Aaron Chan | Anniversary / 2012

handmade gifts are better

by Douglas Messerli

 

Aaron Chan (screenwriter and director) Anniversary / 2012 [4 minutes]

 

Having just finished his university final exams, Jorge (Ryan Clayton) is on the phone with a friend when he suddenly notes that today is his and his boyfriend’s first anniversary. He quickly hangs up,

trying to imagine what he should bring when they meet up. He shows up to the place where they evidently planned to meet with a rose in hand.

    While waiting he observes a woman (Bekki Mergens), also holding a flower, whose lesbian partner (Maggie Chan) shows up, startled by the fact that her friend has had no more imagination than to bring her a flower. The girlfriend stalks off, her friend, still with flower in hand, running after her.

     A moment later, Jorge now has a guilt-edged picture frame in hand as a present for his boyfriend Lucas (Brendan James Boyd). But soon after he observes a girl (Ann Wang) run up to her boyfriend (Chenda Lee) with the same gift, the young man not particularly charmed by the predictable token of her love. Nonetheless, he kisses her and they walk off together.

     In the next scene we see the handsome Lucas standing nearby, with cinema tickets for the 7:20 film. Jorge walks up to him, handing him a paper flower, which clearly Lucas sees as the slightest of gestures, but good-naturedly greets him with a kiss nonetheless. As he turns to move on, however, Jorge gestures for him to come and look, inviting us as well through the camera to join him.

   On a nearby wall he has painted the words “I love you.” The boys pose in several positions beside the wall-painting in absolute delight.

      Up to this point this charming short parable has been in black-and-white, but the last frame is in color, showing presumably another wall in what must now be their shared apartment, a purple paper flower in a vase next to an unframed picture of the two of them standing by Jorge’s original wall-painting.

 

Los Angeles, March 26, 2024

 Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (March 2024).