Ohm Phanphiroj | The Deaf Boy's Disease / 2018

the fever

by Douglas Messerli

 

Bowen Astrop and Ohm Phanphiroj (screenplay), Ohm Phanphiroj (director) The Deaf Boy's Disease / 2018 [14 minutes]

 

Ant (Arthur Andersen) learns a lot in his summer of coming-of-age. First of all, through an arrangement between a neighboring woman and Ant’s own mother, Early (Beck Nolan) comes to stay at Ant’s house, the two boys gradually growing very close.

   Early is basically deaf and, consequently, has some difficult in speaking. But quite quickly Ant learns that, despite what seems, at times to be a stuttering invert, is basically a normal kid who rumor has it is gay. It doesn’t take Ant long to realize that he himself is attracted to Early, and the two boys, living in a rural community, quickly establish a close relationship with nature and their own selves, designating their friendship with, at least on one occasion, a kiss.

     During that same summer Ant realizes in explaining the fact that his father simply one day left their family, is faced with a memory of his father having sex with another man—the explanation for, which he’s evidently never before come to realize, his father’s exit.

      At the end of the summer, with Early gone, Ant once again encounters his close friend Tremor (Nic Caruccio), who’s been away at camp all summer. When Ant reveals that he’s become friends with Early, Tremor reacts in the manner that apparently the whole community for a long while has, that Early is queer and that even kissing him leads to the disease of homosexuality. He mocks his stutter and represents him as a kind of communal outcast.

      Tremor’s comments both disturb and irritate Ant, who knowing that he and Early have indeed kissed and become good friends, is angry at the prejudices and wives’ tales his friends evidently believe. In bits and pieces, director Ohm Phanphiroj reveals Ant re-living his summer and coming to all the realizations I just recounted, forcing him to challenge his best friend’s beliefs. After all, Early has opened him up to a totally new world of love, and acceptance of his father, and a recognition of how the community outcast can truly be someone you come to love.

      At one moment it almost leads to a fight before the two older friends as they descend back into more serious conversation, Ant wondering whether or not Tremor really believes that homosexuality can be caught by kissing. More sincerely, he wonders whether if he were queer Tremor would still remain his friend.

     As the two boys lie head-to-head in deep discussion of these important issues, Ant rises, turns to his friend and gives him a kiss, which is greeted in turn with Tremor’s own kiss. The presumption that Phanphiroj’s film ends with is that indeed love is something that is truly infectious. Ant can only look to his own family history, Early, himself, and now Tremor to realize perhaps that a kiss is more than a kiss.

    A disease? You won’t be able to convince these boys that it is anything else. But the fever’s sensations put them into a world of near bliss.

 

Los Angeles, June 1, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (June 2024).