‘Drunken Noodles’ Review: Lucio Castro’s Quaint Second Feature Threads the Needle Between Drama and Fantasia
New York City is a metropolis of endless clamor — unceasing hordes of people angle to get where they want to be by any means necessary. It is not often that one finds a moment of true quiet in the city; harder still, a place to be alone.
In his sophomore feature ‘Drunken Noodles,’ filmmaker Lucio Castro captures a plethora of these quiet moments, contrasting them with euphoric tableaus of various gay dalliances. The film spiritually evokes a space between two worlds: the hushed atmosphere of a cruising site and the unburdened revelry of one of Sal Salandra’s canvases (the real-life artist who inspires a crucial character in the film). Inside of this delicately drawn world, protagonist Adnan — a graduate student house sitting for his uncle in New York City while working at a small art gallery — seeks to fulfill his desires.
The film’s narrative unfolds out of sequence, giving the film a hazy, elliptical quality reminiscent of a satisfying short story collection. The story begins with Adnan on vacation with his partner, Iggie, at a cabin in the East Hampton woods. The two haven’t had sex in six months, and their relationship has become strained. When Adnan’s bike gets a flat tire miles away from the cabin, he is rescued and taken in for a kind of one-night stand with Sal, an older gay man who embroiders erotic needlepoint art. Housesitting in New York the next year, a newly single Adnan frequents several cruising spots, which leads him to engage in a series of ruminative hookups with Yariel, a soft-spoken food deliveryman.
The character of Sal, portrayed in the film by actor and neurosurgeon Ezriel Kornel, is based on a real artist of the same name. Castro initially intended to make a documentary about him before turning the project into a narrative feature film. Sal’s actual art is the centerpiece of the film in more ways than one. Each new segment begins with footage of Sal embroidering a title card.
At the gallery where Adnan works, Sal’s art is on display. When Adnan shows Yariel Sal’s art at the gallery he works at, he becomes nostalgic while Yariel becomes sexually and intellectually transfixed; as a result, his feelings for Adnan grow more intense. Here, the mood of the film changes slightly, and nearly spells danger. Instead, it ventures into a more wistful, surreal territory. It’s a clever balancing act by Castro, who confidently wields abstract sexual exploration as a way to distance his characters from their more charged initial intimacy.
Much of the film’s playful humor is derived from how characters relate to Sal’s work and the reactions that striking pieces like “You Have Been Lying” (depicting an erect Pinocchio and a leather-daddy Geppetto, styled after their Disney variants) elicits from the audience; during the screening at Wicked Queer Film Festival (Boston’s annual queer film festival) the cut from the Adnan saying the title to a shot of the work itself made the crowd erupt in laughter.
A key sequence midway through the film synthesizes the surreality of sex and artistic inspiration with impish humor and grace. During Adnan’s night at Sal’s cabin, Sal takes the younger man to a special spot in the woods near his house, where they sit in lawn chairs for hours as the sun goes down. Sal says he goes there every day to simply wait for the forest to speak to him — only then can his work begin to take shape. The forest’s contribution? A nude, flute-toting fawn appears (you can’t touch him, Adnan learns, but he’ll touch you). It’s a stunning evocation of Castro’s lithe tonal balance between the comic and the sensual.
The film is brisk but deep, with sparse dialogue and languid pacing interspersed with sweeping touches of magical realism. It’s easy to read the sprawling isolation of 2020 New York City — when connectivity was a digital swipe away but always tempered, dangerous and slightly unfulfilling — in some of Castro’s compositions. Even now, back to a bustling baseline, the city that never sleeps might rest its eyes awhile — what dreams may come?
“Drunken Noodles” had its Massachusetts premiere at Wicked Queer Film Festival on April 11, 2026.
Regions: Boston