Aske Bang | Ladyboy / 2011

refusing to put up with ‘everything’

by Douglas Messerli

 

Aske Bang (screenwriter and director) Ladyboy / 2011 [31 minutes]

 

Aske Bang’s Ladyboy begins with an intense scene of the transvestite singer, Kristain/Kristine (Casper Castello), who performs in a local gay bar with a band, getting fucked in a back storeroom of the bar, interrupted by the manager and bartender Rodney (Stanislav Sevcik), who reminds Kristine that she is soon due on stage.

     A moment later Kristine and her group are performing on their popular songs that begins “I know I’ve you sad and upset,” which might describe her life in relationship to several of her major supporters, including her mother Emma (Birthe Neumann), who despite her son’s constant transformation from male to female, not only supports him but actually enjoys her female-son companion as a confident. Rodney, despite the fact that Kristine consistently  ignores his tender advances, virtually ignores the genuine love which he offers.

    Kristine’s band which consists of male performers in female drag, strangely enough cannot be described as a drag-queen event. These are serious singers, performing moving and somewhat innovative songs that attracts an almost entirely female audience. Although the male performers are transvestites, the female audience appreciate them as a group who sing of their own experiences—a very different perspective of transvestite performance.

 

     At home, with his makeup on or off, Kristain and his mother share delight over female shoe adds and other such female things, without his mother necessarily ignoring him as a sis-male being. The relationship they have forged is a fairly gender free one without her denying him as being her son.   

    Meanwhile, back at the club Rodney encounters Kristian, alone, practicing a beautiful song he has written for his devoted mother, with lyrics such as “You’re an angel, like the sunshine on a rainy day,” which he truly appreciates. The gentleness with which he approaches his bar’s songwriter is truly touching.

      But Kristian seems quite obvious, as we see him in the very next scene with a full room of elderly woman as he accompanies his mother on her weekly Bingo game, Kristian appearing in full drag as Kristine, his mother protecting his from sneers of her peers. But Emma is also a bit alcoholic, returning after they adventure out in a condition that forces Kristian to undress his mother and put her to bed.

      But it at the that moment when she admits that she has met a man, a “real” man, a macho male Søren whom he first encounters as he showers, the elder entering the bathroom without knocking, proceeding to shit with self-commentary, and leave the room without washing his hands.

     That first meeting characterizes the feelings Kristian has for the truly heterosexual force that has suddenly entered his and his mother’s previously private life.

       His mother attributes his dislike of Søren to jealousy, but what she doesn’t realize is that his worries for her are quite genuine, particularly when he overhears her crying out in pain for his drunken and loutish behavior toward her one night. She protects him, however, as much as she has long protected her son.

       And it is clear in her suggestions for their first meetings that she prefers her son to appear before her new lover as Kristian rather than Kristine. When Søren, after being told that Kristian is in a band, comments that he’d love to hear him perform, Kristian commenting “Well, we’ll see.”

        Rodney again attempts to offer Kristian a ride home, but he makes an appointment for a late night appointment for sex in the park, which he describes as “fresh air,” Rodeny responding, “It sounds like a saucy date.” He offers Kristian some pepper spray just in case.

       The event itself ends terribly, with Kristine, being fucked by an unknown figure. But when walking back, she is attacked, the pepper spray proving ineffectual as she suffers several eye and cheek lacerations in a homophobic beating. His mother is more than sympathetic, offering him the love any such terrorized young transvestite might need, but the next morning at breakfast encountering the now live-in Søren, he describes it simply as a bicycle accident.

       Finally, she gets up the never to tell him that her son is a transvestite, but as in Geoff Burton and Kevin Dowling’s 1994 film, The Sum of Us, the outsider lover does not deal well with the news. As she attempts to explain why her son was beaten, Søren’s response is what you might imagine from a bigot: “What can you expect if you dress up in women’s clothes like an idiot?” Her only comment is “Søren, behave,” which immediately deflects in a comment about her own sexual attraction.

      Kristian’s band sings a song about how impossible it is to be “truly happy,” as Rodney once more attempts to care for the self-destructive friend, not only suggesting he take better care of himself but asking serious, “Aren’t you afraid of getting HIV?” He comments that “Those people are using you,” but Kristian’s replay is a fairly stupid response: “And I fully love it.”

     This time Rodney does drive Kristian home. But he arrives home nearly drunk without truly realizing his friend’s kindness. But returning home, he finally realizes that his mother is also being abused by her new boyfriend who gets violent when he’s drunk.

      Finally, he meets up with the new border as he is dressed full drag, who describes him as “Princess Mary.” But Kristian merely warns him that if he crosses the limit, there will be serious results.

       His mother continues insist, however, that he is a “good guy.” “He’s funny and I love him, and he loves me.”

       Kristian finally decides to as Rodney for a place to stay. Rodney is perfectly willing to put him up in his apartment, but the performer asks for a place in the bar, which we grudgingly allows.

Late at night, Rodney brings coffee for the now sleeping Kristian, out of drag, whom he lovingly wakes up. His love of the transgender figure is so clear that everyone can perceive but Kristian himself.

        When the next evening the man who fucked Kristian in the first scene attempts to get a second try, Kristian pushes him off.  As Kristian goes off to the men’s room, the abuser tries to follow, Rodney gathering a group of the band members to follow him into the bathroom who manage to pulverize the would-be stud.       

       Rodney finally makes clear to Kristian that “you shouldn’t put up with everything.”

      Upon his return home, Kristian hears his mother crying out from a severe being from the drunken Søren. This time Kristian enters, beats up the monster and throws him out of their home.

He has clearly stopped putting up with “everything.”

 

       In the last scene, Kristian sings the song he wrote for his mother, she in attendance. And Rodney finally tells his performer how much he loves him, that “he just likes to look at him,” Kristian realizing that love has been readily available for him all this while.

 

Los Angeles, December 25, 2023

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (December 2023).