obsessions
by Douglas Messerli
Laura Iancu and Florina Titz (screenplay),
Florina Titz and Marian Adochitei (directors) Orange / Milk / 2010 [20
minutes]
Damian (Adrian Draganescu/George Foca, young
and old) emails Alex (Cosmin Dragomir/Alex Ilascu), telling him that he’s at
his beach house doing “the same old arrogant and pretentious stuff,” and
wonders if he might visit him. The two, close friends from childhood, obviously
have had a rupture, and Damian is determined to mend it if possible.
“The
pretentious stuff” of which Damian writes is simply his gardening, as we are
shown clips of him in his quite beautifully flowering garden. Words like
“arrogant” and “pretentious” are code words for the two, we soon learn, along
with anything and everything that might be perceived of as ordinary and
bourgeoise, which these two in their filmed observations of the world seem to
define almost all they witness outside of their own voyeuristic lives.
As
we move back and forth in time through the numerous tapes and videos they’ve
made over the years as friends, spying on their neighbors through telescopes,
binoculars, and most importantly the camera lens as well as other “espionage”
tools, we perceive that Alex evidently grew tired of gazing at a world that the
two boys, first as children and then as young adults, constantly dismissed as
beneath their standards—although what values they are committed to is not truly
established. The two young men seem to share a mutual close friendship with a
woman, Rebecca (Beti Fotu) in a manner that might remind one of François
Truffaut’s Jules and Jim (1962).
In
his messages to Alex, Damian seems to still perceive his friend’s leaving as a
“cruel disappearance,” almost as if it had no significance or evident reason.
And clearly, despite his rather upscale home life, the fact that he apparently
has a job which can pay for all of his “spy cameras,” toast and honey, fresh
oranges and milk, and a beachside house with lovely flowers, Damian continues
to treat the outside world as a voyeur, perceiving himself as its interpreter
and judge.
As
we observe his messages, we see the handsome Alex speeding toward him in his
new car, obviously having taken up his offer to visit. As Alex arrives, we see
Damian rise with joyful anticipation. But we do not get to know them through
their new encounter as much as we do from their collection of old videos and
tapes, from childhood forward. We do get occasional calls from Alex’s current
female friend, to whom he verbally messages that he’s readjusting
to Damian, who, he explains is even less talkative than before.
So
we realize we should not look for long revelatory conversations, but instead
watch for brief instances between clips of people who have absolutely nothing
to do with the narrative. We must discover the lives of our characters from how
they view the “other,” “outside” world which they often dismiss.
These men are queer, we can only conjecture, not necessarily because of
their mutual love for one another—which seems to be apparent—but from their
view of the world as outsiders, with them strangely being alone and protected
in an imaginary “inside” in which they together exist.
That inner world is really quite lovely, as Damian makes a full
breakfast with freshly made orange juice to his handsome friend. The outside
world is fuzzy, grainy, filled with poorly dressed and overweight individuals
as they listen with headphones in on their chattering, nattering, quite
meaningless existences.
As they sit far above, with
their binoculars and photo-lens they might seem to be scanning the beach below
for beautiful bodies; but, in fact, the seem to be seeking out the ugly, the
bourgeoise, the purposely vacant vacationers one finds on such beaches. Their
own lives, meanwhile, are presented among the flowers as almost perfect, framed
by plants, flower blossoms, and good food, the space crowded with their
beautiful trimmed bodies; and the film alternates, accordingly, with stunningly
colorful scenes and the grainy, grayish, often almost colorless images of their
films and photographs. Whatever happened to these two young men to yoke them
into this shared narcissistic view of the rupture between themselves and the rest
of the world is clearly a phenomenon with which Alex has finally become fed up,
although seemingly willing to take it up momentarily again to regain his
friend’s confidence and trust.
But
then there is some evidence that it has to do with the Romanian Communist world
out of which they have come. As they purchase a small flowering plant in a
smart-looking plant store, the cashier can hardly be bothered by their purchase
from eating her apple and reading her newspaper; Damian takes a snapshot of her
as he leaves the place.
As
they walk jauntily home, directors Florina Titz and Marian Adochitei interleave
a clip from the two boys as pre-pubescents walking along a similar path with a
kite in hand, one of them reaching to the tree above to bring a blossom to his
nose. In short, these two might almost be said
to represent to new Romanian elite,
technologically savvy and disdaining the old and dowdy Romania of the past.
Damian’s lovely bedroom is filled with old photos of just such a world,
of fat men on flatboards and women with bad hairdos and outrageously outdated
clothes.
At
this point we also begin to hear the reasons for Alex’s having left, which
given what we have seen of Damian, makes perfect sense: “Now I have to leave
you, my friend. Because I need to do something else, something more interesting
than looking with (unfounded) arrogance at people with less luck, money, and
education (but they all have a lot more savoir de vivre, after all, no?)
Something more interesting like women, gardening, or walking.”
If
Damian has not changed since Alex’s “cruel disappearance,” we must ask, why has
Alex returned. As they retreat seemingly into that previous world, the viewer
becomes more and more perplexed. What keeps Damian there with a friend who
seems to be trapped into his childhood obsessions?
But
things have subtly changed, Damian spends far more time filming his sleeping
friend than observing a woman on the street wearing a halter which, as he
cattily describes it, is meant to “undermine the masses.” And gradually leafing
through the piles of old videos of the two boys and further revelations about
their long friendship, we begin to perceive that, as we should have guessed,
there is far more to their queer relationship.
When we almost feel that Alex has once more tired of his friend’s silent
removal from the world, they sit at their wall over the beach, the crowds
having left. Damian turns the camera once again towards Alex, but he calmly
pushes if off, reaching out with his hand to touch Damian’s chin and bring his
face toward his lips, as the two engage in a long and sexy series of deep
kisses—interleaved with an old tape of them as boys, Alex demanding of the
other to turn off the camera—as Titz and Adochitei’s camera remains firmly
rooted in place to watch the sensuous reconfirmation of the two men’s sexual
desire and love. Far deeper than their obsession for watching others,
apparently, is their obsession for one another.
This short film written directed by women is nearly as slow and
ruminative as the feature films of the Romanian New Wave by Corneliu Porumboiu,
Cristi Puiu, Cristian Mungiu, Radu Jude, Florin Șerban and others, and just as
carefully crafted and visually rewarding.
Los Angeles, May 15, 2023 / Reprinted from World Cinema Review (May 2023).
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