Paul Preston | Now You Know / 2017

a father comes out to his son

by Douglas Messerli

 

Paul Preston (screenwriter and director) Now You Know / 2017 [12 minutes]

 

10-year-old Oliver (Jayden Louth) is getting the opportunity to spend the weekend with his rapper Dad (Jurrell Carter) during a new filming session. The boy asks his father if he can be in on the shoot, but his father promises him “next” time. Yet Oliver is puzzled by the fact that the cameraman Luke’s daughter Scarlet is performing in the musician’s song.

       Obviously, the divorce between Oliver’s mother and his father has been fairly recent, and he’s hasn’t been told any of the reasons. And it appears the precocious boy is a bit shy around the new people with whom he is expected to share his father. Luke’s daughter, Scarlet, moreover, seems to be slightly sulking and not at all that friendly.

     Given this film is only 12-minutes long, what Oliver rather quickly begins to perceive—and the viewer along with him—is that the relationship between his father and the cameraman is a bit more intense than he might have imagined. Rising up from a later afternoon nap, the boy peeks out the window to see his father at the dinner table kissing Luke.

      Later, he reports this to Scarlet, who does not at all seem surprised, although she’s never actually seen her father and Oliver’s kiss. The quick-thinking boy immediately confronts his father: “Dad, are you gay?” A question which those of my generation would surely not have known how to even ask of their fathers.

      That question results in an intense background argument between the two men, with the rapper making it quite clear that he’s not at all ready to explain the situation to his son. Luke scoops up his daughter and they leave in anger, clearly in disagreement with his lover’s inability to explain the situation to his son.

       The two, father and son, are left in the darkening trailer in almost a face-off, the father refusing to explain his consternation. On his hand computer the boy watches a scene from another video of the two men together who look very much in love and happy, and suddenly the entire situation becomes quite apparent. The child grabs the cellphone and runs from the trailer, calling up Luke and Scarlet before handing the phone back to his father.

      Obviously, he has forced his father to ask Luke and his daughter to return. Meanwhile, Oliver explains to the elder that he’s still his Dad and he continues to love him, what can only be described a reversal of the usual coming out situation. The two hug, just as Luke returns, a man who Oliver now accepts into his life, as Oliver’s father hugs his lover. Apparently both the kids are now in the video.

      British filmmaker’s Paul Preston short nicely hints at what is likely the positive shifts to LGBTQ acceptance between the younger and older generations. But it might have been more fascinating and complex as a short feature, in which we watch the boy come to the discover over a longer period of time, presenting his confusions, his fears, and misapprehensions before the sudden revelation. Children often perceive things quite quickly and are far more accepting to change, in many cases, than their parents. But the discovery of his father’s radical shift in sexuality in what appears to be a single day condensed into 12 minutes is simply too much to be believed. And this film leaves us wanting to know more. How long his Oliver’s father known he was gay? How did his wife discover it? How is she dealing with that revelation? And will this radical discovery affect the relationship between mother and son?

 

Los Angeles, July 4, 2024 | reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog.