James Bolton | Eban and Charley / 2000

illegal love

by Douglas Messerli

 

James Bolton (screenwriter and director) Eban and Charley / 2000

 

We should have known. Even 24 years ago in 2000, critics had already become nervous. How dare a director present such a controversial subject in a film without making the obvious and necessary viewpoint clear: indicating that he totally disapproves of the pedophilic actions of his character Eban. As John Anderson, writing in Newsday put it quite straight-forwardly: “There's not enough judgment being rendered by the filmmaker, who seems happy enough to portray his movie's relationship sympathetically because, after all, these things happen.” In other words, director James Bolton should have taken a totally negative approach to his own story, immediately damning the character he has created precisely in order to question the general societal values.

    Other critics, not wanting to deal with the subject in any manner whatsoever, accused the film of a “numbing solipsism” (Ed Park, The Village Voice) or of “preaching to a sparse congregation” (Elvis Mitchell, The New York Times). Many accused the film of being slow-moving and boring.

     How a subject which you daren’t even speak about might be “boring” I cannot comprehend. If nothing else such a forbidden subject might give some a secret thrill if not the inevitable chill.

     But, yes, Bolton’s film is slow moving, just as are his central characters, Eban (Brent Fellows) and Charley (Giovanni Andrade, also known as Gio Black Peter). They are both children, and act and behave as children, spontaneously and without deep thought and rumination. They come together slowly because, at first, they have no plans or preconceptions. Perhaps only Eban hints at a slow stalking of the beautiful boy he first spots in a second-hand record shop of Seaside, Washington. But even that is based on happenstance. When he runs into him again at a small coffee house, he shares a table with him only for a few moments. And it is not until he meets up, again by accident, on the small town’s boardwalk that the two really strike up a friendship.

      Things move slow, in part, because despite Eban’s eagerness to make Charley’s acquaintance, he is afraid to proceed. And even when the two begin spending time together, Eban attempts to define limits to their relationship, having just been fired as a soccer coach from school where he was teaching in Seattle on account of another inappropriate relationship he had developed with one of his students.

       Eban, age 29, has returned to his hometown of Seaside supposedly as a Christmas visit. But in actuality, it is an attempt to get his life back in order, to reassess his possibilities for a new future without the boy he very much loved.

       The central problem is that Eban has been deadened by his family. Both mother and father are cold and reclusive beings. Although his mother is clearly joyful for his return, she is able to show little emotion, and the father, who, unbeknownst to Charley, has been told of Charley’s behavior by the school principal, is almost hostile to his own son. He hardly speaks except to criticize his son’s lack of communication with them, and clearly has no room in his heart for a 29-year-old failure who might have been arrested and jailed were it not for the school’s attempt to keep things undercover by simply releasing Eban from his contract and insisting that he no longer see his student lover.

      Had Eban grown up in a more felicitous spot, and been simply a few years older he might have been a happy hippie living in San Francisco, but instead he has been frozen out by his own generation at a time when it is no longer hip to spend one’s life composing mediocre songs, strumming a guitar, and writing atrocious poetry.

    When Eban first encounters Charley, the boy is just 14, but soon after turns 15.* The age of sexual consent in the state of Washington is 16, meaning that Charley is a full year away from the magical age when he might legally be perceived aware enough to make a decision about who he loves by himself. We cannot ignore the fact, moreover, that he has previously been living with his loving mother who was deaf and had long ago separated from her husband. The mother has died after being hit in a crosswalk by a drunken driver, after which Charles has been shipped off to a reluctant father who has apparently had no interest in him for years, and who, when he finally discovers that his son is gay and, even worse, has become involved with someone older, is immediately prepared to ship Charley off to his Charleston, South Carolina grandparents who are evidently hard-hearted folk since the father is sure they will “shape him up.” Moreover, he threatens Charley with a psychiatrist (read a person who is likely to send him to a “conversion camp”).

     Charley, as do many disenchanted gay boys his age, is learning how to play the guitar; he too writes poetry, and in his room he worships a world lit by candlelight instead of the cold sunlight that seemingly freezes the heart of most of the town’s residents.

    In short, Eban, who still has the mind and heart of a child and Charley are, in theory, a perfect couple—except obviously for the legal stipulation. And neither of them are truly responsible enough, particularly 15-year-old Charley, to perceive the law from its proper perspective. The two quickly fall in love. Although for the earliest of their outings Eban is careful not to stay with Charley and engage in sex, by the third visit he can no longer resist the boy’s own pleas for him to stay for the night.

