Sophie Boyce | Dear Friend / 2011

speaking love

by Douglas Messerli

 

Sophie Boyce (screenwriter and director, assisted by George Fox) Dear Friend / 2011 [16.32 minutes]

 

In many respects, Dear Friend might almost stand as the model of friend/gay “coming out” films. In this film, long time Liverpool friends Christian (Joshua Miles) and James (Julien Mack) spend their time together in 1965 mostly in Chris’ house where he lives with his father (Christopher Gee), no mother in sight. There the teenage boys, wrestle and roughhouse in a manner that might suggest much younger children, battling with one another like they were playing at sword fighting or jumping upon one another’s backs to ride them forward like horses into battle. The father sits in the kitchen mostly reading the newspaper with great equanimity and patience seemingly to recognize their ruckus as healthy male bonding.

 

     This particular evening, however, represents a special occasion. The next day James is moving to London, and this will be their last night together, which it is obvious is far more devastating to Chris than to his good friend. The directors represent his inner feelings through moments when he stands against the loud 1960s wallpaper of his room, the patterns cracking into fault lines behind his back as if the house had just suffered an earthquake. The period lava lamp replays images of Chris’ inner howling of pain and his heart throbs heavily over the possibility of losing his best friend and, we soon recognize, hopefully lover.

     After a night at the local bar, they stumble and shout back into the house recognizing that it is now their last hours together. As James, half-drunk, falls into Chris’ bed, where he has apparently spent many a sleepover, Chris sits up simply staring at him. Sensing his friend’s presence, despite the fact that he is laying faced in the other direction, James asks what he’s doing. Slowly Chris leans toward him, bending his torso in a slow arc to kiss him on the lips before briefly pulling away. When James, stunned by the act, does not move, Chris is about to attempt the gesture again, upon which his friend, clearly disgusted, shouts out “no,” forcefully pulling away from him and shifting once more in the other direction.

 

    Dreadfully hurt by the violent rejection, Chris sits up the rest of the night pondering things, and, after James shares a pleasant breakfast with Chris’ father—who clearly prefers James to his own son and sees his family’s move to London as representing financial advance, going as far as jocularly inviting the friend to move into his own house while suggesting he’ll ship his son off to London instead—faces off with James in the doorway as his friend attempts to make a quick exit to pack for his move to London.

      The show-down is terrifying as James keeps repeating that Chris is sick and wants nothing more to do with him. In one of the most painful moments in this unsettling short, Chris, near tears,      

shouts out, after claiming he is not a queer, “Don’t fuckin’ make me feel bad for fallin’ for you. I can’t help it. It just happened.”

       James’ response says as much for the tenor of the times and his inability to perceive anything outside of social convention as it does for his own personal convictions: “It’s illegal. And it’s fuckin’ sick. Why did you have to tell me about this Chris?” It is as if his friend’s honesty is the true crime, a betrayal of his own now impossible love for him.

 

     When Chris finally pulls away, he claims that the only sickness he has is from letting his friend and his ego get “inside my head.”

      The father comes out in attempt to discover why the two life-time friends are ending their last moments together in verbal sparring, only to be told by James: “You son is a puff. I hope you know that.”

      The ramifications of the boy’s words are immediately made apparent as the father enters his son’s room. Seeing the wall plastered with photos of the two boys together, the father points to James, saying “You won’t believe the rubbish that just came out of that lad’s mouth. What would make him say such a thing?” Looking at his son’s forlorn but also challenging expression, he pauses before pointing at him, his voice rising to its highest pitch: “You...you’re are going to have to see a psychiatrist. No one can find out about this! Nobody!” Once more, the concern is not about what Chris might feel or even the dangers of such feelings, but rather is focused upon societal propriety. In this world, the truth must never be told.

    There is nothing else for Christian to do but to pack his bags, stopping just long enough to tell his now heavily drinking father, “Mum would have understand,” something he has to believe in order to survive.

 

      He doesn’t get far before he is spotted by James, who calls out to him. He moves swiftly forward to his former friend and when he reaches him begins to slug him, calling him “vile.” The two clumsily struggle until they are holding one another closely. They both back off a short distance, and James signals for him to join him as they go scampering like two young squirrels across the greenyard with a song by Carl Hauck plucked out in tender accompaniment.

 

Los Angeles, July 8, 2021