Ary Zara On How Important Respect Is While Flirting and Falling in Love in ‘The Avocado Pit’

Curiosity bounces off of every shadow and every fluorescent light in Ary Zara’s transfixing and alluring drama, An Avocado Pit. The live action short contender, which won the top shorts prize at this year’s Outfest Film Festival, focuses on a trans woman who is looking for that elusive connection but won’t settle for just any man who gives her attention. This is a story about a young woman who expects equal parts respect when it comes to falling in love, and Zara’s film proves that some men have a lot of growing up to do before they deserve a woman.

Gaya Medeiro’s Larissa floats on the screen. There is something in how she walks and how she carries herself that automatically makes you turn your head. She is planning on spending the night out with her girlfriends, and when she runs into some sex workers she knows, they tell her that a handsome stranger has been hanging around in his car. Claudio (played by Ivo Canelas) protects him self in the darkness in the driver’s seat of his car. I was curious if Zara gave thought to how long Claudio has been coming around and watching these transgender women working on the corners.

“I think he’s been going there for a while–maybe six or seven months,” Zara says. “He’s been trying to find courage while trying to understand why he’s watching these people.”

Larissa steps into Claudio’s car, and he’s more than a little taken aback. He orders her to get out, but she doesn’t budge. When she asks for him to drive her down the road to drop her off, he reluctantly agrees. “I’m not a fag,” he tells her, and she shoots back, “Great. I’ve never been one either.” It’s a disarming moment that shows how Larissa can adapt to a lot of situations.

“Larissa is one of those people who likes to dig deep into other people,” he says. “She wants to get to know them, and she will have profound conversations with strangers to try and understand the world of someone. That’s how I saw her, and I took traits from Gaya [Medeiros] herself. She really stops and listens to people she doesn’t know, and she can get very profound in those conversations.”

Being in the intimate, tight space of Claudio’s car has an effect on him. They drive around, Larissa’s feet up on his dashboard, and they share a bite to eat. When they find themselves in a liquor store, they joke around and share a flirtatious banter, even if Claudio is more reluctant of Larissa’s casual touch. Zara let his two actors play while the camera rolled, and he captured some uninhibited, essential chemistry.

“At the shop, some of it was scripted, and I found a shop that piqued my curiosity,” he says. “This shop has figures of saints and liquor and football t-shirts–it felt like a sort of paradise. I gave Gaya and Ivo [Canelas] actions, but I let them play. I would tell them to get beer or maybe tease each other with the saint. There was a lot of improv there. In the parking lot, we film some scenes where they were walking, and then we just went for it. We decided to just get the camera on to see what they would give us. Ivo and Gaya are so talented, and they had a few rehearsals. That scene was our last night of shooting, so they were already closer than they were at the beginning of the shoot. Even though they were playing these characters, they would get into deep conversations when we stopped rolling. I love working with improv.”

We are brought into this world so quickly, and we don’t want the sun to come up because we are enjoying ourselves so much with these two people. At the start of the film, Larissa’s interactions with her sex worker friends might make people think that she is a sex worker herself. She denies this several times throughout the film. Because Larissa is transgender, some people take the image of trans people in media and place that label on her. Zara was quick to point out how he wants to create new roles and opportunities for his fellow trans artists.

“As a transgender person myself, I am very concerned with the content that is out there portraying trans people,” Zara says. “It is usually connected to sadness, death, or violence. That was present since the beginning, and it’s my goal as a screenwriter to create new opportunities. We are always scripted to die. I have a lot of trans friends, so I am within the universe. I can bring authenticity it naturally. I cannot subvert that I experience. It’s curious that a lot of people think Larissa is a sex worker even though she says that she’s not about three times in the film. Because she is transgender or because she’s a woman or because she’s on that corner, we don’t see other possibilities for her. It comes up a lot during Q&As after the film, because we are conditioned to think that way about trans characters.”

*If you are waiting to see An Avocado Pit, please stop reading here. This final question deals with the ending of Zara’s film.

A night like this can feel magical, but Larissa, and us by extension, wonder what will happen when the sun comes up. Is Claudio trying to hide who and what he wants by the cover of night? He tells her, “I don’t think it’s a fetish” pointing to how a lot of trans people are fetishized by cisgender people, and she replies, “But it’s not love either.” In this simple exchange, Zara’s film speaks volumes in how is speaks for Larissa’s desires, but it also shows that a lot of media should be concerned with the emotional needs of trans people falling in love.

“It was important to me that we end the film with Larissa being the one that’s empowered,” he says. “It’s her decision to not stay with him. Even though he tells her that he doesn’t consider her to be a fetish, there are red flags. He says, “I’m not a fag.” What does he mean when he says that? When he explains anything, we have our guard up. Maybe he can’t see her for the woman that she is. She is in at a stage of her life where she knows she shouldn’t settle for anything less than what she deserves. If she’s looking for love, she’s not seeing, in him, the potential for that. When the sun rises, she knows he won’t be comfortable holding her hand. He won’t be the kind of man who takes her out to a restaurant for the world to see it. Larissa knows that he’s not ready, and that he needs to learn more about himself. She deserves more than that.”