Jake Yuzna | Between the Boys / 2004

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).