on the motorcycle, there are no time skips in the film.
- Romantic Ride Sharing: The coda shows the two young men riding away on the motorcycle, the first young man not riding behind the biker with hands around his waist as is usually done, but nestled up against him in an embrace.
- Second-Face Smoke: The second man blows smoke into the first's face. It seems to be meant as a flirtatious gesture but it backfires when the first man is quite bothered by the smoke.
- Title Drop: The first young man offers to drop a lit match and blow up the gas station, saying he will sell the second man "the distance between us and the sky."
- Visual Innuendo: The sexual tension is already thick, the two young men being literally nose to nose. The biker proceeds to put a lit cigarette in his own mouth backwards, the lit end inside in an obvious suggestion of fellatio, before removing it and putting it in the first man's mouth.
