by Douglas Messerli
Joshua Paul Johnson (screenplay), Leandro
Tadashi (director) Tomorrow / 2014 [13.30 minutes]
The two best friends of this short film, Clark (Daniel Rashid) and Trevor
(Zachary Roozen), begin their lawn-bound discussion by Trevor suggesting that
if Clark moves to Chicago for college, he’ll just come visit him and hang out.
The boys laugh uneasily, knowing clearly that if Clark does move away they may
not be able to retain their deep friendship that goes back to grade school.
While using Clark’s camera as a viewfinder, Trevor’s friend recalls the day he
first got the camera and what happened back then.
Yet
there are even more gnawing difficulties even as they speak, in particular the
fact that Trevor is highly attracted to Sarah (Katie Baker), who is a close
friend of Clark’s, who just happens to show up while they’re talking, inviting
them both again to a party to celebrate in the new millennium.
Trevor confides to Clark that he’s finally “going to make a move on
Sarah” and wants him, as her close friend, to be his “wingman,” helping to talk
him up and lead Sarah to become interested in him.
We
recognize almost immediately just by slight facial gestures from Clark and from
Sarah that we are about to experience the possible break up a friendship that
fits all the patterns of a gay crush that the one (Clark) has for the other,
Trevor being a figure who goes out of his way to express himself as a
heterosexual, in part to deny any of the truly close feelings he has for his
friend. In this instance, it’s clear that he’s asking the boy who secretly
loves him to help fix up a heterosexual romance, a situation that given what I
have described in the films surrounding “How to Lose Your Best Friend,” does
not look promising, particularly since the evening on which Trevor has
determined to make his move signifies so many other changes, the beginning of
an entirely new century and a break in the thread of friendship woven by two
boys throughout the years.
But
how can Clark, the more passive of the two, possibly turn his friend down? The
moment the party begins with a toast to the last sunset of the millennium you
can see Clark’s smile quickly fade to a look of quiet desperation. As the room
full of partying teens moves in a celebratory frenzy the two boys stand on
either side of Sarah, Trevor pushing himself upon the girl with Clark working
hard just to keep the fairly one-sided conversation going.
We
recognize that things are not going well. When Sarah suggests to Trevor that
she needs a refill of her tequila, he quietly confides to his friend, “You’re
supposed to be talking me up, come on you’re killing me,” and the moment he is
out of sight, Sarah reports to Clark, “He doesn’t let up, does he?”
It’s also clear that Sarah has a crush on Clark which surely doesn’t
help given that it puts him in the middle of two friends, and positions him
into a kind of emotional corner regarding his feelings for Trevor. Even if
Sarah is not interested in Trevor, he has utterly no clue as to whether Trevor might
ever truly be able to show any love for him.
Sarah
moves Clark out to the dance floor, and while he suggests they hold back until
Trevor returns, she counters, “And I think you should stop worrying about him.”
How
does a closeted gay boy come to terms with love given these circumstances where
it’s clear that the wrong person who truly cares for him? As they begin to
dance, he suddenly abandons her, perhaps the only way out.
And when he spots Trevor he runs from him as well, Trevor following in an attempt to comprehend what’s going on. Where’s Sarah and why has Clark abandoned them both?
Fortunately,
several people appear to be moving in a specific direction and when the boys
check it out they discover they are heading to the large pool of this
ranch-style desert house. Clark, seeing it as a way back into a connection with
Trevor, suggests they join the others, and together they swim for a while, lost
perhaps in the memory of the hundreds of times they’ve swam together, diving
deep into the waters and suddenly popping up behind one another in surprise. At
one moment paddling in place a few feet from each other it appears that they
have momentarily lost track of time, staring deeply at one another as if to
admit all those years of their special friendship.
Trevor pulls away, but still remains as
if almost puzzling it all out, as Clark again comes near. One could almost
imagine them saying what they both need to say or briefly awarding one another
a kiss, but Trevor, true to his type, pulls back into himself: “Sarah’s waiting
for her drink,” something Clark knows to be absolutely not true.
Clark dries off, taking a long look at himself in the mirror. As he
returns to the main room, Sarah intervenes once again with a hopeful greeting,
“There you are....”
“I think I’m goin’ to head out,” he answers.
But she insists he stay, “It’s almost midnight,” finally cornering him and
embracing him in a deep kiss at the very moment that Trevor shows up, Clark
running off, with Trevor following.
When
he catches up, he shouts, “What the fuck was that?”
“Sorry, I promise it wasn’t
what it looked like.”
Trevor
moves closer, and Clark tries to reassure him, placing his hands outward.
“Fuck,
don’t touch me!”
Clark
finally spits it out: “She’s not even into you!”
“Fuck you,” Trevor
responds, pushing him to the floor and leaning over the prone body of his
friend as if he were about to beat him, but pausing as he literally straddles
him and finally leaning into a long a desperate series of intense kisses. Clark
is so absolutely and delightedly surprised that by the time he loosens his arms
to embrace his friend, pulling Trevor back towards him, his sudden lover,
resisting all he feels and has just begun to express, slowly pulls up and away
and leaves the room.
Clark looks off in the direction that his friend has left in
astonishment. What has just happened is nearly as shocking as if he has
suddenly been raped, even if he has perhaps desired it all his life. Longing is
sometimes far easier that recognizing the other has been holding an equal
feeling back apparently for years. Surely their friendship can never be a
simple buddy connection ever again.
Almost inexplicably
everyone has abandoned the party, while our three friends have remained late
into night, Sarah falling to sleep drunk on the couch, with the two boys
obviously hidden away in different spaces in an attempt to process what has
just happened. Waking up to find both Trevor and Clark still there, Sarah asks
if she might catch a ride home. Once more, she unknowingly intrudes upon a
moment when they might have been able to begin to work things out. But as it
stands, the long ride home with Trevor driving is so quiet that it’s deafening,
the car motor being the only sound.
As
they arrive at Clark’s house he looks in his friend’s direction but his face
makes it clear that any attempt to speak would be pointless. How can he tell
him what surely the other has not yet been able to forgive himself for and even
if he could explain cannot with Sarah sleeping in the back seat.
The
seat belt snapping loose is the only sound director Leandro Tadashi allows,
other than the opening of the car door and its small slam back as Clark walks
off into what surely must appear to be a future of emptiness.
But
suddenly Trevor rolls down the window, calling out for Clark. The boy pauses,
looks back and slowly returns to the car bending down to the open window.
Trevor hands him his forgotten camera. Clark takes it, somewhat disappointed,
but observes that now Trevor is also holding out his hand as if to shake. “See
you tomorrow?”
Clark smiles, takes the hand and holds it for instant, Trevor slightly
smiling. Trevor starts up the motor and drives off.
Clearly Trevor has accepted what has happened. The only question now is
whether he wants to forget it or to see it as an event upon which to build a new
kind of relationship with Clark. If nothing else, he has opened up the
possibility that their friendship has come to be something different: a
tomorrow instead of an endless series of days spent just hanging out.
Los Angeles, August 5, 2021
Reprinted from World Cinema Review (August
2021).
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