Simon Schultz von Dratzig | Frank / 2013

a picnic on the way to prison

by Douglas Messerli

 

Simon Schultz von Dratzig (screenwriter and director) Frank / 2013 [14 minutes]

 

German director Simon Schultz von Dratzig’s short film Frank is a melodrama with the films central figure, Dominik (Robert Zimmermann) heading off for jail for offenses not explained in the film. Nonetheless when Dominik’s calls his lover, Frank (Max Schaufuss), to ask him if he’ll accompany him on the bus to prison, Frank quickly agrees and begins packing up a large bag of the kind of silly mementoes, toy animals, shells, books, and other shared talismans that couples accumulate.

    He even brings along a bottle of beer, a substance which both men have been evidently consuming in significant amounts in the past few days. Dominik scoffs at Frank’s offering of a drink, explaining that he cannot show up to prison drunk, but soon cannot resist imbibing, eventually relaxing enough to lay his head of his lover’s lap.

     At one point, however, the bus stops to pick up a large number of children, young boys and girls evidently on their way to the beach, the lovers sitting up again as the bus driver gives a sour glower in their direction. And suddenly Frank determines that they too should stop off at whatever lake seems to be attracting the young bus riders.

     Putting out a large piece of cloth Frank has packed up, he seems almost to present the event as a kind of joyful picnic, although Dominik can do little else but scoff at the event. The couple jump into the waters naked, swim around for a short while, and retire to their picnic “blanket,” but when Dominik, in search of a cigarette, encounters the vast number of trinkets his friend has gathered up as a memory of their relationship, he becomes angry, spilling many of them onto the ground and stopping on them.

      Even though Frank promises to visit him regularly and has attempted to gather the mementoes as evidence of their past, Dominik realizes nothing will ever be the same again. When they finally reach their goal, he hugs his lover and turns to leave him, the younger Frank left behind with the huge bag of memories which no longer have any meaning.

      Perhaps it doesn’t truly matter what Dominik’s “crime” has consisted of, but it would help us to know if it had been some small act, perhaps even related to his sexuality, or something involving far serious criminal behavior in order to comprehend Frank’s continued love for him. 

      As it is, we find it difficult without knowing whether or not to sympathize with the situation and, in particular, Dominck’s somewhat understandable bitterness toward it all. Most of our sympathy goes to Frank, who for whatever reasons must now live alone in a house with all those trivial reminders of what their relationship once meant, perhaps knowing that even when Dominik is freed it will never again be the same. If nothing else, we must admire Frank’s spontaneity: who else might ever have imagined having a picnic on their way to prison.

 

Los Angeles, June 17, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (June 2024).