Douglas Messerli | Plastic Paradises [Introduction]

PLASTIC PARADISES

by Douglas Messerli

 

Since LGBTQ experiences generally lie outside of heteronormative definitions of sexual and social behavior to describe gay or lesbian films as sometimes representing compulsive actions is almost beside the point. Indeed, it once almost stood as a definition of LGBTQ sex—perceived by the medical profession and the public both as something that was a compulsive disease, something that the individuals suffering from the various psychological conditions simply could not properly control, and accordingly a cure was always proffered by the heterosexual community as being associated with methods of controlling and delimiting sexual desire.

      To mention, accordingly, that the septet of films on which I write below, produced from 2005-2020, generally reveal compulsions previously unrecognized by the central figures of these works might be said of hundreds of LGBTQ films. Yet there is something notable in all these cinematic shorts, the way the characters compulsions often lie outside of their previous experiences, that they occur in strange places to which they’ve previously never visited, and they reveal bizarre behavior in which they’ve never before engaged that compels me to read these films in the context of one another. The characters, in almost all cases feel like visitors to the worlds in which they suddenly discover themselves, almost like tourists who have a more common compulsion of wanting to snap photographs or to uncover tokens or mementos which might help define the eerie territory into which they’ve just entered. And while in almost every instance in these seven films the central figure is attracted to another male, there is often a third or numerous other persons, male and female, in the background—judging or evaluating the heroes’ actions and, in general, attempting to control them.

      A great many of the figures in these films are young, not yet of full age, so that both the danger and perversion of the acts involved are made even more apparent. These mostly gay figures are willing to give up almost everything to fulfill their sudden desires which help to make for the surreality of the tales these films witness. And it is no accident that two of these can be described as horror films, and the movies involved include serial pick-pocketing, breaking and entering, abduction and bondage, exposing oneself sexually in public, potential incest, and in three cases child abuse. The least transgressive of these concerns a man bartering for a way home by paying with drugs and stolen goods who is finally granted his wish only if he sits for hours head-on hugging the body of the motorcyclist, his preference I might add. Although I would argue that almost all the characters involved are loveable or at least redeemable, none of them might be described as a member in good standing in society, unless you want to count the various cops and guards scattered through these works whose actions have little effect on those they might seek to restrict and restrain.

      It’s not that the figures of these short films do not recognize that they are seeking merely plastic paradises that are delusional and unobtainable, but that they simply have no choice in the matter: they were born queer.

      The films included here include works by directors from around the world: Spanish director Antonio Hens, Doors Cut Down (2000); Philippines director Mark V. Ryes, Last Full Show (2005); the German Til Kleinert’s, Cowboy (2008); the British Dominic Leclerc’s, Nightswimming (2009); the Venezuelan Carlos Alejandro Molina M’s Red; the US Dave Solomon’s Photo Op (2015); and the Greek Vasilis Kekatos The Distance between Us and the Sky (2019)

 

Los Angeles, October 18, 2021

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (October 2021).