Faustine Crespy | Famille nucléaire (Nuclear Family) / 2020

the plastic-covered ghost

by Douglas Messerli

 

Faustine Crespy (screenwriter and director) Famille nucléaire (Nuclear Family) / 2020 [19 minutes)

 

Every summer Adèle (Catherine Grosjean) takes her son Jules (Louka Minnella) and his younger brother to a French nudist camp where she sits about naked, mostly drinking and demanding the attention of her son of Jules, now 18-years-old, and not at all as his age so comfortable about nudity, particularly given that he is gay.

     The film begins with Jules giving blood at a small trailer located on the local beach, as a handsome young man, Karim (Syrus Shahidi) queries him about any diseases and sexual activity, all the questions answered in the negative, which makes it clear that so far it has been a most uneventful summer for Jules.

     Part of his problem is that he is, in fact, the caretaker for both his mother and his 6-yeaar-old young brother. He cooks, looks after his brother and tries to ignore the endlessly sexual glances and comments of his nearly shameless mother, who would clearly take him into her bed if only she could. When the brother Tom (Lohen Van Houtte) asks if he might taste her beer, Adèle is ready to pass him her glass, and it is only Jules’ intrusion stops her from providing a pre-adolescent with alcohol. She complains that her elder son is just like his father, who obviously has left her and the boys—given what we’ve already observed of her behavior, with good reason. The big-breasted, heavy assed woman gets mad and storms off, leaving Jules, once more, to care for Tom alone.

 

    We see Jules frustratedly changing shirts as he plans to go out for the night, no mother still in sight, Tom at least safely in his room. He tells their neighbor to keep an eye on Tom, telling her brother that their mother surely must be nearby if there’s any problem.

     Tom goes in search of Karim, who he is told is on his break. His substitute, however, points over further on the beach where Karim in resting, apparently asleep. Tom sits down in a spot nearby. When Karim finally notices Tom, he invites him over as a friend. And before long he’s made a date for that night to celebrate Karim’s last evening at the resort.

      By the time he returns Tom is at the neighbor’s sharing her son’s tent. Adèle is still not to be found, and Jules, his little brother in hand goes in search of his mother. When he finally spots her she is in the non-nude part of the beach attempting to find Jules through Karim’s co-worker. Jules does not attempt to intrude for fear of being connected with the mad woman, appearing nude where least expected. They beg her to get up since she needs to be dressed on that part of the beach.

     Jules sends Tom to retrieve her. Back in the cabin Jules dresses her and put the fully drunken woman to bed. And even then she grabs him and tries to tell him how loved he is. She would surely pull him down into her bed if possible.

      What she has done is make him late for his appointment. He races the beach, but Karim finally grows impatiently with his lateness and leaves without him. Jules lays down in the sand in front of the blood trailer, only to see an image of what looks to be his mother wrapped in plastic come again in an attempt to reclaim him, almost like a ghost, which she herself claims to be—a woman long out of her prime who has never been able to except the consequences of aging.

      She sits down beside him and takes out a cigarette. Jules finally says what he should perhaps have stated long again: “You have to leave me alone, Mum.”

       Adèle finally answers rationally, “I know.”

       But, as she attempts to touch his cheek yet again, he pulls away, gets up, and walks off in tears, his plastic-wrapped ghost waddling behind him.

       Jules has lost perhaps his chance to experience his first love, and she has most definitely lost her son. The nuclear family has long before collapsed.

 

Los Angeles, December 11, 2023

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (December 2023).

