Lily Dommart | Before You Go / 2019

the open hatred of gay desire

 

by Douglas Messerli

 

Burbs L Burberry (screenplay), Lily Dommart (director) Before You Go / 2019 [13 minutes]

This film, which takes place evidently on the Isle of Man in 1972, begins with Eddie (Joshua Moore) bicycling up to his friend Jack (Liam Rice) to express a notion that repeats throughout the film: “Ready whenever you are.”

     What apparently Jack is not ready for is the imagined kiss that Eddie places on his lips. Jack is heading off to become a fisherman, in all inevitability leaving his friend behind forever as he heads off to the difficult work of sudden indentured adulthood. He doesn’t at all want to be a fisherman like his father, which requires him to move to an entirely other world, on a new island.

    As Eddie asks his friend, “What do you want?” they come together in a deep kiss; but obviously given the repeat of the same scene, that is not what actually happens in the reality of their world. Jack can only reply, “I don’t know.”

     But Eddie tries to push their love just a little closer to real-life experience, noting that he will miss his friend, and “You don’t realize about how much you love something until you are about to leave,” that something clearly including one another.

     Eddie insists that he is not going to forgot his friend, but both know that Jack’s dramatization of the event is serious. Eddie insists, however, that he now needs to go to Paul’s (Jeremy Theobald) to return some books.

     Paul, evidently a former teacher of the two, has loaned out a copy of Orwell, which the intelligent Eddie is not entirely pleased with, not being a fan of dystopias, he claims, while Paul thinks it a semi-realistic viewpoint from the view of 1948. We are obviously talking about his 1949 fiction, 1984, which concerns Orwell’s fears of totalitarianism, mass surveillance, and repressive regimentation of individuals within their societies, a book we might well imagine as significant in 2019, if not the 1972 date of this movie.

     Of course, Eddie’s right in his complaints that even the conception of a state having that much control over what we like, how we think, and what we feel, is unappealing. But what he doesn’t comprehend is that he, himself, is a product of just such an estate. But he is convinced that the government isn’t out to get him.

     Eddie asks Paul what he most remembers about university, Cambridge, to which their former teacher replies: “The people I guess. They were some of the best people I’ve ever met.” He made friends there, although of course no longer sees them. Cambridge was the home of homosexual relationships during the period in which Paul must have attended, the world of spies recruited from the intense relationship between friends. Nothing of this is spoken about in Dommart’s movie, but it’s there nonetheless, just as is the invisible relationship between the would-be lovers Eddie and his friend Jack who is about to be thrown from the intellectual towers into a work-a-day world. 

     This film, as much as it is about homosexual relationships, is also about the British class system, which in 1972 these young men still had to face, a world not that much different, in fact, from E. M. Forester’s Maurice or Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited. The Manx boy Eddie is facing just the forces that separated school chums from both Oxford and Cambridge in those now cinematically rendered tales.

      Paul admits that there was someone at school which changed his life, and whom he has loved very much, but hasn’t spoken to for years.

      “Why?” asks Eddie.

      “Because that was the way of things back then,” Paul expresses his cowardice. He never jeopardized their friendship.

      “You could have had that time together,” Eddie insists, while Paul, still the coward, expresses his excuse, “He wouldn’t have wanted me.” Paul suggests that Eddie might benefit from reading some Isherwood, and hands him a book to bring back at Christmas.

 

      But if you might think Eddie, the intelligent student would support his obviously gay mentor, you would be mistaken, and, in fact, we have been wrong in our perceptions all along. It is Jack who argues that Paul has certainly never told anyone else about his sexual desires, and that besides what might they do? Eddie, on the other hand, is invested in reporting him, although he doesn’t want to become involved in anything like this; “I don’t want it on my record.” Moreover, it’s irresponsible for his being around kids, although Jack argues it doesn’t truly bother anyone. To Jack’s insistence, that “He’s never hurt anyone,” Eddie comes back with the terrified and angry: “Jesus, Jack, you always come out with such stupid stuff!”

