Daniela Lucato | For the Time Being / 2018

love in a fog

by Douglas Messerli

 

Daniela Lucato (screenwriter and director) For the Time Being / 2018 [35 minutes]           

    

Italian-born German writer / director Daniel Lucato began her career as an actress. In this film she plays the previous lover of Roman (Crisjan Zöllner), the central character’s girlfriend, Stella. The film begins with him attempting to convince Stella that he has his alcohol problems under control and that he wants to begin again with their relationship, promising her children and a home in which they’ll change the colors of the walls every month to signify their new beginnings.

     She is not at all convinced, and is disgusted that he still has such machismo values as marrying and raising a family, particularly after what they have evidently recently suffered through. The handsome would-be lothario isn’t convincing.

     Stella leaves him, it appears, for her black lesbian lover.

    Although Roman has demanded their cat stays with him, he can’t even find the animal in order to feed it. And no one sees the cat throughout the film.

     A short while later the doorbell rings, a handsome young man Mel (Pascal Houdus) appearing at the door with a woman, describing her as his sister. He’s come to check out the rental room advertisement Roman has already posted.

      Roman shows him the room, and despite its emptiness, with hardly any furniture, Mel finds it to be perfect, without even asking for the rental price. He’s totally pleased with it and ready to move in the very next day, troubling the somewhat surly Roman.

      No sooner after Mel has moved it, Roman rightfully complains at the loud noises coming from his room from his new roomer’s player. But he is fascinated by Mel’s painting which he’s already placed in a prominent position. Roman storms out, but it’s clear he is intrigued by the handsome young man.

      A day or so later, he discovers the painting in his own room, as well as other objects, clearly gifts from his new flat mate. But Roman is furious, demanding he take his shit away.

      Although Mel apologizes profusely, it was actually meant as a gift for his new landlord, to whom it is clear he is somewhat attracted. But Roman makes it almost possible in his violence and lack of empathy, clearly the problem he has had with Stella as well.

      Roman reappears in Mel’s room to apologize, describing his reaction had nothing to do with him but with other emotional concerns. As they sit on his bed side by side, Mel moves closer and finally attempts to kiss him, Roman reacting in macho horror, pushing him away.

      A few days later, Mel’s sister visits, complaining of Mel’s pale feet, determining to paint his toenails. Obviously things with him and Roman have returned to semi-normal as Roman calls in that he’s going out, and wondering whether Mel needs anything.

      What he doesn’t know is that his sister has also brought friends, his gay companions whom he hasn’t apparently seen for some time. They bring liquor, dance, sing, and mostly hug.

       Roman returns to find an effeminate man in his kitchen, with one of Mel’s friends, shirt off,

being sprayed with whipped cream across his chest by his friends. Like an avenging angel, Roman enters, furious for the unannounced party in his own apartment. He pushes away the effeminate friend and grabs Mel around the neck, the young man protesting that the event it is nothing, as whatever pent-up emotions Roman has been carrying around suddenly explode, he bending into a long, passionate kiss with Mel before the next blackout of the film.

 

      Some time later, we see Mel and him alone, Roman calling him over to tell him it was his first time with a man. “Does it show?” Mel comments that the combination of fire and silence is nice.

        As if to demonstrate what so far we have not witnessed, director Lucato now engages the two in a love scene in which Roman shows his new lover (and clearly the viewer) what precisely the

fire and silence means in terms of a love scene. It’s nice, if not thoroughly convincing; we still feel a reticence between both of them, despite the visually fulfilling moments of hot sex.

 

      Yet both have come to realize that there is no romantic perfection, that, as Mel puts it, they are just swimming against the waves, doing their best. This is particularly appealing to the almost cynically but now brand-new lover Roman, who can only recall his past failures.

       What we have realized almost from the beginning is that these are two lost men who settle for what they can get, just as Mel has so easily accepted a nearly empty room, trying to make it is own, but ready to give up his most valued possessions to anyone who might demonstrate love.

        But Mel as also more practical and interruptive dreams: he wants to be a broker in London, something which Roman cannot even imagine. Nor, incidentally, can the audience.

 

       More importantly, when Mel goes to drink the nearby water bottle, he realizes it is liquor. Clearly Roman has returned to his old ways. Roman soon serves up a surprise lunch to an unexpected Mel—with a full bottle of wine, which clearly he had planned to drink by himself.

        Mel quickly recognizes the situation, wondering if Roman has been drinking every day, Roman reacting, perhaps justifiably, that it is rather unjust for Mel to suddenly act as his boyfriend.

     But Mel does truly care, and demands he stop, Roman once more arguing that he has “it under control.”

       When Roman suggests that other people are already interested in Mel’s room, he finally leaves, calling Roman, perhaps for the first time in his life, a faggot.

        Roman even pours out the wine, trying to bring Mel back into his life. But he cannot change reality. Mel is moving to London.

        As Roman sits alone in his room, Mel drops in, asking if he is all right. Roman describes that it’s not that we wants to drink, but that he cannot stop himself. And then he feels at peace, a peace with the world. Mel finally admits that the reason he didn’t have a relationship with his father, was that he too was an alcoholic, drinking himself to death, something which Roman well comprehends.

        In the last seconds of this film, we witness Roman looking out the window, apparently as Mel moves out.

        Although Lucato’s film is somewhat difficult to totally believe given Roman’s sudden and rather inexplicable transformation from a heterosexual into a gay man, once you accept his metamorphosis you can perceive it as a truly sensitive and beautifully filmed movie with actors Zöllner (who reminds me intensely of Willem Dafoe) and Pascal Houdus performing as if this were an top grade feature film, to which at moments this short work seems to aspire to become. Fireworks truly ignite, even if the story waters down every rubbing of the characters genitals with just enough alcohol to cease the spectacular wonders.

       This is a profound film of good intentions lost in the mist of the alcoholic fog of reality in the manner of the greatest of such novels and cinema renditions, Under the Volcano.

 

Los Angeles, January 8, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (January 2024).