     There is little other to their story, except to carefully watch how their love develops and blooms. They quickly become so dependent upon one another for emotional support in a world where Eban’s parents have basically removed themselves from the picture, and where Charley’s father refuses, at one point, to even buy new shoes for Charley after his previous pair are stolen by homophobic thugs. The father’s level of concern extends to the fact that Charley has embarrassed him in front a female guest by appearing with red nail polish on his fingers. We later discover that he has stolen the money that Charley’s mother had left him.

     So yes, Bolton is understandably sympathetic to his characters, who in many ways have no other possibilities of love, perhaps even recognizing that most of his viewers of this will refuse find any empathy. Society is convinced at this time in history that children are not mature enough to properly determine or even comprehend sexuality, and that anyone older to whom they have become attached is a villain for daring to return their love.  

       LGBTQ films have brought up these issues over the years regularly, and I have discussed some of the problems and the extreme illogic of the of the various ages of consent internationally and even in the US, state by state in the next series of essays which follows this one and elsewhere in later volumes.

    Charley has apparently lived for while in the Netherlands with his mother, and realizes that in Denmark the age of sexual consent—as it is also in Ireland, Portugal, and other countries—is 15.

     But we are in Washington, and can merely wait for the other shoe to drop. Which is does with a thud, when Charley’s father, realizing that his son has not come home for the evening. tracks down the location of his boy, which happens to be in Eban’s bed.

    I have already stated above what Charley’s punishment might entail. For Eban, if Charley’s father comes to perceive the full extent of their relationship, it will be far more serious, with years of imprisonment—particularly should his other relationship be revealed—along with a life-long punishment of being named a child-abuser, many of whom cannot even find a place to live given the restrictions put upon them.

      Bolton may certainly be sympathetic to the emotional involvement of the boys, but he nonetheless, allows Eban’s father (Ron Upton) to calmly and quite gently lay out the realities to his adult son, as he attempts to make it clear that Eban’s love of young boys defines him as a pedophile and that he if cannot immediately put a stop to his behavior that he is doomed to a horrific future. He insists that Eban stop seeing Charley, explaining that if he does not, he himself will turn his son into the police.

      For the younger boy, Eban’s attempt to pull away and once more rethink his feelings is an impossible alternative. He demands that Eban live up to his determination to love and protect him, knowing that now his own future in the hands of his grandparents and psychiatrists only be untenable but cruel and painful. It is clear that they are gay deniers. As his father has already proclaimed: “I did not raise my son to be queer.” Indeed, he did not even raise his son.

      Charley has no one to turn to except Eban. And when Eban finally will not even let him sneak a visit through his bedroom window, the boy determines to run away from home. We know also where that will possibly lead: a life on the streets and likely prostitution in order to survive.

      There are no good alternatives in this world for people like Charley and Eban who have found a love for which the society has no mercy.

      Eban not only finally perceives that fact but realizes that he also has no future in the cold, narrow bed of his parent’s Seaside, Washington house. He goes in search of Charley, finding him, once more, by happenstance, sitting on a park bench overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Both now agree they have any no other choice. Eban presumably having some money saved up from his previous employment and Charley having stolen back from his father the money his mother had left him catch a train to Seattle and, with passports in hand, are headed for Denmark or Ireland where can live legally as lovers.

      We can only imagine the dozens of possible impediments ahead: Charley’s or Eban’s father need only alert the police. The couple themselves may look like a suspicious pair to various authorities. Eban can now be accused of kidnapping if apprehended. If the couple does reach Denmark, they may be not permitted to remain in the country for any period of time other than a short visit. Living together, they may find that they are not truly compatible. Will Charley, as he matures, realize Eban’s failures? And what will they do for a living, even if Eban were able to find a job without any recommendations?

      Yet their love has compelled them to take the leap to chance seeking a world which will allow them the simple (but also so very complex) joy of love.    

 

* In Washington individuals who are 16 or older can legally engage in sexual activity with other consenting adults, as long as they are five years or less older than him. However, if the older person is in a position of authority at the time, such as a teacher or a coach, the age of consent is raised to 18. Clearly at 29, Eban would have been arrested and imprisoned for several years for both of his offenses.

 

Los Angeles, September 25, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (September 2024).