Jules Nurrish | Kiss Me / 2012

frozen between a violent punch and a kiss

by Douglas Messerli

 

Jules Nurrish (screenwriter and director) Kiss Me / 2012 [11 minutes]

 

Much like the African-American homosexual welterweight boxing champion Emile Griffith—recently depicted in the Metropolitan Opera’s production of Terence Blanchard’s Champion, which premiered in 2013, with the Met production occurring in 2022—Nurrish’s short film of 2012 features a queer latino man, Kid Vargas (Raúl Castillo) facing off with the Jonny (Javier Lezama), which ends in the latter’s death, mostly due to a taunt about his sexuality.

 

    Even before the fight gets started, Jonny has managed to whisper into Kid Vargas’s ear, “I know who you are Kid,” sending him into a spin of horror, not only because of his opponents purposeful demeaning of him but because of his closeted homosexuality.

     UCLA film student Jules Nurrish’s work alternates between the Kid’s return home to his wife and child after the fight and the incidents in the ring where he ended up knocking out his opponent, in the process also killing him.

     When his son asks if he won the fight, Kid answers, “Not really,” confusing the boy whose mother has told him his father beat him. The distress of Kid is evident, as he scolds his wife (Sylvia Vargas) for having told Manny that we won the fight. And in a furor the boxer leaves the house.

     In his long walk, he encounters two men kissing under a bridge, his long look back at them indicating his own fascination and desires as he moves forward to his old boxing club, but finding it closed, sleeps outside its doorway for the night, being awakened by the manager, his friend Benny (Hansford Prince).  

     After checking his eye, Benny suggests he should start training again the next week. But it’s clear that Kid has no intentions of returning. Benny assures him that what happened to him could happen to anybody, and Benny tells his own story of how he knocked out an Irish boxer long ago who went to the hospital with brain damage.

      But Benny’s sympathy doesn’t work, as Kid argues that he’s not fighting anymore.

     Benny insists he go home and get some sleep, talk to his wife Sylvia. But Benny hints that there’s something more to the story when he declares, “This ain’t got anything to do with Sylvia.” 

    After a few more frames of the fight scenes and the repetition of the taunt, we see Kid almost embracing another fighter, walking him around the ring as if they were in a slow dance.

     Sylvia is understandably furious with the fact that he has stayed out the night without letting her know where he was, and he awakens to the tromping of her feet, having returned from shopping. She’s been to the gym and Benny has told he of Kid’s intentions to quit fighting. The family is nearly broke as it is, and obviously she is terrified of the consequences. Evidently working as a maid, she wonders what makes him so special that he just walk away to return to bed.

      She attempts to interest him in sex, but he doesn’t even respond, as she pulls away, recognizing that there is a deeper problem between them. She challenges him by suggesting that other men look at her, other men want her, leading Kid to shout “Why don’t you go fuck other men!” their child being awakened in the fracas.      

      Back in the ring, the Kid relives the knockout, the realization that his opponent is dead.

    Unless this highly conflicted man can come to terms with his sexuality, there is no solution to his dilemma, and he remain a man frozen in space between a violent punch and a kiss.

 

Los Angeles, March 7, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (March 2024).