Søren Green | En eftermiddag (An Afternoon) / 2014

the go-between

by Douglas Messerli

 

Tomas Lagermand Lundme and Søren Green (screenplay), Søren Green (director), En eftermiddag (An Afternoon) / 2014 [8 minutes]

 

Appearances are everything in the tentative teen world of Danish film director Søren Green’s An Afternoon.

     Mathias (Ulrik Windfeldt-Schmidt), who is clearly in love with the slightly older or, at least, his taller and more mature friend Frederick (Jacob Ottensten) invites himself over to his friend’s house to watch images on his computer. Frederick demonstrates some interesting scenes, mostly daring athletics, as the shyer and younger looking Mathias looks on, but mostly at his friend with nearly cow-eyed admiration, joyful clearly just to be in his presence.

     Things are fine until Frederick receives a text message from a high school girl Cecilie, which immediately begins to bother Mathias, particularly when his friend continues to text her in the middle of their activities.

      Both attempt to return their interest back to the screen, but Mathias can simply not maintain his sense of pleasure since, after a couple of other short clips of leaps and jumps, Frederick shows

him a girl, probing to see if he finds the female “hot.” Mathias, as expected, agrees but declares the video to be so boring, obviously signaling his friend that he’s not interested in girls. Just to check, Frederick asks “You think so?” Mathias responding, “Yes. Do you like it?”

      The two boys are doing what older gay men do it also attempting to determine whether or not an attractive acquaintance is interested in the opposite sex, but in a far more direct and unsophisticated manner, both simply terrified of admitting too much too quickly as to offend the other’s possible heteronormative viewpoint.   

     Frederick doesn’t answer Mathias’ important question and, furthering the hurt, receives another text, apparently from Cecilie. Mathias’ face reveals his disappointment and a bit of bitterness. But at the very same time he cannot resist looking at how perfect his friend’s back meets his thin waist.

     In a few seconds this young actor conveys disappointment, hurt, and love all in brief facial gestures.

     His next question, however, is tossed out almost as a challenge: “Aren’t you going to text her back?” To which Frederick mutters a negative response.

   But then comes the inevitable question, the most important question of all as far as Mathias is concerned: “Are you two together?

      Even his friend’s response of “no,” doesn’t quite reassure him. And Frederick’s secondary response again attempts to protect himself from heteronormative expectations. “Not really.” 

      Disappointed with the following silence, Mathias stands, explaining he has get home for dinner. The afternoon in which both boys were holding their breaths in anticipation for what they hoped to discover has ended once more without resolution.

      Shrugging his shoulders, we see Frederick texting “I don’t think he’s interested.”        

     After a few long moments, the phone sings out a response, “Text him. He’s crazy about you,” with happy-faced emojis. You don’t need me to tell you this film’s ending.

      If Green’s 8-minute short is not profound, it certainly will remind some gay men of their childish endeavors of playing the game of dropping beads. Alas, those of my age usually didn’t have a Cecilie to help them out. Or perhaps, in this case, a girl who unintentionally stood momentarily in their way, since it’s obvious Mathias had confessed his love of Frederick to the same girl, explaining his deep interest in what precisely Frederick’s relationship to her consisted of.  

     But finally, one has to ask, whatever happened to simply reaching out to explore a touch? These boys wait for their phones and computers to tell them the truth.

 

Los Angeles, April 23, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (April 2022).