Lisa Marie Gamlem | Bennys gym (Benny's Gym) / 2007

rehearsals for a male heterosexual life

by Douglas Messerli

 

Lisa Marie Gamlem (screenwriter and director) Bennys gym (Benny's Gym) / 2007 [25 minutes]

 

Alfred (Atdhe Belegu), age 12 or 13, is regularly bullied by some of his classmates, Benny (Kim Erik Tena Eriksen), Petter (Johannes Sejersted Bødtker), and others, a kind of school gang of which Benny is the leader.

 

    There is no logical reason why they have chosen Alfred at this age, except that he is quiet, intelligent, and refuses to fight, the last a particular requirement for young hetero-conforming boys. There is no evidence throughout this film that Alfred might be gay—except that he does not conform to the heterosexual standards in which young toughs like Benny have come to define males based, in Benny’s case, on his own mean and brutal father who runs a gym. Alfred’s refusal to spit back when Benny spits in his face is evidence enough that he is a “fagula” (faggot) (which the English-language translation of this Norwegian film renders as “chicken,” “kylling,” not the word Benny speaks).

     The film begins with Alfred on the run, the other boys catching up, with Petter, and others doing the beating, while Benny leaves through Alfred’s sketch book with his toe before pissing on it.

      Alfred’s behavior, evidently, not only disturbs the school bullies, but also his own father (Michalis Koutsogiannakis), who, not liking his son’s cap, steals it and refuses to give up unless Alfred fights for it; instead, he pleads with his mother for its return, his father unable to comprehend what the fuss is all about.

      These are the first signs of a young boy’s sexual difference, all gender stereotypes that adults create, often categorizing young males who have had no thought of sexual desires, let alone contrary sexual identification, and who sometimes don’t even know what the names they are called such as “fagula” mean.

       What we can observe is this young boy is quite aware that he is different in some respects; he realizes, for example, that Benny wouldn’t have the slightest notion of whom Gandhi was, obviously one of Alfred’s heroes; but he hasn’t a clue later, when Benny describes himself as having “souped up” his brother’s moped, what those words mean.

      One might say that his parents have perhaps pandered to his tendency to stay to himself, having built a full treehouse for him to which he retreats when he arrives home from school and where he sleeps at night.

      Strangely, that very night, he is visited by Benny, who asks to come up, promising not to be mean to him—obviously displaying an awareness of his own behavior. Amazingly, and revelatory perhaps of the beautiful Alfred’s loneliness, is the fact that he allows Benny to climb up, like a prince in his tower. It seems Benny is interested in having Alfred draw a half-nude female figure on his bicep in lieu of a tattoo. He has brought a picture he wants Alfred to recreate, which the boy does, the two sleeping together without any sexual interchange, together for the night.

      When Benny climbs down in the morning, with Alfred’s mother hanging laundry and his father hulking about the yard, the boy looks over at the mother (Ågot Sendstad), he winks at her before calling over to the father “Hey, you got lucky there.” The father cannot understand what Benny’s trying to say, so the boy explains it: “That she’s so foxy!” “Foxy?” he giggles to himself. “Yeah, Foxy,” Benny repeats. Playing into the stereotypical heterosexual conceits, the son’s new friend makes both happy, making them feel almost young again, and Alfred noticing that, shares their joy as well without comprehending that Benny has simply played into the gender conceits of a heterosexuality that he hasn’t yet learned.

     Having been served pancakes for breakfast, Benny promises Alfred that he will come again soon, leaving the son also in near euphoria.

     The next Sunday at church, Benny signals Alfred to join him outside. Once there, Benny knocks him to ground and calls him prick, but immediately after invites to come by his place since he something to show him.

      Indeed, that meeting shows Alfred a great deal about his new friend. Knocking at the house door, Alfred asks for Benny, being told there is no one there by that name. Soon after, called over discretely by his friend into a nearby garage, Benny shows him the souped up moped that I previously mentioned. But when the father shows up, having heard their voices, Benny signals absolute silence as the two hide in near terror of being discovered by the brute.

 

     A frame later they’re speeding down the highway in the moped, an absolute look of joy upon both of their faces. Benny takes Alfred to what is evidently a high school dance, breaking in through the basement. He grabs one of the towering girls and begins to dance with her, pointing out his friend. The giant—in comparison with the runt of a 12-year-old boy—pulls Alfred on the dance floor as, in a slow dance, becoming engulfed between her teenage breasts.

