Otoja Abit | A New York Christmas Wedding / 2020

watch out for angels

by Douglas Messerli

 

Otoja Abit (screenwriter and director) A New York Christmas Wedding / 2020 [TV Movie]

 

In Netflix’s 2020 Christmas TV movie offering, Jennifer Ortiz (Nia Fairweather, the younger Jennifer played by Camilla Harden) is about to marry the heir to a Fortune 500 company, David Wilks (Otoja Abit), having met him, presumably when she worked at Goldman Sachs before she left her job to become a low-paid veterinarian assistant, a self-demotion that has not gone unnoticed by David’s nasty dominating mother, Alison Wilks (Tyra Ferrell).

      As Jennifer meets the future in-laws for dinner in a David’s Manhattan apartment, it becomes apparent that Mrs. Wilks has planned out the entire wedding, from the Christmas Eve date down to the table flower decorations complete with cinnamon sticks. She has even made an appointment with fashion designer Vera Wang for Jennifer’s wedding dress.

      As might be expected Jennifer, a girl originally from the Queens, is more than a little taken aback by all the surprise plans for her own wedding and perturbed that her future hubby David dares not say a word to his mother to support her own reservations. Having lost her father and a best friend at Christmas, she isn’t comfortable with having a “Christmas Eve” wedding and frankly would prefer a courthouse marriage with a couple of close friends as witnesses—an impossibility of course given her boyfriend’s celebrity parents.

       She leaves the table, changes into her sweats, and decides, quite late at night, to take a jog. Clearly an unadvisable act in the empty streets of city wealth. And wouldn’t you know, almost the moment she leaves the apartment building she witnesses a stoned driver hit a bicyclist? She rushes to check on his well-being and to demand the driver produce his insurance card. The driver gets back into the car and speeds off. Not to worry about the cute gay boy, however, as we immediately recognize him to be an angel named Azrael Gabison (Copper Koch). I mean that literally. Yes, he’s a nice gay guy who—as she walks him down the streets just make sure he isn’t suffering from a concussion—is not only ready to hear her woes but her entire life story. After all, he’s a complete stranger. What has she got to lose?

       Fortunately, her flash-back begins in 1999, not at birth, the Christmas Eve day when she baked cookies, mixed up some alcoholic eggnog and called up her best friend Gabrielle Vernaci (Adriana DeMeo, the younger Gabby performed by Natasha Goodman) reminding her of her promise to help her decorate the Christmas tree. But Gabby is busy with the local school drop-out Vinnie (Avery Whitted), about to have sex, and demands she leave her alone, in response to which Jennifer pours the eggnog down the drain, dumps the plate of cookies into the trash, and dashes off a letter saying that she never wants to hear from or even talk her friend Gabby ever again, immediately posting it, something she will regret—at least for many years—since soon after Gabby got pregnant, had a still-born child, and quite purposely stepped out into traffic to be killed by a passing car.

      That still-born child, the film soon perversely reveals, is none other than Azrael Gabison (get it? “Gabby’s son”) the gay angel patiently listening to all this.

       The trope of a guardian angel suddenly appearing after you’ve died or are contemplating suicide is fairly common. Generally, however, it ends badly. Scrooge was told by three such spirits (Christmases past, present, and future) how things would turn out if he didn’t change his ways; Billy Bigelow got to return home from heaven for just a day in Carousel only to learn how he had missed out on the most important things in life, much like Emily in Our Town who found her one day return filled with pain since the living, she discovers, are so very unaware of life; and George Bailey of It’s a Wonderful Life returns to Bedford Falls after his death to discover that without him his hometown has turned out to be a vile city with even meaner folk.

       I suppose in order to waylay any of those possibilities and in recognition that Jennifer is not really contemplating death, but just at an impasse about her wedding plans, writer and director Otoja Abit lets his heroine have a chance to experience an “alternative life,” a life that could have happened if, let’s imagine, her father and Gabby hadn’t died. But it’s truly an odd place for a gay still-born angel to send anybody, particularly since the world she uncovers supposedly can’t happen since everyone is dead except for the woman experiencing a life with them.

      Oh well, I guess if God can make a still-born fetus into a gay angel it must be worth taking a chance just to find out where the hell it takes her. We already know it will take her back to Gabby, who surviving the betrayal of her best friend, has not only forgiven her but is about to marry her—on Christmas Eve nonetheless.

     This might have been a lot of fun, since the 30-some year-old Jennifer has no idea what’s happening in this alternative world, suddenly realizing that she’s in a lesbian relationship—without having evidently any prior lesbian sexual experience—that they have a dog whose name and gender she doesn’t know, and discovering that her father inexplicably is still living—all of which is treated by the others as if she had only a momentary memory lapse like quirky fits of behavior that most of us might have quickly feared hinted at early onset of Alzheimer’s. Is it any wonder when she and lover get into bed to make love, Jennifer is not really sure what to do? Gay sex in this movie, accordingly, consists mostly of cuddling up to the other and stroking an arm or a shoulder.

