shaking off the snow
by Douglas Messerli
Jake Yuzna (screenwriter and director) Between the Boys / 2004 [4 minutes]
In 4 short minutes US director Jake Yuzna
deftly paints a picture that several other films have only been able to
accomplish in a lugubrious vale of tears.
This work, however, purely light and comic. The two young men central to
the piece, Eric (Rick Stahlmann) and Paul (Adam Vanderveen) are obviously young
gay lovers. It’s early morning, and Eric still lays in bed when Paul comes
sneaks into the room, straddles him and greets him with a morning kiss—well, a
near kiss as they tussle for a few moments, meeting up in the bathroom to
shower while one hugs the others back.
They dress, one of the boys finally appearing to exit their Minneapolis
house. Hardly does he get to take in the cold winter morning air before the
other boy, out before him, comes at him, knocking him to into the snow, the two
beginning the wrestle as simply another way to keep their bodies locked in
embrace.
A
car drives up into their driveway, and the boys immediately cease their play,
brushing the snow from their clothes. A woman exits the car, both boys greeting
her as “mom,” as she asks them get the groceries out of the car. They each pull
out a sack, both looking a bit disconcerted and perhaps even glum until their
eyes again meet, putting a smile upon both of their faces.
With the ease of most gentle of love stories and the use of a single
familial noun, “mom,” the director has quietly brought up a taboo which I have
long argued is quite meaningless. What does it matter if gay brothers fall in
love and even have sex. As anyone knows they’re not going to have babies with
too much shared DNA? And as I recently pointed out in my reviews of Hermanos
(Brothers) (2016-2017) and E vissero (2021), in most Western
countries it is not even against the law, although it is still illegal in the
Scandinavian countries, Estonia and, quite inexplicably, in Canada and in
several of the US states, in some states being defined as a sexual offense with
all the serious restrictions and limitations of movement that go along with
that. If discovered, the cute boys of this short film might go to jail for
sexual intercourse for 10 years according to Minnesota law.
This subject is the focus of several other LGBTQ films I have written
about including Starcrossed (2005), Brotherly (2008), Bruderliebe
(Brotherly Love) (2009), Zwillinge (Twins) (2010),
and In Half (2012). Of those I’ve mentioned, only the Italian film E
vissero treats the subject with the remarkable ease and humor of Yuzna’s
film, the earliest of them.
Los Angeles, September 27, 2023
Reprinted from World Cinema Review (September
2023).
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