Lucan Schmitz | Florence / 2022

the mendacity of being queer

by Douglas Messerli

 

Jack Bozick and Luan Schmitz (screenplay), Luan Schmitz (director) Florence / 2022

 

Matthew Florence (Jack Bozick), a shy nerdy kind of gay boy makes an appointment to meet up with Justin (Luan Schmitz). The two boys have a pleasant day catching views of their beautiful city, San Francisco. But when it finally turns into a sexual rendezvous, Matthew backs off, fearful of even kissing someone he’s just met, and nervous about the possibility of his parents discovering his sexuality since he has yet told them. He’s only 18, but is about to turn 19, which somehow has more significance to him than the legal age of consent in California which he already reached. Perhaps he’s still in high school or plans to live with his parents for while longer yet. The film does not quite explain his fixation with adding an extra year.

   Justin wonders why he hasn’t discussed his sexuality with his parents yet, Matthew explaining that he’s seen videos on the net in which a young man comes out to his parents, a lot of them ending in disaster, the child being beaten, kicked out his home, and even worse—which suggests me that for all the positive things gay movies have brought into the world, they can also be detrimental. If nothing else, Matthew knows he’s not the only gay boy in the world—how could he not in San Francisco?—but he’s also come to fear the whole “coming out” process in a way in which previous generations might not even have imagined.

     Justin promises not to follow him on the internet or tell anyone else, if Matthew will only provide with him his phone number and “hang out” with him again.

    They do get together again and continue to meet up on a quite regular basis, a relationship developing between them, each sharing their favorite views of the city and ocean, etc.—just what those “coming out” movies generally signal to show a developing love.

     Time has passed, and Matthew is now about to turn into the magical 19-year-old man. Now at their private birthday celebration on sushi, Justin gives his Matty a special bracelet. Might this be the coming of age/coming out film that Matthew has been seeking out?

     But no, something evil comes this way as the next day Matthew rushes off with a final kiss to get home for his family gathering. Justin grabs his cellphone, communicating to someone: “He just left. I think he’s ready. Let me know if today is the day.”

   We seem to have suddenly entered a mystery adventure, perhaps even something worse. What does Justin and the receiver of this message have store for the innocent boy?

      And finally the director awards us with a meeting of the supposed gorgons, Matthew’s parents (JeJe Gentry and David B. Schively). Both seem absolutely delightful, well-educated, and warm and loving. These are the kind of people with whom you might want to sit down and share even your deepest secrets. And sure enough, Matty finally opens up to tell them that he’s gay, his father responding, “Gay, there’s nothing wrong with that,” and his mother adding, “We’re so glad you told us,” their son almost a little bit disappointed that there is utterly no startlement or challenge.

    Yet he’s so pleased, he also announces that he has a boyfriend, his mother immediately wondering when they can meet him. Asked if he has a picture of him, Matthew pulls out his cellphone and shows them, his mother agreeing that he’s handsome, his father pausing before repeating the word. The moment he leaves the room, the parents turn to one another overjoyed that he has finally told them, making it clear that they have long been waiting for this much-delayed revelation.

     Almost immediately after, the father insists that he needs to go make a call. The call is to, you guessed it, Justin. “You’re my son’s fucking boyfriend. Are you crazy?” For a moment we are even more confused. Is the father having an affair with Justin? What is his relationship to him?

     We soon discover that the father has actually hired Justin to help get Matt out of the closet, and his furious when Justin tells him he is now in love with him. “Get out of this life. Your job is done.”

     Unfortunately, from his upstairs window Matthew has heard the entire conversation. The betrayal may be even worse that the treatment of young gay boys in the “coming out” films Matthew has been watching. Storming downstairs and picking up his father’s cellphone, he discovers that the boy to whom his father has just spoken is named Alexander, with the same number as Justin.

     The mother is also startled by the news, betrayed as well by her husband’s actions. And at that very moment Matthew realizes that his parents knew he was gay the entire time without talking to him about it. That his father also hired the man who is now his boyfriend to help him turns it into an even further debacle. How can the father Mark and his son ever again ever come to terms with one another? Moreover, his own boyfriend, Justin/Alexander has lied him as well, not admitting that the relationship between them was part of a “job.”

     One almost longs for the good old days of a father taking up the rod and sending his son out of the house into the streets forever! Not really, of course, but this modern-day comic version of experience is certainly not as clear about the issues surrounding heterosexual intrusion and love.

     This is pure farce. Where do we go from here? Even more ridiculously we now learn that Mark hired Justin from Craig’s listen where “You can hire people to do things….” Perhaps we have entered the Twilight Zone. It turns out he hired an actor in Alexander without knowing he was also gay.

     Through Matthew’s closed bedroom door, the father attempts to tell him that they have long known he was gay, and were simply worried about making him happy, apologizing for his intrusion into his son’s life. The door isn’t opened.

    Now speaking in Spanish, the mysterious Justin/Alexander confesses to his friend, Juan (Pablo Ruiz) just how he too has fucked up. Has Justin also hidden even his ethnicity if performing his job, in his courting of Matthew? Layer after layer, we see how everyone has lied with the best of all possible intentions—with the exception of being honest.

     Regarding homosexuality, apparently, honesty is the most difficult of all possibilities. The “honest” coming out movies struck terror into the young gay man’s soul. His parents didn’t dare honestly confront him about his sexuality. Justin/Alexander in fear of losing the boy with whom he’d fallen in love, could not get up the courage to tell him of his own background, his profession as an actor, his relationship with the boy’s father. And Matthew couldn’t even imagine it was possible to tell the most open-minded people in the world that he was gay. Clearly, as the farcical comedy reveals, speaking the truth around the issue of being queer is not an alternative even today. I have to admit, I cried a little about that always evident truth.

    Unfortunately, Alexander’s friend Juan’s answer, a bunch of roses and a box of chocolates, is the answer of almost every predictable heterosexual comedy to a romantic dilemma. Yet love is love, isn’t it? Fortunately, Safeway was out of flowers, and Alexander’s roses have become a pineapple instead. To my way of thinking, that’s gay!

    Too bad that this charming film might not tightened up its script just a little, that Luan Schmitz (aka Luan Larbac) couldn’t afford professional actors, and that he hadn’t chosen an editor who might have more quickly cut away from the cars, showers curtains, and walls when the characters have already exited the scene, helping establish a more energetic rhythm in sync with farces such as this. This might have been a small masterwork.

 

Los Angeles, October 13, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (October 2024).