       What’s more, Gabby has arranged a meeting with their local parish priest to try to convince him, despite his conservative record, to open up his parish to same-sex individuals and marry them the very next evening! Gabby does all the talking while Jennifer sits like the stone log she has accused her fiancé David of having been. No matter, the priest who has cared for them since they were children refuses to go against the Church’s traditional position.

     In the process of Gabby’s amazing activism regarding all things, Jennifer falls in love all over again, as we discover on that long ago day, the reason she had invited Gabby over was to tell her how deeply she felt. This film seems to suggest that if you lose your first object of same-sex desire the only solution is to become heterosexual.

      On the other hand, as the angel has suggested in this alternative world, anything can happen. Since Pope Francis has said he liked homosexuals, their friendly priest decides overnight that it is time for a change. In her review in Slate titled “Ballad of a Flamboyantly Gay Dead Fetus,” critic Christina Cauterucci outlines the total absurdity of the new plot twist:

 

“Gabby begs the priest to flout the Catholic Church and marry her and Jennifer, because “the Supreme Court ruled” and Pope Francis is kinder toward gays than his predecessors. (For all of its waylaid themes, this movie is suddenly about homophobia in faith communities too.) The priest rebuffs the couple for what we’re told is the second time. But the next day, at the parish Christmas service, he gives a big speech about how Catholics need to stop being homophobic to prevent more gay Catholic suicides. He literally says “love is love,” to cheers from the parishioners (with a few nominal walkouts). He then calls out the names of every queer person in the congregation and brings them up to the altar, effectively outing them, so they can all take communion together while the straight congregants look on approvingly. The priest says this is a big deal and some kind of first—but in real life, the Catholic Church doesn’t bar gay people from communion. It does require that people confess their sins before communion, and it deems gay sex a sin, so I guess if any of the queer people who were non-consensually summoned to the altar had had gay sex and not confessed it to a priest yet, the communion-giving would have contravened Catholic teaching….”

 

      If you’re not astounded by these events, you might certainly be when, unbeknownst to Jennifer and perhaps to Gabby he decides to marry them on the spot, producing matching gold rings for the occasion (a gift from the parish?). And then when the girls rush home to change clothes, Jennifer is told that somehow Gabby has been able to find the time to buy her a stunningly slinky new red dress (somewhat strange, since Jennifer has complained about her mother-in-law’s table decorations of being too “red”). They rush back to celebrate their marriage with the entire parish, Jennifer now a married woman while also simultaneously realizing that this is not really happening and, that as soon as Azrael reappears, she must go back to David and to heterosexual normality. What has she gotten herself into, we have to ask, regarding both her past and her present.

 

    This time when she wakes up in bed, it is David, not a strange dog, pawing her. And a decision must be made about their wedding plans, although it appears that Jennifer doesn’t yet realize that since she has lost her former girlfriend, she might find another woman to love in all of metropolitan New York.

      Instead, she drags David back to Queens, a place to where he apparently has never been and never once realized that black men lived. It’s all a bit confusing, but we quickly perceive that we are now back in the present, even if David somehow as never even imagined the real world in which he’s supposed to be living.

     In visiting the old church, they discover that her priest is no longer there, having been removed for illegally officiating same-sex marriages. But we also discover from the tell-tale lesbian secretary that it was that same priest who had insisted that Gabby have her baby instead of aborting it, and so in a sense was actually responsible for her apparent suicide after the stillborn baby.

      Speaking of stillborns, the angel shows up once more, this time with a new piece of information he’s been holding back. Jennifer can return to the past if she desires to rectify matters, or simply go ahead with her future—although of course if she chooses far enough in the past, the fetus will no longer be and she will lose forever her guardian angel. She chooses to go back the day of the fight.

      This time she does not immediately react when Gabby demands she leave her alone. And Gabby doesn’t go through with having sex with Vinny, showing up instead with a basket of candy canes to help decorate the tree. Jennifer gets the opportunity to tell her she loves her, and two get in a quick mouth to mouth peck before they settle down to the serious business of decorating that tree, only to discover a miniature angel that looks a lot like Azrael already hanging on a branch.

      In the end, I have to agree with Cauterucci’s assessment that this bizarre tale, presumably found to be perfect for Netflix distribution, is “a cautionary tale about teen pregnancy, stillbirth, suicide, and time travel as the only way for an adult to be her true queer self.” Certainly, it’s not at all about an adult lesbian relationship with women who engage in real sex. This is a movie, after all, in which even the dead fetuses of gay angels are not safe!

 

Los Angeles, December 25, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (December 2022).