Jamieson Pearce | The Fruity / 2016

the kiss

by Douglas Messerli

 

Jamieson Pearce (screenwriter and director) The Fruity / 2016 [11 minutes]

 

It’s Valentine’s day at The Fruity, with Geoffrey (Andrew Benson), the boss, running around in a drag version of cupid giving the young Spanish-speaking cook Jorge (Adrian Dieguez) instructions, clearly repeated every day, about how he likes the food hot, spicy for the Friday night Karaoke BBQ. Jorge is planning to have things is own way and is treated badly for even suggesting that he is, after all, the cook. Jorge wants the sauce on the top, while Geoffrey wants him to put it on the side.

 

    Lindsay (Cameron Rhodes) enters. He’s evidently a special friend, who feels free to enter through the kitchen, but also has a tender spot, we immediately perceive, for the cook Jorge, which he treats, unlike Geoffrey, quite kindly. Jorge also clearly likes Lindsay, even if the older man can’t say his name properly.

     Lindsay loves Spain he declares, even though he’s never been there, his love clearly influenced by the idea of having Jorge around, a sentiment shared by the talkative customer, beer in hand, Bruce (Brendan Miles).

    Jorge wonders why Lindsay isn’t eating dinner, but he demurs (“I can’t), while Geoffrey, now behind the bar, says you’re the one who wanted his special sauce, Bruce joining in, “Oh, don’t we all!”

     Jorge wonders if Lindsay plans to do karaoke, but again the obviously shy Lindsay suggests “he can’t.” Jorge argues that he sings well, but Lindsay argues he wouldn’t get up on stage even if Ricky Martin were to promise to give him a spanking. Geoffrey charges into the conversation, “How about a spanking from Jorge?” 

     “That’s another matter!”

    Bruce asks Jorge whether who give him a spanking, but Jorge is not sure precisely what “a spanking” entails. When asked if he might give Lindsay a kiss for singing, Jorge responds, “Sure.” “But”—he adds—"he has to do it properly, like he did when he was drunk!”

      It appears that Lindsay is truly mulling over the matter. Bruce insists he won’t do it.

     Several customers in Valentine’s Day drag suddenly enter and sashay around the room. Fruity is an Aussie older man’s gay bar in which nearly all the customers have long known one another.

Geoffrey announces that Lindsay is about to perform, and the frightened and unsure man stands with mic in hand tentatively singing Marc Bolan and T. Rex’s “Solid Baby.” The audience soon joins in and Lindsay becomes more assured, and ends up singing quite splendidly.

      He finishes and almost dazed walks back to the bar. Jorge comes out of the kitchen, walks over the bar, and pours Lindsay and gin and tonic. He then walks around the bar, Lindsay assuring him he doesn’t go through with it, and puts a long deep kiss on Lindsay’s lips. The older man is astonished, almost out of breath as Bruce quips, “You realize from here it’s all downhill.”

      The two say goodbye, and Lindsay walks slowly off with a little swagger in his step.

     Certainly, there’s nothing profound in his little film, but it’s sense of realism and depiction of the importance this slightly sleazy Australian bar has in these older men’s lives provides it with a sense of humor and gravitas missing in so many short films with far more complex and consequential subjects. Although the comparison seems absurd, I might suggest that there is something even Joycean about this work in the way the great writer’s Dubliner stories manage to genuinely move us through the everyday talk of people in pubs and dining with their families.  

 

Los Angeles, December 21, 2023

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (December 2023).