Anaïs Sartini | Spasibo (Thank You) / 2012

vanished

by Douglas Messerli

 

Anaïs Sartini (screenwriter and director) Spasibo (Thank You) / 2012 [14 minutes]

 

Clément (Clément Bayart) has just arrived in Russia for a film festival, and is pleased by his large quarters, which even includes a piano. On the telephone he tells someone back in France that he plans just to walk around, perhaps visit the Hermitage, etc.

    But as he begins to walk the St. Petersburg streets he discovers something he never expected: he has become the invisible man. As he calls out in Russian, French, and English to speak the citizens on the street, to his fellow filmgoers, and whoever else he encounters, there is no response. They hurry on talking among themselves as if he didn’t exist. “Здравствуйте!,” “Hello,” “Please,” none of the terms of greeting seem to have any effect. Even asking to know if a doorway is the entrance to the festival receives no reply.

     It seems to be worse for Clément in this 2012 film than it was for me in the Soviet days of Leningrad, where the people were discouraged from speaking to foreigners, and the differences in language often made it impossible. Try getting lost in Leningrad and seek for help, as I did.

     But here, we sense, something else is happening. Finally, as he sits near the Neva, a man (Andrei Odintsov) approaches him, speaking in Russian. Clément is amazed that he can even be seen. The stranger offers him a cigarette, and our French festival-goer smiles, responding, “Spasibo,” “Thank you.”

     When the Russian finally determines that Clément can speak English, he sits down beside him, reassuring him that “I can see you, you can see me,” but also wondering what he is doing “here.”

       I came her for a film festival, the Parisian explains, “and I vanished.”

     “Why” asks Andrei, to which Clément responds, “I don’t really understand.”

     The Russian speaks his own language for a moment, and then asks the visitor to come with him.

     What other choice does a man who is otherwise invisible have, but to go with a stranger who at least recognizes his existence.

    The Russian explains that he too vanished, on the 7th of March. “I started to be transparent in February.”

      “What happened?” the curious Clément eagerly asks.

      “I remember, I was afraid. I couldn’t do anything. The people in the street were screaming because of this. The authorities didn’t know what to do. We were just vanishing, disappearing, like this.”

      “The policeman, the government, they didn’t do anything?”

      “No.”

     As they have been walking they finally come upon the location for the Film Festival, which Clément points out to his new friend.

       “So you are an actor?”

       “Yeah, a transparent actor.”

       Andrei invites him out for the night, suggesting he knows a good bar.

       Slowly, for the perceptive viewer, this parable, like so many Russian stories, a veiled statement of moral value.

       The bar is, obviously, a gay bar.

       Back in his Nevski Prospekt Hotel with Andrei, Clément declares that he doesn’t understand. How can they see one another if other people can’t?

       Andrei suggests that perhaps they don’t want to.

      When the Frenchman asks why, Andrei answers, “Maybe they don’t want to. Maybe they are afraid.”

       “How is it possible that people don’t see me when I feel fire burning somewhere inside? …When I feel like a hole, a darkness in each part of my body?” The two men kiss.

       The time has come for Clément to leave, and Andrei has accompanied him to the train station. They hug, as Andrei sadly recounts their futures: “Soon, you will be in Paris existing again. You will see you[self] in a mirror, you will be able to speak to people, people will hear you. Tell them, tell them that here we vanish.”

     Andrei returns Clément’s “Spasibo,” as he is blurred out by the camera lens, now an almost smudged out image walking off.

      The film was evidently inspired by the censorship of another film by director Anaïs Sartini, Between Bodies to be shown at the Parisian Seasons’ Festival in St. Petersburg. That film introduced gay people in Paris. Sartini quickly filmed Spasibo in response. The Russian law which resulted in the censorship of the earlier film, and which came into force just before that film’s premiere, prohibits “the propaganda of homosexuality and pedophilia among minors”—but, of course, is easily applied to filmgoers of any age.

     By coincidence, when I first begin the write about this film in mid-August 2024, I had almost finished with the first draft when I looked up to find that all my writing had suddenly vanished from the screen. I madly begin to look to all my computer back-up locations, but couldn’t find it. The writing had been completely lost. It took me several weeks to get up the energy to begin all over again.

 

Los Angeles, September 4, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (September 2024).