Madeleine Gottlieb | Walking Gambit / 2023 (TV series, Erotic Stories, Episode 5)

finding what he thought he lost

by Douglas Messerli

 

Adrian Chiarella (screenplay), Madeleine Gottlieb (director) Walking Gambit / 2023 [28 minutes] (TV series, Erotic Stories, Episode 5)

 

Although TV has certainly matured in the US, occasionally bringing highly sophisticated LGBTQ material into the framework of the still basically sexually terrified medium, I can’t imagine a short film as sophisticated as Australian director Madeleine Gottlieb’s Walking Gambit on US television.

      Presented as Episode 5 in an Aussie TV series devoted to “erotic stories”—of which only 2 episodes were gay—this film begins in a man, Patrick (Yuchen Wang) walking his dog one night late in a public park. The park clearly is a favorite cruising ground for both gay and straight couple, the former in great profusion in various forms of undress and sexual positions. As happens in these situations, a particularly sexual arousing couple fucking, draws several people, including Patrick to briefly surround the couple in pure voyeurism.

       Eventually, however, Patrick moves off, tying up his dog, Gambit, to a tree, as he moves on into deeper brush to hook up with a handsome man Cyrus (Dominic Ona-Ariki). The couple have apparently enjoyable sex, but when Patrick returns to reclaim his pet, he discovers him gone, and angrily blaming himself, slamming his fist into the tree, bloodying it, as he goes in search of Gambit.

       He reencounters Cyrus, the man with whom he has just had sex, who when Patrick briefly describes the problem, offers to help him find the dog and even dress his bloodied hand, suggesting that in most such cases the animal will return home, offering to drive him to his house.

        But Patrick, at first, seems disinterested in his help, and we suspect, as Cyrus also seems to hint, that Patrick may be one of the many married men who tell their husbands and wives they’re off to walk the dog while actually seeking out other sexual partners. And when Patrick, finally allowing him to drive him home, asks him to let him out a few blocks away, we are almost convinced that that it precisely the situation, particularly when a woman, Fiona, calls to tell him she’ll see him the next day.

        Gambit is not at home, and Patrick, who has provided his pet with an implanted chip, calls the animal services phoneline, they promising to be on the search for the dog as well. And the next morning, Patrick calls his employer to tell them he is sick, while he goes on search for the dog, once again encountering his sexual partner of the previous night.

        Yet again, Patrick remains unfriendly and refuses to fully communicate with the quite friendly and seemingly willing to help Cyrus. But Cyrus, who describes his himself as a gardener, finally does begin to make some small communication with Patrick, who reveals he is a teacher of high school students. And the two gradually begin some early communications, even agreeing that their sexual encounter was fulfilling for both of them. It almost seems that they might develop a relationship as the go calling through the park for Gambit.

        In director Gottlieb’s complex work, in fact, we begin to discover not only that the previous evening was the first time Patrick ever visited the park, but that he is—or as we quickly discover was—a married man, whose gay partner was precisely the kind of person who Cyrus had described. Patrick admits that the two discussed almost everything with one another, but, although he knew or, at least, suspected that his husband’s nightly journeys to walk Gambit involved sex, they never once discussed it. And it was not until one night that he received a call—presumably to report that his lover had been killed by one of his nighttime partners—that Patrick had his fears confirmed.

      His journey into the park, in part, was an attempt to understand why his otherwise loving and loyal husband did not feel that their own relationship wasn’t enough: “And I’ll never know why. Why I wasn’t enough.”

       We also sense Cyrus’ basic goodness, and his possible ability to offer something to replace Patrick’s confusion and longing for his former companion. But when Patrick accidently meets a gay librarian from the school, who when told about the loss of his dog, also wants to enter into the search for Gambit, Patrick’s entire mood yet again shifts. Embarrassed by being seen by a friend with another man in the park, where even his friend warns him that there are “perverts in the bush,” leads Patrick to turn on Cyrus and demand he leave him alone in his desperate search to find the one thing the two former lovers shared and which still symbolizes that lost love.

      Calling out over and over for “Gambit,” which we realize might describe Patrick’s entire nighttime outing—a risk he has taken to gain an advantage over the horrific situation that brought about his lover’s loss—appears almost as a surreal attempt to call back the night, not only of his own recent experience, but those many, many evenings which stole his husband from his own bed.

      Amazingly he discovers the dog, but now with another man holding the leash. Gambit immediately recognizes his owner and Patrick is delighted with the discovery. But the stranger insists that the dog is not Patrick’s, that he knows the man who owns the dog—obviously Patrick’s husband. He has taken the dog because he has not seen his friend, obviously a regularly sexual partner in the park, and was delighted, so he suggests, that perhaps the man had returned and that through the dog he might find him once again.

     But from Patrick’s reaction, he suddenly recognizes the truth, that Gambit is his dog as well as the stranger’s nighttime sex partner. He apologizes for having taken the dog, and admits that he barely knew him, not even his name. He tries to explain: “Something happens here. It feels like…like…um, like being alive.”  As the man turns to go, Patrick calls out, “Hey, just so you know. He won’t be back.” The scene is so very painful that it tears at the heart, the lover reaching out to explain, indirectly to one of the men who stole his own husband’s love, so that he too might share in his sense of bereftness. “He’s gone.”

 

     Cyrus once more shows up, Gambit seeming to truly like the friendly stranger. “You found him,” Cyrus says. Patrick’s agreement clearly stands for more than just the dog.

      Writer Adrian Chiarella has brilliantly expressed what gay men search for in such public parks, woods, and dark meeting-up spots around the world, that cruising is not always just about sex, but as the stranger has attempted to explain, about hope, about feeling that the individual is still sexually alive. Even the monogamous Patrick has perhaps learned that potentially love can be found in even these strange and dangerous spots.

 

Los Angeles, January 23, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (January 2024).