Phillip J. Bartell | L.T.R. / 2002

making mistakes

by Douglas Messerli

 

Phillip J. Bartell (screenwriter and director) L.T.R. / 2002 [16 minutes]

 

If one learns nothing else from Phillip J. Bartell’s L.T.R.—an anagram for the words “long-term relationship”—it is that no beginning couple should ever attempt to describe themselves in such a relationship and, above all, never allow a highly skeptical documentary filmmaker to stick a camera into one’s everyday affairs.

      When I met my companion and spent every day of the first week in each other’s apartments and beds, moving in together at the end of that period, neither of us ever quite imagined that we would become a permanent couple—now in a marriage lasting 53 years. We fought like dogs for the first two years, and although we made up all sorts of rules regarding our sexual fealty, we fortunately did not completely obey our own strictures. A relationship is a process that is difficult to evaluate while establishing the definitions and boundaries of what one means to the other.

     But these two boys, Michael (Cole Williams) and Riley (West Mueller), both immature and clearly inexperienced are convinced that they have found true love and share numerous values, as well has feeling that they are engaging in spectacular sex. First love has a way of exaggerating such feelings. A day seems like a month, a month like forever.

        In this mockumentary the couple hardly get through the third week before they discover what should have been obvious on the very first night, particularly given that Michael, the elder (21), likes to party at the clubs, while Riley (20) prefers to remain at home with a bong for a companion. Michael wants to get “gay” rings, each of which is number so that the community might determine how many gay men there are, while Riley sees the whole thing as being something like being, if nothing else, “creepy.”

       Riley suggests that they both want kids—“that’s something we have in common”—without bothering to perceive that neither of them, together or alone, is even slightly capable of being a parent. An invitation to each of their best friends, Caitlan (Aimee Garcia) and Tobias (Michael Azria), ends disastrously, with Michael only speaking with Caitlan, while Riley and Tobias roll about the floor giggling in a drug high. The evening ends with them wondering if they can continue with such different behaviors.

     When Michael invites the documentarian over to watch him making up with Riley, he finds his friend unreachable by phone, as the camera catches the wan look upon his face. (The phone from 2002 is almost comical in its a cigarette carton-size, one of the earliest versions of a portable phone).

      In his car delivering pizzas, Riley tells the camera that he doesn’t know what’s going on, that they’re both into this “thing of not calling one another.” “I just need someone more mature,” the most child-like and self-infatuated person in this film intones. He turns to the filmmaker, “Like how old are you?” The documentary maker says, “30,” and Riley pauses as if considering the matter.

       Michael is sadly contemplating why just a couple of things bring down an otherwise nearly perfect relationship. When asked what those two things are, he answers that he thinks they like to party differently—an obvious conclusion since Michael appears to enjoy the company of others, while Riley removes himself into a world of his own confused head—and they have different “energies,” an idea which remains vague, although we sense that the commitment of the relationship was perhaps mostly Michael’s enthusiasm.

       Soon after, we see Riley in bed, topless, talking, as he explains to the documentary maker, to Michael. He wants us to get together, the cameraman hissing that he thinks it’s a bad idea. He then suggests Riley should do whatever it is he wants to do.

       We can only suspect what gets revealed in the next scene with Michael and Riley attempting to enjoy a reconciliation dinner, the camera whirling away as they sit silently face to face. This isn’t working Michael finally speaks out, Riley reacting that he thinks it might be because he slept with John.

       Suddenly turning on the cameraman, apparently the “John” they are talking about, the flabbergasted Michael shouts out, “We haven’t even officially broken up yet….” He runs angrily into the bedroom and locks the door, Riley pounding for him to let him in, shouting “It didn’t mean anything.” From the other end of the room we hear the filmmaker asking “What do you mean it didn’t mean anything?”

      When Michael opens the door to let Riley in, he forces the camera and its operator out, and for two weeks, reports the documentarian, he didn’t hear from either of them. “But then Riley called to tell me that they’d broken up again.”

       Michael finally calls John again for a meeting, asking how things are with him and Riley. The relationship between them is also over. Michael wants to report that he’s fine, no longer even pissed. From this relationship, he argues, he has learned nothing—“except not to go out with immature freaks, but everybody knows that. And not to trust documentary filmmakers.”

       But finally, he perceives a truth about finding love. “I look at you, and it’s all clear. I’m going to make the same mistakes over and over again, like you are until I get it right. No, not right; just lucky.” He looks up and over to another table, adding, “That boy’s cute.” He stands and begins walking over to the cute boy, turning back for a moment to the camera, “Interview’s over.”

        If much of this film is coy and simply silly, there is an underlying sense of sadness which emanates from the realization of just how difficult any relationship is, and how even more complex and problematic it is for gay men who not only have fewer choices even in large urban areas, but are pulled still by different societal rewards and pressures that historically isolated them from long-term relationships and encouraged them to seek out sexual fulfillment over the responsibilities of family and monogamy. Sexual attraction may indeed bring gay lovers together, but it is not what primarily makes their relationship adhere. Only by letting time reveal who the other is, can lovers determine whether they might be able to remain with the other over the years.

 

Los Angeles, March 13, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (March 2023).