     The coward is Eddie, not Jack who is about to be sent into the heterosexual workhouse with a woman surely identified as his mate for the rest of his life. It is Eddie, the supposed intelligent and perceptive one, desperately in love with Jack, who cannot break away from the deep, dark fears of the dear, stupid heteronormative Britain.

      Why are you doing this, Jack wonders. “Mr. Kelly practically got you into university, and you’re ready to disown because he’s in love with another man.” Jack points out that he respected him an hour ago, but now he is ready to hate him, although he is still the exact same person, and Eddie is the exact same person, and—he adds, shifting everything in this taught little melodrama—“I am still the exact same person.”

      “What have you got to do with this?” asks Eddie, knowing full damn well Jack has everything to do with Eddie’s homophobic terror. Jack almost moves into a kiss, until Eddie again demands to know about his involvement. Jack stands, picks up his backpack, and answers the only way someone can to the Eddies of the world: “Nothing. I’ve got nothing to do with it.”

    “You just get to leave,” Jack shouts back to Eddie’s pleas to stay, “but the rest of us don’t. We’ve got to sit behind and figure out what to do with the rest of our lives.” Everything is expressed in the image of Jack having to lift his leg over the wire fence of where previously they have sat in appreciation of the homeland’s beauty, he escaping to someplace where he doesn’t truly want to be.

      Of course, Eddie shows up to say goodbye, with a summary hug before he pulls away into a new world that he is clearly not prepared for. To himself, Jack mumbles, “See you at Christmas….Eddie.” But we know that they won’t find a way to truly get together again. In 1992, The Isle of Man decriminalized homosexuality, 20 years after these 18 or 19-year-old boys had permanently broken the love of their childhood. Eddie, perhaps, found his way into a gay relationship, while Jack was stranded, wishing for a past that could never have existed, just as for their teacher Paul Kelly. Class had everything to do with British homophobia, as Forester, in particular, recognized.

     Dommart’s short film is a far more profound study of the British problems with homosexuality than many a feature film and documentary.  

 

Los Angeles, December 31, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (December 2024).

Ryan Turner | Sensual Masturbation / 2014

on the other hand

by Douglas Messerli

 

Jesse Pepe, Gray Musiq, and Sean Sekino (song), Ryan Turner (director) Sensual Masturbation / 2014 [5 minutes]

 

J Pee (Jesse Pepe) and his gang of performers that include Gary Musiq, Daniel Eldridge, Tetris Kelly and Fran, Klaridi, along which his fellow composer Sean Sekino, produced some of the most delightful gay fables of musicland in the second decade of the 21st-century, including I’m Not Gay, Jellyfish, and Sensual Masturbation, among others.

    This 5-minute music video has a great deal on hand, as both Jesse and Gary make dates with their hands for a predictably sexy night, Jesse evidently preferring a bit of S&M action while Gray just determines to lounge in the bathtub and bubbles of his best buddy. The major difficulty that these two roommates seem to encounter is who gets the bathroom for the night. Jesse gives it up to Gary, and both have great fun with their respective visitors, the hand that makes for the sexual partner anyone can imagine.

    As the lyrics put it:

 

“So I'm going to do this right

you know at the end of the day I'll

always come back cuz nobody does me

better than me yeah I'm going do it nice and slow

….right relationships like this take time

to build and I'm here to make sure every

need is fulfilled I've got with cream….”

    Too bad parts of their bathroom encounters, and, particularly, the full dance number with their backup singers had to be cut, but as suggest, director Ryan Turner had to cut the action down to focus on Jesse and Gray’s sensuous visitors, who are evidently on hand most nights for their sexual delights.

    Once more, J. Pee takes up topics which few singers before him have wanted to approach, giving them the satirical and sexual edge that they deserve.

 

Los Angeles, December 30, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (December 2024).

Inabel Selah | The Tailor / 2021

sewing up a new identity

by Douglas Messerli

 

Inabal Selah The Tailor / 2021[14 minutes]

 

We might guess where Israeli director/writer Inabal’s Selah’s short film of 2021 is going from the very first moment. Oren (Koren Solomon) a hirsute tailor is making a dress for one of his gay, transgender clients, all pink and chiffon, whom as a “top” he fucks.

