Hello and Goodbye

Ciao.

One common Italian word, two diametrically opposed meanings: hello and goodbye. Depending on the circumstance and inflection, the four-letter utterance can be either a salutation or a valediction, marking either the beginning of a relationship or its end.

Perhaps there's no better title for director/co-writer Yen Tan's new film, opening in Boston on Friday, Dec. 19 at Landmark One Kendall Square. The film focuses its lens on two gay men brought together by the need to mourn the death of a mutual friend.

Following the death of his friend Mark and in the course of handling the deceased's effects, Jeff (Adam Neal Smith) discovers that his old college buddy had been corresponding online with an Italian graphic designer named Andrea (Alessandro Calza). It turns out that shortly before his death, Mark had invited Andrea to come visit him in the states. Jeff invites the handsome Italian to come out anyway, and stay with him instead; presumably to sate his own curiosity, make good on his late pal's promise, and because though misery loves company, genuine bereavement doesn't readily translate to e-mailed emoticons. In the course of Andrea's visit, the two will discover much about their feelings towards Mark and their own ability to grieve his passing.

Interestingly, the international relationship that anchors Ciao is based on Tan's actual experience corresponding with Calza, actually an Italian designer (and actor) who had e-mailed the director to praise him for his first feature film, Happy Birthday.

"We started corresponding, forming a very platonic relationship online," recalls Tan, who eventually cast the overseas actor to play the role he inspired. He and Tan also wound up writing much of the script together. "After I finished the first draft, it made sense to show it to him to get input on his character," says Tan. "He would point out to me things that were inaccurate, in terms of what a gay Italian man might do. I thought it made sense to get him on board with me, and we worked together on the subsequent drafts."

The two also forged a cross-continental rapport. "In my correspondence with Alessandro, though we weren't romantically connected, we got to the point where we communicated very openly with each other," says Tan, adding that the intimacy of those exchanges inspired the film relationship between Mark and Andrea. "I found myself telling him a lot of things happening in my own life that I wasn't necessarily telling people around me. It's totally bizarre. I think writing things down puts you in a state of mind where you can express yourself in a more introspective manner, especially if it's someone you feel really comfortable with."

Obviously, Tan and Calza would eventually meet in real life; but the same could not be said for Andrea and Mark. While those two characters do forge an intimate, emotional bond during their e-mail correspondence, the romanticism of Ciao is actually heightened by the fact, however tragic, that they will never meet in flesh and blood.

"I think it raises an interesting question," posits Tan. "If Andrea and Mark met in real life, would they have gotten along? As much as you can connect online, sometimes meeting someone in the flesh can be a very different experience."

Mark's death does serve as the catalyst for Jeff and Andrea's actual meeting. When those two come together, their conversations about Mark provide the only real insight the audience has into the lost friend; we never meet him (save for a few flashbacks), and our sense of his character is informed only by their impressions. We learn about Mark's love of rugby, his persnickety laundry habits, and in a particularly effective scene where Andrea plays Jeff a video Mark made of himself singing a guitar-strummed ballad, his embarrassingly earnest affection for country music. The video reduces Jeff to tears, not only for its glimpse at a lost friend but because the more-than-platonic feelings he has long held finally surface, now in the presence of a stranger who may never have had Mark physically, but perhaps held him emotionally closer than Jeff ever could.

Eventually, Jeff and Andrea kiss, in a tender bed scene where once again, Mark's haunting presence may be the one rounding out an emotional threesome.

"It's as though they're doing role substitution," says Tan of the scene. "Jeff has never been physically intimate with Mark in the way that he wants to, and obviously neither has Andrea. So I think at that point they were giving each other what the person needs and was missing. It was meant to be a physical gesture that occurs at the point when they got to know each other intimately. It was a natural progression for the characters. Not 'Oh! They're hooking up!' But something more complex than that."

Equally complex: the question of whether Jeff and Andrea will continue to stay in touch beyond their tragically inspired meeting. Though they make promises during a heartfelt goodbye at the airport, Tan says he wonders whether their unexpected hello would have become a prolonged friendship.

"I don't think it would have!" he admits. "I think they met at a time when it was right to meet for them. They helped each other deal with their own loss... [During screenings, audience members] would sometimes ask me if I thought about ending it differently, having them hook up with some big romantic gesture at the airport."

That might make for a popcorn blockbuster, says Tan. But it doesn't make for sincerity.

"If I was making a romantic comedy with Hugh Grant, maybe there'd be an airport chasing-each-other-down moment," he says. "But that would betray the rest of this film."

Indeed, Ciao is a particularly tender examination of what it means to lose a vital human connection, and the transient nature of mortality. If life is a stage, the film seems to say, then we are all actors making our exits and entrances on a strict schedule, and knowing when to say hello and goodbye at precisely the right time.

Ciao premieres on Friday, Dec. 19 at Kendall Square Cinema (One Kendall Square, Cambridge). For show times, visit www.landmarktheatres.com. For more on the film, visit: www.ciaomovie.com.