Dave Solomon | Photo Op / 2015

until death do us part

by Douglas Messerli

 

Dave Solomon (screenwriter and director) Photo Op / 2015 [9 minutes]

 

An attractive and seemingly affable, yet obviously shy young Brooklyn photographer Jacob (Randy Harrison of Queer as Folk) shows up at the cafe which has recently become his regular spot. We know from the gathering of random clips he’s taken in the past that spaced every few moments throughout these early frames of US director Dave Solomon’s 2015 film that the other patron in the breakfast spot is Jonathan (Aaron Lazar) photos of whom, hand in hand with his lover/husband Jesse (Lucas Steele), Jacob has evidently snapped at a safe distance many a time.

     We quickly perceive that the reason why Jacob is now regularly haunting this place is that he is strongly attracted to Jonathan, but too shy apparently to tell him so.

      This morning, however, as he watches Jonathan reading the morning paper and soon after lowering his head into a brooding, perhaps even despairing position, he dares to snap a photo close

up, the opportunity simply being too powerful for him to rationally resist it.

       As Jonathan immediately stands to leave, for the first time Jacob actually speaks to him, apologizing several times for intruding upon his privacy and even suggesting that he’s seen him around the neighborhood, wondering if they mightn’t get together for coffee sometime.

       Jonathan smiles politely and forgivingly but at the same time displaying his wedding ring to indicate that he’s not available, clearly recognizing the invitation as a kind of sexual come-on. He leaves, Jacob trudging back with his Canon camera back to his apartment.

       We also have gleaned the reason for Jonathan’s profound sadness. Evidently a man has gone missing in Brooklyn, his lover Jesse. And we become somewhat suspicious of Jacob’s motives since he too asks for and briefly peruses the morning paper and surely, having photographed the two together in several instances, knowing that it is Jonathan’s friend who as disappeared.

      The minute Jacob enters his rather Spartan quarters, he switches on a blaringly loud piece of music, cuts out the new article about the missing Brooklyn man, and pins it to a wall of what appear to be numerous other photos and articles about Jonathan and the missing Jesse. And before we can even assimilate the strange shrine we have just witnessed, the camera pans left to the floor where we see a body bound in masking tape and rope, the man’s eyes covered over by a cloth tied around his head. Jacob releases the eye-covering but nothing else as we see the man, obviously the missing Jesse, suffering in pain on the floor.

        Jacob bends down and despite the muffled cries of his prisoner pulls off the man’s ring, putting it upon his own finger, presumably affirming to himself at least that he is now married to Jonathan.

        We have no idea whether or not he’s been feeding Jesse, permitting him toilet breaks, or even temporarily relieving his pain; and we have utterly no idea whether Jacob intends to permit him to live or what else he might have in mind. For he, already beyond those realities, exists in a madness which obviously consists of somehow replacing Jesse in Jonathan’s sexual attentions. And on this particular day he has, if nothing else, broken the verbal ice and actually spoken to his future lover.

     After stealing the victim’s ring, Jacob snaps his picture, seeing it apparently as another photo op.

 

Los Angeles, October 17, 2021

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (October 2021).