Peter Ahlén | Mørke rum (Perpetual) / 2015

dream lover

by Douglas Messerli

 

Jakob Holtet Stridbæk and Peter Ahlén (screenplay), Peter Ahlén (director) Mørke rum (Perpetual) / 2015 [26 minutes]

 

Danish writer/director Peter Ahlén describes his work as “an unconventional love story.” In this case, however, the love is all one-way, coming from a young high school student, Sebastian (Nicolas Wollesen) who, like so many young boys today unable to relate to anyone in their schools but perhaps a best female friend, is desperate to hook up with someone over the internet.

     Sebastian connects with a slightly older man, Jacob (Mads Hjulmand), a truly handsome figure who seems to the young boy to be everything he’s imagined in a gay lover. He’s quite literally hooked by the very first glance which he steals from around the corner, almost ready to return home in the fear of meeting up with such a hunk.

     But he bravely overcomes his doubts, introducing himself as Alexander. He is surprised, however, when instead of taking him back to his own apartment, Jacob takes him into a gay bath (described in the film as a “sex-club”). There, the shy boy admits that this is his first time, as the elder confesses his wonderment of having found such a beautiful young swimmer seemingly ready to join him in sex. As Jacob gently begins the foreplay, however, Sebastian gets cold feet and runs, Jacob reassuringly suggesting that whenever he’s truly ready, he’ll be there for him.

 

    The entire incident has already been horribly exaggerated by the teen, as he describes his “new lover” to his best friends Sara (Sofie Topp-Duus), complete with “cool apartment” in which they’ve met up. But when Jacob doesn’t reply to his cell-phone greetings, he becomes depressed.

      To cheer him up, Sara accompanies him to a gay bar where he immediately meets up with someone closer to his own age, before Sebastain even knowing it, the boy kissing him. At that

moment Jacob appears, however, and appears shocked that the innocent boy, the virgin which he clearly wanted for himself, may not be what he seems.

       Sebastian, despite the pleas from Sara and others, goes running after the older man, explaining that there’s nothing between the other boy and him and that he has tried to communicate.

      The two end up meeting again at the baths, this time the boy appearing to be quite ready for the sexual aspect of what he deludes himself is already a “relationship.” But at Jacob gets read to fuck him, he again pleads that since this is his first time mightn’t there be a place where it might seem more special. Couldn’t Jacob please take him to his home? The answer is an emphatic no, a brief explanation about it being a “mess.”

 

     If we immediately perceive that Jacob may be a married man, living with either another man or a woman, Sebastian has no such wisdom and to keep Jacob near him gives into his pleas, allowing him to take his virginity in a cheesy sex-club.

       Yet now he can at least claim that they are truly a “couple.” Only Jacob does not answer his internet communications, and when he finally calls him, the man is vague about when they can again meet, vaguely explaining that he’s busy. Soon after, Sebastian shows up at the front door of his apartment, ringing his door, and wondering who might the other person who’s listed next to his name might be. Jacob scolds him for daring to try to visit him at home, and despite the fact that another person now opens the door and he could possibly enter, the boy has the good sense to leave.

 

    But the last scene of this short film makes it clear that Sebastian has not yet been fully able to cure himself of his delusions, his desire for such a handsome lover overwhelming his logic. We see him meeting up again at the baths with Jacob, the man only to happy to take advantage once again of young and willingly beautiful flesh. As Jacob bends over the boy to kiss him, it is as if Sebastian were lying etherized, as T. S. Eliot described it, upon the table.

    Despite the film’s English-language title, I can only imagine that even this naïve young love-stricken dreamer now realizes Jacob is the not the right first love, and that he needs to look elsewhere to find what he’s seeking. Sometimes, perhaps most times, “first loves” are something to be forgotten.

 

Los Angeles, May 12, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (May 2024).