Francis Boggs ? | The Pasha's Daughter / 1911

behind the veil

by Douglas Messerli

Lloyd Longergan ? (screenplay), Francis Boggs ? (director) The Pasha’s Daughter / 1911

 

We do not know the director of the Thanhouser Company’s production of the 13.49-minute film from 1911, The Pasha’s Daughter. The internet film site Fandor attributes the work to Francis Boggs (director of the 1908 film version of The Count of Monte Cristo), whereas other sources suggest it probably is the work of Barry O’Neil or Lucius J. Henderson. The most likely scenarist of the film is Lloyd Lonergan, a long-time newspaper reporter who may have written about the real event upon which this short was based. The male leads are played by William Garwood and William Russell, presumably Garwood acting as the American traveler Jack and Russell performing as the Turkish Pasha.

      Jack is touring Turkey by train when he encounters the Pasha who, seated in his train car, suddenly finds himself without his billfold to pay for his ticket; Jack quickly comes to the rescue, paying for the older man’s fare.

      In appreciation of his kindness the Pasha invites him to his home for the night. While the Pasha enjoys his hookah, Jack follows the servant to his designated room, returning soon after to enjoy the company of the Pasha.

      Suddenly and quite inexplicably soldiers arrive to denounce the Pasha as being a conspirator against the government, and soon after they arrest Jack as well.

      In prison at one point Jack overpowers a guard and attempts to escape, but is immediately caught by another guard and returned to the cell. Soon after, seeing a blanket laying on his bed, it gets the idea of how to escape. Applying his pocketknife to the molding of cell window, he is able to pry loose one bar, and, having tied up the parts of the blanket into a long rope, slips through the window and drops to freedom.

       He is quickly met by another guard but is able to overpower him before climbing a second wall to drop into the courtyard of the Pasha’s palace.

       A few minutes earlier we observed the Pasha’s daughter and other women of the harem waiting in the garden to meet with the Pasha, who evidently has been freed of the conspiracy charges. Now Jack encounters the daughter alone, explaining to her his situation and begging for help.

      The daughter, Murana, calls her servant and insists that he prepare Jack for escape. Meanwhile other guards enter the courtyard quizzing both the daughter and her manservant if they have seen the young American. Her face hidden behind her veil, she shakes her head “no” as does her servant.

      Insisting that Jack smoke the hookah, the servant tells him the only way to escape is to dress like one of the harem women, providing him with a costume. Presumably, he is convinced that the only way he can get the young Jack into female custom is to drug him, but after a few puffs of the hookhah, Jack laughingly accepts the challenge, dressing in a gown and hiding his face behind the traditional veil. (With the incidents of a young American being arrested and locked away in a Turkish prison along with his use of drugs, one might almost imagine this film to be the precursor of Midnight Express of 1978.)

      Murana reappears to check on him, he thanking her for her help. When he pleads to see her face, and she offers him a view, he is stunned by her beauty and begs her to escape with him so that they might marry, an odd marriage proposal given that he is dressed in female garb. 

     The daughter tells him she cannot join him but perhaps will meet him some time in the future, presenting him with a flower, he, in turn, gifting her with his calling card on which is printed his address so that if she ever reaches the US she know where to find him. They kiss and he escapes.

       A year later Jack and his mother, back in the US, are standing in the living room when the Pasha’s daughter, now dressed in western clothing, is ushered in, she telling him that since she has now arrived in the new world, she is ready to marry.

       He is intrigued, but doesn’t quite recognize the beauty, and she turns as if to leave, looking back toward him for a moment as she holds up the lace overlay of her dress to mask the lower part of her face. Suddenly he realizes it is Murana and rushes to embrace her, introducing her to his mother who apparently has heard a great deal about the young woman he met in Turkey.

      At least to this “reader” of the film, his inability to recognize her, despite the fact that she previously revealed her face, suggests that he is more interested in the erotic allure of the woman than the actual flesh and bones being. It appears that the veil that once saved him is what attracted the young Jack to the Pasha’s daughter as well. If you read this as a coded message—and I don’t believe it was intended to be one—you might argue that Jack appears to prefer things that hidden to what is openly revealed.

      This film survives in the archives of The Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

 

Los Angeles, April 28, 2021

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog and World Cinema Review (April 2021).