Alexandre Authier and Johan Gayraud | Max / 2019

a kiss

by Douglas Messerli

 

Sarah Borgi (screenplay), Alexandre Authier and Johan Gayraud (directors) Max / 2019 [6 minutes]

 

Two friends are drunk and rather heavily drugged when Antoine, an out gay boy, goes for a kiss with his friend, Max, who insists he’s straight. Max attempts to reject the kiss, but when Antoine continues, he pushes him forcibly away, calling him a “PD” (the French term for “faggot”). He immediately apologizes for the word: “Listen Antoine, that’s not what I meant.” But it has caused at least a temporary rupture in their friendship.

     Max attempts to resolve the situation by repeating that he simply doesn’t like “men,” reminding Antoine that they’re both drunk.

      This is a story played out hundreds of times between friends where one is gay or, at least, more adventuresome, and the other is not. Is the aggressor simply at fault for aggressing or has he, in fact, sensed a desire, a willingness for him to continue what, after all, is a rather innocent act. Today, of course he could be arrested if the other claimed that he was being sexually abused. Yet that seems so incredibly harsh for an attempted kiss, unwanted or not. Where does one draw the line?

      In this case, Antoine knows his friend well. They have a history. And he begins to drill him with sexual questions such as “Think about it when your girlfriend has to put her finger up your ass in order for you to come?” What is he really saying? Many straight men also enjoy anal stimulation.

       The next challenge may be more to the point. “Think about when you’re drunk and you won’t stop groping me?” Or, “Think about when you disappear in the gay club at 2 in the morning and you don’t answer my texts until noon.”

       Max insists that none that means anything. And that he’s not drunk enough to kiss Antoine. Max moves into a slightly homophobic mode, generalizing, but quickly correcting himself: “See, that’s problem with you people…I mean, you. I can’t do anything without you trying to hit on me.” He even doubts that Antoine is a true friend.

       Antoine insists that he truly is a friend, but that Max should just admit that he’s deeply closeted.

       “Shut up! You’re talking shit.”

       “Now we can truly talk. That’s the problem with ‘straight people,’ you all think we’re in love with you.”

        But Max counters that he’s fed up with his “tantrums.” “You’re insufferable with me and everyone else since your ex dumped you. You’re impulsive, you fight with your friends, and you want to fuck everything that moves.

        If Antoine has hit a soft spot in Max’s defenses, Max has now deeply hurt him.

     Antoine argues that it is easy for others like Max to talk about his ex, when he wasn’t there. “Nobody was there for me.” Yes, he may be sensitive about it, but he hasn’t had to hide anything.

        “So, what’s wrong,” Antoine continues in his queries about the contradictions that he’s noticed in his friend’s behavior. “Are you afraid to disappoint your family?”

        Max insists that it has nothing to do with his family.

        “So what are you afraid of?”

        “Yeah, I’m afraid,” admits Max. “I’m afraid to become a narcissistic asshole like you. I’m afraid to become someone who gives life lessons but can’t sort out his own fucking messy life.”

        Antoine does not even attempt to answer his charges, simply responding from the pain of the facts, shouting out: “So why can’t you love me?”

         “I don’t know,” Max simply responds.

         At this point I felt this short film would definitely end up like another I’d just seen earlier in the day, Andrew Gillingham’s 2017 short film Banana, where his friend ends up rejecting him, admitting he just can’t love him, that liking someone is not the same as loving him or her.

         Max answers simply and honestly, “I don’t know.”

         But Antoine drives even that comment home to a fear of homosexuality instead of recognizing that it might be another issue. “You’re scared of being called a faggot, aren’t you?”

         Max begs him to stop.

         “Maybe I’m a faggot,” Antoine responds, “but at least I have balls.”

         Max slaps his face.

         Antoine shoves back, and the two are suddenly in a face-to-face moment of possible combat, broken the moment Max kisses him, Antoine kissing back, and the two falling into a deep bussing session that reveals Max’s true emotional state.

         French directors Alexandre Authier and Johan Gayraud might have ended their intense dialogue between two characters as simply that, an intellectual exercise that demonstrates the failure of both sides, and represents the dangers of attempting to love someone who is not willing or ready to return that love. Instead, they have turned their short work of cinema into a series of challenges which finally have the effect of helping the confused Max to come out.

    I’d argue, finally, that a kiss begins always innocently, being just a sign, a gesture, a signal of desire. But a kiss is never just a kiss, but is also an expression of the inner emotional state too dangerous to put on immediate display. The kiss is a signal through an external sensitive body part, the lips, that hints at what lies deep within, sometimes dormant, at other times ready to fully come into action, brought to the surface through the act that claims intimacy with the other in the hope that eventually the two can explore those other more dangerous realms of intense emotions.

 

Los Angeles, March 8, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema (March 2024).