Alexis Dos Santos

In “Glue” writer/director Alexis Dos Santos adroitly captures life at 16 in a remote area of Argentina where bored and horny Lucas (Nahuel Perez Biscayart) experiments with sex and sniffing the title substance with his hunky best friend, Nacho (Nahuel Viale). Dos Santos uses dizzying handheld camerawork to reflect on the desolation of the characters and the barren landscape, but the intimacy of this visual texture distinguishes this worthwhile film.

“Glue” will play at the Philadelphia International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival at 9:30 p.m., July 17 at the Wilma Theater, 265 S. Broad St. and at 5:30 p.m., July 20 at the Arts Bank, 601 S. Broad St.

The film features a tactile emotional space — the nexus of heartache, loneliness and punk attitude — with utter realism (and music by the Violent Femmes). Along with all the expected adolescent angst and pain on display, the film features an erotic threesome with Nacho and their friend Andrea (Ines Efron), not found in many teen coming-of-age films.

So of course, everyone who sees “Glue” wants to know: Is the story autobiographical?

“Hmm...” the filmmaker says, mulling his answer over on the phone, and laughing. “It’s a question I get asked a lot.”

Just when it seems Dos Santos is about to leave this unanswered, he offers, “I used things that were somehow from my life, and I made lots of things up so I could tell a story. There are different elements in there.”

Originally set in London, “Glue” shifted locations to take place in a small town in Patagonia where the filmmaker spent his formative teenage years. Dos Santos, who was born in Buenos Aires, grew up in the town where the film was shot. He remembers being 13, when he experienced many things that, he says, “shaped me into who I am — the sexual stuff in most kids’ minds.”

He observed, “Sex is more prominent in small towns than in cities. I think I had more extreme [sexual] experiences than my friends in Buenos Aires. I also know people who live in small towns and have no experience until they were 17. I’m not trying to generalize. A lot of people thought I was putting a name to a generation under 20 who have a very fluid, ambiguous sexuality.”

The teenagers in “Glue” are not identified as straight, gay or bisexual, and they barely discuss the intimate moments they initiate and share together. Nacho, in particular is a bit of a mystery, acting mainly as an object of desire for Lucas and Andrea.

“It was important that they wouldn’t talk [about sex], or mention what happened, but that they were fine about it,” Dos Santos explains. “I wanted this film to portray something I had not seen before — the intensity of sexual experiences you can have between 14-16.”

While Dos Santos is happy to discuss the sexuality of Lucas, Nacho and Andrea, he is less forthcoming about details of his personal life, admitting only, “My sexuality is as fluid as my characters.”

The writer/director’s caginess suits him and his film just fine. He claims that he started the project with a 17-page outline that had the narrative structure from beginning to end written in paragraphs.

“All of the details and dialogue,” he acknowledged, “came from the actors.” Dos Santos made tape recordings and Super-8 films with the cast to flesh out the characters and their relationships. In fact, the part of Andrea was expanded for the film because of the intensity of Efron’s tapes and her ability to tap into that angst-y teenage mindset.

Another stylistic device was shooting the film as if it was a documentary. This allowed the actors to “live” in front of the hand-held camera, and have the freedom to perform without concerns about camera angles, lighting or editing. As such, the structure of the film is a bit unconventional. The dramatic climax is a ménage-a-trois between Lucas, Nacho and Andrea. Yet once this sequence ends, “Glue” continues on for another 10 minutes, featuring a family camping scene.

Dos Santos defends his film, and its narrative structure. He said, “I didn’t want to think in conventional ways. The film grew in different proportions because of the way I made it. The story grew from what I had originally, and it grew more in some places than in others. I like to think the film is like a body of the wrong proportions — like a teenage body.”

It will be interesting to see how Dos Santos grows after making this remarkable — and remarkably intimate and intense — film.