    The would-be clothes designer has also applied to design school, and in the very first few frames of the film is sent a letter that rejects his application, to his devastation and his mother’s (Yael Daniel) sad regret. Mother and son in this movie obviously have a loving a relationship, but how far that rapport will take the now angry and confused dress designer is not quite established.

     Oren shaves his beard, and is interested in going even further, but the intrusion of his mother stops him from applying the makeup that he has discovered in their shared bathroom. Instead, Oren tears down all of his old designs from the wall, and begins to create a new wardrobe for his dummy model that consists of a gown all in white, almost like a marriage gown.

     That costume, we quickly perceives is for himself as, in the middle of the night, he finally is able to the makeup to his face, place the hidden wig upon his head, and dress himself in the gown which he has been sewing up for so very many nights.

     To her mother’s blinky-eyed middle-of-the-night awakening, he presents his newly discovered self, the transgender individual he has been hiding from himself and others for all of his life.

     We don’t even get a glimpse of his new transformation, but we surely guess it might be something splendid. If nothing else, it is the identity that he has been secretly sewing up for years of his closeted tailoring activities. A rejection of his dreams has freed him to become an individual he has for so-long struggled to become.

     There is nothing particularly earth-shattering here, or even amazingly revelatory. But in this short film we have witnessed another being come into her identity, and move into the new recognition of self. What is mother has to say about this is not really important for her grown son, now daughter. But it might, nonetheless, been interesting to see her reaction and the reality Oren had consequently entered.

 

Los Angeles, December 29, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (December 2024).

Rebecca Ann Bentley | Stepping Out / 2022

coming to terms with reality

by Douglas Messerli

 

Rebecca Ann Bentley (screenwriter and director), Stepping Out / 2022 [9 minutes]

 

In this rather simplistic Australian film, first shown in international festivals in 2022, despite IMDb’s 2024 dating of its release, writer and director Rebecca Ann Bentley presents a rather simplistic view of coming out.

     Will (Will Hutchings) in this short film has just kissed Max (Darcy Smith), the popular soccer player of the elite all-male school which both boys attend, and Max is terribly disturbed since he truly liked it, and has made Will promise to no longer further discuss it.

 

     But Will, who is clearly quite comfortable with his sexuality, can’t resist making further advances.

     There is a tradition of gay films since 2020—perhaps even before—where smart sisters (Tori, in the series Heartstopper is a perfect example) clearly know what’s going on sexually between their older or younger brothers. In this case Liv (McKinely Markham) takes her brother aside to discuss his new “friend” to which he has just introduced her; “What do you know,” hisses her uptight brother. I know nothing she declares, “but if you don’t fuck that boy immediately, I will.”

     Max, however, despite is regular visits to internet gay sites is still haunted by the notion that everything he feels is wrong and rotten, and it takes a visit from Liv, who notices his appetite for young men, to finally get him to realize that there’s nothing wrong with his sexuality, and that even if his soccer-boy friends reject him, that no one should ever reject such deep love. Besides, she informs, she’s pansexual. O the progress (?) that has been made. Rugby player Nick (Kit O’Connor) from Heartstopper didn’t do anything more that blink before he described himself as bisexual. But Max has the problems that most gay boys share, how do I get from here to there?

     His sister Liv is the conduit, and it only takes a good conversation with his sibling and a plate of friendly cookies from his disappeared mother to set things straight, or perhaps we should say, in a crooked way. On the particularly school-day morning on which Max comes alive, we walks over to his clearly disappointed friend Will and plants a deep kiss on his lips. Even the student (Jeffrey Li) notices, and surely it will soon be all over the school. But who cares? The boys have a great deal of love to enjoy in the viewer’s imagination.