 

     There’s no conception of the reality of sex here, simply its heteronormative images; but that’s enough for the two boys who, this time with Alfred driving, hoot it up as they return via moped back to Benny’s farm.

      The closest thing to sex and real love is Benny’s leaning into Alfred’s back for the voyage home, one of the most beatific moments of the constantly emotionally shifting movie.

       When Benny asks why Alfred never hits back, he replies “Because you want me to.”

      But Benny, uncomprehendingly attempts to take the logic further. “If I wanted to fuck your mother?”

       “That’s your problem.”

       “What if I wanted to fuck you?”

       “Right!” Alfred answers, mostly in jest but nonetheless hinting that it is closer to a possibility.

       “I really do! I really do!” continues Benny, dancing around the body of his now beloved friend. 

       “Forget it! I’m fucking Gandhi” replies Alfred, the moment when after Benny draws a blank, he announces, “No one you would know.”

        Suddenly, Benny lurches forward and kisses Alfred on the lips, Alfred spitting in mock disgust. It is the only gesture Benny knows to express love, and that he has chosen his former enemy to express that feeling suggests the complexity of his emotions of the moment. If sex means love, he wants sex with the friend who has given him so much joy—a totally innocent expression based on adult distortions of the true innocent moment of genderless boy-on-boy love. The complexity of this moment is so immense that it is virtually impossible to fully explain. But most recently Flemish director Lukas Dhont has attempted just that in his film Close (2022) in a situation that does not end so felicitously.

        Only a day or two later, attempting to approach Benny at school, Alfred discovers the rules. Benny cannot even pretend to know him around his other friends. The mistakenly identified “fagula” is still that to all others, even if Benny himself knows he might now be said to better express that indefinable slur.

         The rejection deeply pains the boy, as he sits alone on the pier in tears. His friend is his only in private, mirroring what later so very many young gay boys experience when they discover young love with other males who attempt to remain in the closet among their fellow peers. But this feeling is even vaguer, more difficult to comprehend. Alfred has done nothing but be a friend. It is only the meaningless labeling of him that forces a distance between them, a label based on the heterosexual norms these young men are learning to which Alfred either cannot or simply will not conform.

 

        We get a further insight into the sexual politics at play in this complex short film, when, in the middle of rainstorm Benny dares once more to visit his Rapunzel, this time with a black eye giving evidence to the beating he has received from his father’s hands. He just wants to sit there, he explains, until his father falls asleep, demanding Alfred not to even look at is face. Alfred gives him a handkerchief for his bloody nose. The two again fall to sleep side by side.

        When Alfred awakes in the morning, Benny is gone. This time Alfred arrives at a place where others are playing soccer and hanging out to return Benny’s jacket. But Benny pretends to not even comprehend how Alfred might have gotten hold of his jacket, his friends highly suspicious of events, questioning him whether he might have truly spent time with the outsider they hate and resent.

        When Benny describes him as loser, however, Alfred finally proves that he indeed may be just that, certainly “losing it,” as all the repressed anger of his childhood rises up in protest, forcing him to attack and strike Benny—who isn’t, after all, a very good fighter, the other boys having to pull Alfred off.

        Soon after, as Alfred attempts to leave, however, Benny and his gang are again on the run after him, this time scooping him up in his backpack and tossing him into the lake. When Alfred doesn’t return to the surface, the boys begin to argue that they should have removed his backpack, Benny, in particular, turning away in the horror of what has apparently happened, his nose beginning to bleed profusely of its own accord.

 

       After too long a while, the others hurry off, fearful that they have drowned Alfred, only Benny remaining in tears, complete despair, and remorse. Alfred meanwhile waits under the pier and eventually returns to land, meeting up with Benny. But instead of joining his old friend, he moves off, Benny running after him, the two finally in stride breaking out in smiles. Alfred asks, “Hey, what’s your real name?”—a question that recognizes the fraud Benny, in his learned imitation of heteronormative behavior, has been all along. The boy answers “Reidar,” the two walking away, almost arm-in-arm, into a different future than either of them might ever have imagined. There is no Benny, no gym evidently. The boy’s name, derived from the Old Norse Hreiðarr, means a “nest of home warrior,” a fighter for the home life.

        Several times in these pages, I have commented on the excellence of the short films of the first decade of the 21st century. You can add Norwegian director Lisa Marie’s Gamlem’s movie to that list.

 

Los Angeles, July 29, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (July 2023).