Chris Derek Van | Fear and Desire / 2024

sail away!

by Douglas Messerli

 

Chris Derek Van (screenplay and director) Fear and Desire / 2024 [14.30 minutes]

 

This short film is basically a revisiting of the 2023 film, also by Chris Van, titled Bookend, which purports to be a memory of a figure named Giorgio who recalls a day in the 1970s on a nude Chicago Beach when he encountered a young boy who sexually enticed him.

     In this new version, instead of the same beach being almost golden in color and filled with visitors, this seems to begin early in the morning with the arrival of what one can only describe as a flirtatious and nearly androgynous young man, who dressed in swimming shorts, a beach coat, and a red bandana around his neck, runs into the water just to wade before he literally prances and dances around the beach, using the white poles that stand at regular intervals (presumably used to set up volleyball nets) as poles (almost like bar poles) in between and against which he runs and leans. 

    This young man with long hair is clearly an exhibitionist of sorts, performing for what we soon discern are other men, one in particular, who stand in the dunes just above the beach watching the growing activity below.

    The young boy soon tired, lays down for a while on the beach, again wades into the lapping tide, and dances. Finally, he moves further up to the watching man, moving bit closer as if to get a better view, before returning coyly—looking back ever so often—to the beach below.

    He repeats his movements, but is also clearly tiring of the inattention of others. At one point he engages a flabby middle-aged man in conversation at the water’s edge; but obviously nothing is made of it.

      The film also focuses, as did Bookend, on the pier, the gulls, the gradual gathering of other men, and even an occasional small sail boat further out in the water. But it’s central focus is the young man, who once more teases his voyeur by coming closer, almost daring him to take action. It appears to have no effect.

 

      The boy again runs between the white posts, showing off, asking for someone to come and take him away or, at least, to pay attention. Yet nothing occurs. The few men, women, and children we observe on the edges of the film’s frame seem preoccupied with their own activities. The mass of human flesh so apparent in Bookend is missing on this particular morning. The boy seems to be performing only for the single voyeur higher up in the dunes.

 

    He moves toward the voyeur once more. This time daring to come closer. The stranger stands firm, neither moving back or forward. And the young man dares come closer to him yet, daring to climb up the sand to actually approach the man. He kisses him and wraps his body around the elders, letting the stranger almost carry him off. The voyeur and exhibitionist have, at last, met up and presumably fulfilling both their disparate “fears and desires.” A small boat sails across the landscape hinting at the perfect interaction of motion, the waves carrying the small craft away just as the man has the boy.

    Only a few frames later, however, we see the young man once more far down on the beach near water’s edge. Does this represent a later time in the day or has he just as suddenly been rejected by the man who perhaps prefers his distance.

      A gull flies into the sun. The film comes to a close.

    Both this work and the previous Bookend are beautiful statements of youth and its desire to find fulfillment in the fleshy world of this Chicago beach. But something has clearly radically changed from the former flashback to the 1970s and what presumably is the empty space of today.

This young celebrant finds little reward in what has turned in a cold, almost empty world.

      Neither of this director’s films have yet to be listed on IMDb or mentioned on-line other than the site titled Khris on YouTube.

 

Los Angeles, May 7, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema (May 2024).