Fotis Zampetakis | O Angelos ta Hristougenna (Angelos at Christmas) / 2021

a dark christmas fable

by Douglas Messerli

 

Fotis Zampetakis (screenwriter and director) O Angelos ta Hristougenna (Angelos at Christmas) / 2021 [18 minutes]

 

It’s Christmas in Athens, but if we expect a traditional Christmas tale, the fact that this film begins with a praying Christmas angel ornament falling over hints at seismic events of other possibilities.

 

    It’s Christmas in the city, with crowds of people, masses of children, and Angelos (Dimitris Georgalas), a 50-year-old handsome gray-haired man standing in a downtown bookstore eyeing a beautiful young boy reading a book which his mother refuses to buy for him.

      The camera pans down to show us the book through which he is leafing, an album of photographs of nude boys by photographer Wilhelm von Glœden who captured pictures of naked boys when such voyeurism and pedophilic attention in isolated Sardinia and other such spots did not produce the outrage as it would today. Is Angelo a pedophile, training he eyes on the young boys around him at Christmas Eve? This is a real possibility, we quickly realize, as three Albanian streets boys enter the store to sing a carol, the youngest of them collecting contributions in a Santa hat. The boy not only catches Angelos’ eyes but stares at it, almost demanding some interchange. 

      We can only wonder, is this child so very desperate that he’s willing to engage in sexual acts with older men just such as Angelos in exchange for money? Are we about to enter a pedophilic horror tale which will end in a tragic disaster for both man and boy? 

     Our fears seem to be confirmed, when Angelo follows the three out of the store, telling them they sang beautifully, and offering the youngest of them, Agim (Marios Nousias) 50 euros if he comes with them to his car, parked nearby.

        A man, clearly their handler, hovers nearby, and the older boys remind the younger that he’s watching, forcing Agim to refuse the offer.

        We breathe a sigh of relief. The man has not been able to lure the boy away from the others, although he realize that all these boys are involved in a scam of cute performances that perhaps puts them as much into the slavery of the man keeping watch.

        Angelos walks away, does some shopping, and returns to his car, opening the trunk to reveal several bags of Christmas shopping, including flowers—all suggesting a normality of behavior that seems oppositional to his previous actions.

      But there suddenly is the beautiful child, looking up at him with an angelic smile, obviously ready to take the chance for such a remarkable offering of 50 euros. In the next frame he is already in the car being driven off by Angelos.

         The boy show some slight suggestions of fear, but is basically ready for the adventure wherever it may take him, even putting his finger to his lips to warn another boy, obviously of his street-pleading Albanian group, to say nothing about having seen him. Angelos puts his finger to his lips and playfully laughs in sharing the secret.

 

         Like many a pedophile, Angelos tries to make the boy comfortable, sharing names and telling him to get comfortable by taking off his coat. They travel a long distance, finally stopping for lunch in a wooded area, by that time Arim feeling terribly sleepy.

         There is a ring on Angelo’s telephone, while the movie suddenly permits us to catch a glimpse a stylish apartment, with people gathered obviously for the Christmas celebration. The young man on the phone, clearly Angelos' gay lover, attempts to understand why Angelos hasn’t yet shown up for the celebration. But the delayed lover reports only: “Nothing serious, don’t worry, something urgent came up.”

         The young man is clearly troubled, however, asking him to explain and wondering if he has his “pill,” perhaps another suggestion that the young man’s lover is prone to psychological problems.

         In a few intermittent clips, Greek director Fotis Zampetakis permits us to see intimate scenes between the adult couple in bed, reading together. We witness them kissing, all suggesting a fairly normative, older / younger gay relationship.

         Back at the road stop, Angelos assures his friend and the others waiting for him that we will be there by nine o’clock. “I’m hanging up now because I’m driving baby.” We have to wonder whether he is addressing his lover as “baby” or literally clueing him in that he is truly driving a “baby” to god knows where? It is a situation fraught with fearful possibilities.

       Even his lover suggests to another guest, “Lately, he’s been acting strangely.” Are Angelos' dormant desires taking over his previous socially acceptable gay behavior? In this work, answers are delayed.

       Previously, Angelos has asked if Agim has a family, and now the boy asks the man the same question. His answer: “I’m not married, I don’t have children, but my friends are my family.”

          The precociously innocent boy asks, “Is that where we’re going? To your friends, your family?”

          We fear for the answer which is never provided.

         The clouds swirl and, a bit as in a Brothers Grimm fairy tale, the car moves deeper and deeper into a dark forest where Angelos seems to be carrying the child away for some dangerous assignation. We now feel almost as we have entered into the horror film we feared we might be watching from the very start. The beautiful Agim has now fallen asleep, Angelos looking toward him with a slight smile on his face, the villain grinning over the child which may soon be his prize.

          Finally, when it seems like they could go no farther, the car stops, Angelos announcing ominously, “This is the end of the road for us, buddy.” As his eyes widen, we can see the child is now quite terrified. Where is he? And for what purpose?

          The screen goes black.

      Angelo walks forward, Agim following. Angelos turns to the child. “We’ve arrived. Don’t be scared.” But both the boy and the audience most certainly are at this point in the story.

          But something shifts. He hands him a set some object and points to a large house set in the midst of this dark forest, telling him, as they evidently previously agreed, to visit it. The boy moves off alone, while Angelo watches far afar.

  

        Agim rings the doorbell and an old man comes to door, the boy asking “Can I sing carols?” as the old man calls into his wife. Suddenly as the child sings, the older people momentarily turn young, the boy ringing the tiny bells Angelo has given him. They ask him to spend Christmas with them, and we realize, almost too late, that this boy is a gift to Angelos’ parents whom the elder has clearly left at an early age because of his sexuality.

       The angel has returned home to the family who has lost their child far too early, the mother praying for her real son wherever he is.

        Angelos returns to his contemporary Athens home, where the party is now being fully celebrated , kissing everyone with Merry Christmas greetings, Angelos attending to his boyfriend with love.

         This dark fable, although obviously playing with our justifiably psychological fears, reveals its audience to be the cynics, while proving that the innocent Angelos has “stolen” (but also, in the true meaning of that word, “raped”) the boy from the streets only to provide him with the family he himself was not permitted, because of his sexuality, to enjoy.

        Of course, the movie makes no sense at all. Can we truly expect the Albanian street kind to completely assimilate to an old Greek couple’s expectation of living a traditional heterosexual life deep in the forest? This is a fable, not social reality. The child is an imaginative figure of what most gay men might have wanted to be for their parents before their "beloved son" slipped into a world they never could have imagined. And it that sense, it rewards the notion of heterosexual exceptionalness. But why not? It’s Christmas, and Angelos is embedded in a world far from their powerfully destructive normative embrace. The homeless Albanian boy might be perfectly happy in their manger, where Angelos clearly never was.

 

Los Angeles, January 8, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (January 2024).