Review: Short Film 'Stalls' Packed with Feature-Length Heart

The three-minute short film "Stalls," by out Brazilian director João Dall'Stella, takes place in the men's room of an opera house, where a good-looking man in full tux awaits adventure in a stall with a secret glory hole.

The film cleverly weaves light-hearted fun into the tropes we've all heard about - a suggestively "wide stance," a coded tapping of feet (that, in Dall'Stella's vision, briefly turns into a fantasy sequence that's literally a kind of mating dance), and - fo course - the glory hole itself, which is secreted behind a roll of toilet paper and through which the main character, hopeful and excited by turns, peers with hammering heart and undisguised yearning.

Fun, charming, and unapologetic, "Stalls" is a cry from the heart of a nation beset by authoritarianism and homophobia: A defiant and joyful statement that eros is not going away, and neither are those who pursue it.