Douglas Messerli | The Games We Play [Introduction]

the games we play

by Douglas Messerli

 

Over a period of several months of watching short gay films, I observed that the people in many of these LGBTQ movies of the millennium often seem to engage in game playing far more than previous generations did as youths—at least in the movies—even bringing back a game sometimes played at certain parties of my own ancient time, “spin-the-bottle,” along with various versions of “Truth and Dare,” the game which US singer Madonna made famous.

     Game-playing, I realized is important to this generation not merely in order to bring people together and explore sexuality in general, but in a more complex society in which adolescents are also curious not only about discovering whether a girl or boy is sexually interested in them but whether or not they are even attracted to the same gender, games help to reveal to straights what queers had long communicated through language, playing language games such as “dropping beads” or using coded references, dropping in names and situations that have meaning to only someone who might be lesbian or gay.

    In a world of more open sexual possibilities, it is all the more confusing when it comes to determining who might be available and if they might be interested in oneself. As I’ve noted below, computer groups such as Grindr and others serve a true purpose for those seeking sex with like-minded others. But when it comes to finding out about one’s own peers, a good old-fashioned game “of spin-the bottle” often breaks the ice just as “Truth or Dare” reveals information necessary to discover about the other.

     And of course, these are not the only games young people play in order to get to know and please others. There are numerous games for slightly older individuals as well, including S&M role-playing to more theatrically-conceived activities. Most of the games beyond the moment of a party event involve play-acting to some extent, the ability to reveal and dodge sexual questions as they arise and appear necessary to be answered.

     Two of the films I discuss below may be seen as early exemplars of what later became far more common in short LGBTQ filmmaking, French director François Ozon’s Action verité 1994, perhaps the prototype of the genre, and US director Adam Salky’s 2005 film Dare, continued in his 2018 work The Dare Project, the latter two of which together may be said to have served the same role for this small genre as did Simon Shore’s Get Real (1998) for the extraordinarily popular “B” version of “coming out” films, both Shore's and Salky's films bearing significant connections.

      The others I write about, an international selection, represent a sampling of what I am sure I shall soon discover to be a much larger number of works: popular French filmmaker Pascal-Alex Vincent’s El Colo (Holiday Camp) (2010), Italian Giuseppe Bucci’s Una note ancora (One More Night) (2012), US director Dave Scala’s Grotto (2013), Danish Søren Green’s En eftermiddag (An Afternoon) (2014), the prolific US director William Branden Blinn’s Truth or Dare (2014), Mexican Julián Hernández’s Muchachos en la azotea (Boys on the Rooftop) (2016), French-born Germain Choffart’s Dare (2016), Dutch Niels Bourgonje’s Turn It Around (2017), Australian Sam Langshaw’s Amsterdam (2017), and three other French directors Olivier Lallart’s  PD (Fag) (2019), Thomas Raoul’s Bonhomme (2020), and  Quentin Jabelot’s Fauvre  (2021).

 

Los Angeles, June 4, 2022 / October 14, 2024