Frankie Kraft | Touch Me in the Morning / 2017

the goodbye dance

by Douglas Messerli 

 

Frankie Kraft (screenwriter and director) Touch Me in the Morning / 2017 [5 minutes]

 

US director Frankie Kraft’s evocative “morning after” movie can be read in many ways I suspect. Some might read it simply as two lovers engagingly greeting each other after a night in bed and enjoying a brief and touching moment in the morning before they’re off again to their own lives.

     But I see it as a much sadder evocation of what, unfortunately, is too often a typical portrait of gay life. These two men, Will Branske and Vance Vlasek, arise, one after the other, the obviously first the owner of the apartment.

      He’s picked up someone for the night and now, as it washes off his face in the morning, it’s the end. He’s certainly enjoyed the sex, but there’s a vague and mounful past he still faces (he places one small framed work of art face down, presumably a work by a former lover) and cleans away the memory of what he’s just experienced.

 

    His pick-up soon awakens as well, joining his friend in the bathroom where he quickly discerns from the bemused look on his lover’s face that any further attempt at a relationship is simply not a go.

     The other moves off into the front room, sitting on the couch as his bed partner returns to the bedroom to quickly put on his clothes.

     But the handsome gay boy with a man-bun is apparently a romantic and, having thoroughly enjoyed the evening together goes over the record player and turns on the music they had evidently danced to the night before, the lyrics which speak of the very situation in which they find themselves.

 

Touch me in the mornin'

Then just walk away

We don't have tomorrow

But we had yesterday

 

Hey, wasn't it me who said

That nothin' good's gonna last forever?

And wasn't it me who said

Let's just be glad for the time together?

 

It must've been hard to tell me

That you've given all you had to give

I can understand your feelin' that way

Everybody's got their life to live

 

Well, I can say goodbye

In the cold mornin' light

But I can't watch love die

In the warmth of the night

 

    He begins to dance, the apartment owner joining him for a lovely moment as the two once more engage. But after a few spins around the room, the other pulls away, goes over to the player and turns off of the record.

   His one-night stand realizing the time has come, zips up his coat and, and with hardly a backward glance, leaves the apartment.

    For a second, his last night’s lover realizes that this boy might have been something special, quickly moving to the door and peering out, catching only a glimpse of him before he disappears forever.

    The feelings this short film creates seems to me the very essence of the poignant gay sorrow that so many LGBTQ people have come to desire more than a real relationship. It’s the subject of the song itself, the sad desire that will never be fulfilled, the sense of perpetual loneliness, and the essence of why he will return night after night to the bars and clubs to find yet someone else to bring home with hopes of fulfilling that deep emotional want.

     This little gem of a film gets to the very heart of the muddled sadness of so many gay boys hooked on drug called cynical love, based on the idea that “nothin' good's gonna last forever,” without ever allowing the good to last long enough to know whether or not it might survive beyond the night.

 

Los Angeles, May 29, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (May 2024).