A Moment in the Reeds is the story of Leevi (Janne Puustinen), a gay Finnish man who left Finland at his first opportunity and has spent the past five years studying poetry in Paris, to the chagrin of his more traditionally-masculine father. When Leevi returns to his native land to do research in Helsinki for his thesis, which is on gender performativity in the poetry of Rimbaud and Sarkia, he spends some time at his father’s cabin in the gorgeous Finnish countryside, assisting him with fixing up the cabin so it can be sold off. Leevi’s father has hired Tareq, a Syrian refugee and immigrant, to help with the renovation. When Leevi’s father is unexpectedly called away on business, Leevi and Tareq find themselves irresistibly attracted to one another as they share tasks around the house and share Leevi’s bed at night.

Their initial connection is sparked by the fact that, although Tareq speaks no Finnish, both of them speak English, which Leevi’s father does not; sharing a language allows them to talk about and around the overbearing, conservative man who lurks at the edges of the film. Leevi acts as translator between the other two characters, and we as the audience get to see how his allegiance shifts; sometimes he translates exactly, but sometimes he alters words or meaning to protect Tareq from his father’s racism and homophobia. The fact that neither Leevi nor Tareq is speaking his first language also adds an emotional layer to the film; whereas an actor’s performance can sometimes be stunted by performing dialogue in a tongue they are not necessarily native to, here this performance is part of the story, as both men are literally searching for the words to express how they are feeling for each other. Their conversations are halting, awkward, occasionally feeling around the words in their mouths as they feel each other out.

Leevi takes a second to look at Tareq instead of the railing they’re working on.

There’s a queerly visual language of glances and stares at play here, too. Importantly, unlike some other recent LGBT+ films that have an eye on mainstream audiences — I’m looking at you, Boy Erased — A Moment in the Reeds takes a casual, scopohilic pleasure in depicting how gay men look at each other. Before both men realize that their attraction is reciprocated, they spend much of the first act catching furtive glimpses of each other through the woods, each taking a moment to look each other up and down when they think the other is looking away. It’s a dance of the eyes, the characters seducing one another almost without realizing it in how they look at each other, and are looked at. It’s a dance queer audiences know well.

Boy Erased shows Lucas Hedges looking at his friend in basketball shorts, but doesn’t think to show the audience what he’s looking at out of frame. Why would we — the straight we in the audience that the film presumes — want to see that? (Especially since the movie goes on to suggest that this furtive act of looking, noticed by the predatory friend, invites his character’s rape later that night). And in Call Me By Your Name, except for the obvious shots where the act of looking is explicit — like when Oliver watches Elio play piano — the queerness of the scopophilic pleasures in that film happens almost by accident. I’m thinking of the inset shot where we see Elio looking at Oliver down the dinner table that first day, and we get a brief, screen-filling close-up of Armie Hammer’s open shirt and chest hair. The first time I saw it, in its startling quickness and expansive intimacy, I gasped. It wasn’t until my second viewing that I realized I’m supposed to think Elio is noticing Oliver’s Star of David necklace, not taking an all-too-familiar-feeling opportune moment to glance at Armie’s body being revealed.

Here, though, we are expected to just understand what’s happening when Tareq and Leevi look at one another. The looking happens mostly in wide shot rather than in shot-reverse-shot or closeups. We don’t need a close-up of Leevi’s hands to know what Tareq is admiring when he looks that way. We don’t need the camera to rake itself down Leevi’s body when Tareq glances at him while they talk. The film has a casual, second-nature expectation that the audience will follow the characters’ eyelines, will naturally understand the significance of those glances, and will understand how they feel about what they’re seeing. It’s refreshing.