Pascal Mörchen | Semicolon / 2017

adding to the list

by Douglas Messerli

 

Pascal Mörchen (screenwriter and director) Semicolon / 2017 [26 minutes]

 

Like many a young high school student, Timo (Christoph Stuhlmann) is having a difficult time dealing with his gay sexuality while hanging out with his straight friends. He is in love with one of his friends, Chris (Philipp Wieser), but has been busy on the internet with a new contact named “Mr. Boy.”

 

    Although he’s popular with his group of friends, even they notice he is preoccupied with his cellphone and vague about questions they put to him. In particular, his female friend Sowie (Lisa Brockhoff) has been noticing his distraction from their group gatherings.

     When suddenly a fellow student, Lars (Lukas Prangenberg) announces to the entire class that he is gay, Timo feels that perhaps he too can come out. He first confesses that he’s gay to Sowie, and when his friends begin talking about Lars’ strange public “coming out,” Timo finally gets up the nerve to tell the group that he too is gay, adding it somewhat like a “semicolon,” linking himself to the boy he barely knows.

      Their reaction is not at all what he might have expected, particularly since Chris describes him as a fag and demeans the very idea while the others basically remain quiet. Timo races from the room with tears rolling down his eyes. By the time he reaches home, his mother calls him in, having observed some of their comments on his internet which he has forgotten to turn off. She too is highly distressed by the idea that her son is gay and by the time Timo’s father returns home and she reports the news, the boy can hear from his bedroom his father insisting that his son cannot be gay. No son of a heterosexual father can be gay, evidently, in the world of LGBTQ movies.

     Even worse, someone on the internet threatens to tell the entire class of his sexuality if he doesn’t meet him in the park at 9 pm. Why Timo does so is not explained. Perhaps he is simply curious or maybe he hopes it’s simply a hoax.  Surely he’s simply afraid to become an outcast from the entire world he once was part of. But whoever he meets in the park doesn’t give him the opportunity for discussion, instead slugging him in the nose and bloodying his face. 

    Seeing no way out and feeling particularly distraught by Chris’ rejection, like many a young male and female in his situation, Timo gathers together a large number of pills, goes to a park near a church nearby and, one by one, begins to swallow them down.

      Fortunately, this movie does not include yet another gay suicide of a queer victim, but its solution represents a far too easy denouement as Chris suddenly comes bicycling by, drops his bike and runs over to pull the pills out of Timo’s hands, admitting that he loves him, that he was the mysterious “Mr. Boy.” Timo responds in kind as the two kiss and all ends well as the credits roll.

    This short movie by German director Pascal Mörchen offers no solution for when this poor boy must return home to his homophobic parents, so his “coming out” still offers little dramatic solace. And what about the violent stalker? Surely by the morning he and perhaps Chris as well will become the school’s new version of Lars. And what, we can only ask, ever became of Lars? Why didn’t we learn more about him if his situation is so similar to the movie’s hero? Perhaps this film has left itself with far too many semicolons, additions to the syntax of the plot which it hasn’t fully explored. There is something dangerous, perhaps, in simply adding names and issues to a list. We need to comprehend each individual and situation separately, rather than as a collective.

 

Los Angeles, February 18, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (February 2024).