The Astronaut Lovers (2024) – gay movie by Marco Berger

The Astronaut Lovers (2024): Attraction Without Gravity

The Astronaut Lovers: When Pretending to Be Boyfriends Stops Being Pretending

“The Astronaut Lovers” (2024) looks like a simple seaside holiday story at first glance, but don’t let it fool you. It’s one of those films that start quietly, almost casually, and then-somewhere between a campfire, a clumsy joke, and a half-smile-you realize you’ve been pulled into a strangely intimate little universe of two people who weren’t supposed to collide again, but absolutely do.

Old friends, new tension

Pedro arrives from Spain to spend the holidays in Argentina with his uncle’s family. The plan: sun, rest, nothing dramatic. The reality: Maxi. Childhood friend, now grown, chaotic, charming, and incapable of staying still-or staying quiet. Their reunion is awkward in that warm, dangerous way that only old friendships can be. Ten years apart melt in minutes.

Maxi immediately slips into his fast-talking, joking, slightly unhinged mode-half flirting, half hiding behind humor. Pedro is the opposite: quiet, observant, trying to make sense of this tornado with a heartbeat. And the chemistry between them doesn’t build through dramatic moments-it builds through glances, unfinished sentences, late-night conversations, and dumb jokes about “looking gay while smoking.”

When pretending stops being pretending

The story turns when Maxi asks Pedro for a small favor: pretend to be his boyfriend to make an ex jealous. It sounds like a classic rom-com setup, but here it lands differently. Because nothing about their affection feels like acting. Not really. They’re too honest in the wrong moments, too nervous in the right ones, too natural when they should be performing.

Their conversations about identity, desire, bodies, labels, and insecurities feel spontaneous-almost improvised. Maxi covers his nerves with jokes. Pedro hides his with silence. And somewhere between the lines, something real slips out.

Pedro & Maxi – floating in the same space in The Astronaut Lovers (2024)

The most beautiful scenes aren’t the big ones-they’re the quiet ones. The beach at night. The fire. A shared drink. A silly argument. The kind of moments where you suddenly realize you’re more connected to someone than you planned to be. When you feel that stupid flutter in your stomach and think: “Well… damn.”

Maxi keeps talking about astronauts and rockets-sometimes as metaphors, sometimes not. And Pedro just goes along, floating in this gravity-free connection they’ve stumbled into. They circle around each other like two satellites that were never supposed to be in the same orbit, but somehow are.

Humor with warmth, intimacy without theatrics

The film is genuinely funny-Maxi’s ridiculous metaphors, the underwear jokes, the “super rocket” monologue, the endless teasing. But beneath all the humor sits a tender honesty. The movie gives two men space to be insecure, vulnerable, open, and confused without ever mocking them for it.

It’s a story about the kind of intimacy that sneaks up on you. The kind that feels like friendship until it suddenly feels like something you can’t name anymore.

A gentle ending that hits exactly where it should

I won’t spoil the ending, but it lands softly-just where this story belongs. No melodrama, no screaming matches, no over-the-top declarations. Just a quiet truth: some connections come into your life to wake you up, even if they don’t promise forever.

“The Astronaut Lovers” is warm, funny, human, and surprisingly emotional. A film about attraction, vulnerability, identity, and the complicated line between “friend” and “something else.” It doesn’t shout-it whispers. And sometimes that’s the kind of story that stays with you longest.