Raphaël Balboni and Ann Sirot | Avec Thelma (With Thelma) / 2017

doomed to straightness

by Douglas Messerli

 

Raphaël Balboni and Ann Sirot (screenwriter and directors) Avec Thelma (With Thelma) / 2017 [14 minutes]

 

Jean (Jean Le Peltier) and Vincent (Vincent Lecuyer), a gay couple suddenly receive a call from Jean’s brother, who with his wife has been traveling in the US. Now suddenly, given the major Icelandic volcano, they are trapped by flight patterns in Chicago, and they cannot get back home to meet up with their young daughter, being cared for by a woman who must now abandon their daughter’s care. She’ll be left at the Brussels train station the very next day.

    So begins the short comedic film, one actually of many of this genre (think of the 1987 US film starring Tom Selleck, Steve Guttenberg, and Ted Danson, Three Men and a Baby, itself based on a 1985 French Trois hommes et un couffin [Three Men and a Cradle]), as the two queer guys must accommodate a tiny, loveable female monster into their lives.

     It begins innocently enough with them unpacking her suitcase which contains all of her stuffed animals, a panda, a dog, and even her strawberry toothpaste. But it quickly grows serious as the two delightful gay men, Jean and Vincent attempt to give in to Thelma’s every whim.  

     Suddenly, in the middle of the night, they can’t hear her breathing, and rush into her room to check on her. Is a second blanket necessary? Is she sleeping on her back?

     An attempt to make a video with her while pretending she’s a monkey to assure her parents of her well being is a disaster, as the child is not at all accommodating.

      The gay boys argue over the “cheesy” voice the one is using to deal with the child, a sort of adult “speaking down” to a young girl that he finds quite disagreeable It is the voice at the end of sentences, the   double-syllables that so many adults deal out to children that it might normally be unrecognizable, but now becomes an issue between them.

      They try to teach her gestures to her innocent little song. And before we can even wipe away the tears they are tearing out Paste-It messages in an attempt to determine they regular daily encounters with their new beloved adoptive daughter. The nightly cries from their new charge parallel every straight couple’s pleading for the other to get up and deal with her calls for attention.

      But on Sunday a babysitter Jill will arrive to give them a break. They are disturbed, most perversely for a gay couple, that Jill turns out to be Gilles (Gilles Remiche), a male. If they at first resist, they too must reverse their sexual gender notions, the babysitter knowing just how to deal with a recalcitrant young girl in his care. Like all parents, as they slip into the night the remind the babysitter of how to call them and protect their child while their phones are on mute.

      The lovely last scene where they dance with her on screen is a near masterpiece of fatherly daughter love. These two have truly bonded with the child in a way, perhaps, that her parents might never have imagined.

      The last scene, as the pack up her bag to return home to her parents is a truly sad one as they pull her dressed out of their drawers, making sure that they’re properly folded, that he life is what her parents might have imagined was her life with them before. The boys are now left only with their cat.

      But now, via Skype and other internet connection they communicate with Thelma, using a forgotten toothbrush in an attempt to call up the crazy interactive life they led with the now doomed-to-straightness Thelma.

 

Los Angeles, July 10,2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blot (July 2024)