WATCH: Homoerotic firefighter calendars inspired this surreal musical romance

Once upon a time, in a land not-so-far away, there was a young prince who became a firefighter and wound up falling for his instructor, sparking a romance full of jockstraps and choreographed dance numbers.

Okay, so Portuguese film Will-O’-The-Wisp isn’t your average fairytale. But it exists in a magical, queer, sexually charged world all its own—that’s our kind of fairytale!

Will-O’-The-Wisp is the story of Alfredo (Mauro Costa), a young prince who loves the environment so much that he decides to become a fireman so that he can help protect it.

But once he begins his training, he falls in love with something else entirely: A Man—specifically his handsome fire house instructor, Afonso (André Cabral). Their steamy affair plays out over sexually charged chest compression training, locker room wrestling, and balletic dance routines.

And for some reason it’s all set in the future, the year 2069? Which, as the director puts it, is an “allusion to 1969, the erotic year!”

Look, writing this all out, we realize it may sound a little…. unhinged, but once you get a first look at Will-O’-The-Wisp, it somehow all makes sense. This is a movie that makes its own rules, creating a highly evocative fantasy world—one which largely plays out in the confines of a fire house locker room.

This is all by design for provocative filmmaker João Pedro Rodrigues (The Ornithologist), who says the look of the movie was inspired both by homoerotic firefighter calendars and classical Baroque painters.

“I played with the reference to the firefighters’ calendar in which they are photographed scantily dressed,” the writer-director shares in a press statement. “I took it even further by asking the actors to pose as if for a calendar but also to recreate the postures of characters that would be found in classic paintings. I really love the art of painting, and these are like pictures made in the spirit of Rubens or Velasquez.”

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Rodrigues continues: “I wanted the viewer to understand, upon entering the fire station, that this fire station is special! A fairy tale fire station! Yet at the same time, the firefighters’ training sessions that we see are real, I followed them for several weeks, filming actual firefighters. The idea is still to enter a fantasy world through reality, romanticism through physicality.”

After premiering nearly a year ago at the Cannes Film Festival, Will-O’-The-Wisp will finally be available stateside thanks to indie distributors Strand Releasing. The film is set to premiere May 26 at the IFC Center in New York City, with further theatrical dates to come.

You can watch the film’s sexy, magical, slightly NSFW trailer below:

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Giddy up, partner!