 

Los Angeles, December 29, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema (December 2024)

    

Fiume and Juliam McKinnon | La vedova nera (The Black Widow) / 2023

an italian cyclist ends up in french porno hell

by Douglas Messerli

 

Fiume and Juliam McKinnon (screenwriters and directors) La vedova nera (The Black Widow) / 2023 [20 minutes]

 

A nasty little French film in which a sweet Italian bicyclist (Siro Pedrozzi) speeds presumably back to his home, only to fall into a seeming concussion in the trip, and who is then compelled by an apparently nice gatekeeper to enter an S&M porn theater, where a number of sexual beings hang out in the corners of the theater and the aisles, although the most dominant figure sits down next to the boy in an attempt to seduce him.

      The movie seems to be about a young handsome gay boy seduced by a man who wears a ring of amber in which is embedded the “black widow spider” of the movie’s title; but the boy is finally tempted by his seducer’s retreat into the bathroom, he eventually following only the discover a man has brutally killed another sexual partner with blood oozing from his body, matching the film’s quite evocative red décor. He rushes from the room seeking an escape out of the theater, but finds all doors locked.

      Upstairs he attempts to get into the room where the film is being aired, only to discover that the film itself has become a kind of monster which attacks him. Meanwhile, the terrifying stalker tracks him down, as he again attempts to find an exit in which all door seem to be locked.

     Another of the theater’s gay visitors is discovered to also be a corpse, and our young Italian youth desperately clings the last exit as the monstrous slayer comes closer.

     He escapes into the gentle arms of what I have described as “the gatekeeper,” but we quickly recognize, given that our young hero is now wrapped up in a sling, naked and probably dead, which quickly becomes a crystalized corpse ready for the spider’s palette, that our gatekeeper is also one of the bloody sodomites who destroy all those who enter the hell they have created.    

     What this little horror film is trying to tell us I have no clue. Perhaps it’s warning us of youthful digressions, about the effect of on-line porno. That might be far too easy of an answer to the horror of this story resulting from a simple bicycle spill. If the images are memorable, the plot is clearly queer terror without any possible resolution. And I can’t suggest anyone take the little torturous trek down the aisles of the porno theater, whether in a concussion or a living desire to experience the delicious tortures of messy sex. Don’t go here, I advise, knowing, of course, that many will track down this film simply because of my disdain.

 

Los Angeles, December 27, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (December 2024)

Jordi Núñez | Píxeles (Pixels) / 2015

minutiae in the breakdown of the image

by Douglas Messerli

 

Jordi Núñez (screenwriter and director) Píxeles (Pixels) / 2015 [12 minutes]

 

The two lovers who begin this film, Edu (Javier Amann) and Adri (Miguel Ángel Amor), Adri already accusing the quite handsome Edu of being an ugly mutt, a boxer dog, when inevitably his face will fall into old age, Edu imitating a lonely, crying dog.

    By the second section of the movie Adri is already sketching a portrait of another tenant in the building, Tristán (Ferando Hevia), who stands posing in his underwear as Edu enters the room, and although the two lovers, Edu and Adri have passionate sex later, Edu wants to determine whether or not his lover was turned on by the handsome Tristán. Yes, Adri admits, the model is really hot, but he loves Edu, and obviously he wouldn’t fuck him.

     But the distance between them has already been established, and with his friend Sara (Laura Minguell), Edu has already established he fear that he is losing his hair. Moreover, their neighbor Tristán wants to attend their party to meet the “hot girls” Sara and Linda (Andrea Sánchez).

     Indeed, Paula (Nakarey Fernández), one of Edu and Adri’s female friends is ready immediately to jump into bed with cute-boy Tristán, Adri, the artist, filming them up close with his cellphone, while Edu looks judgmentally on. When Paula spills a bit on wine of Tristán’s undershirt, Adri demands he go into their bedroom a pick out another shirt. Why, wonders Edu, might he not return to his own apartment in the same building, and why did he pick out one of his shirts which clearly looks better on his lean body?

     Adri realizes something has changed, asking “Are you going to move? Or are you staying home?” This is not a question one can just ignore, but is addressed more as a challenge, Edu already realizing that his lover may not even care which of the two options he chooses. Edu no longer feels like following the others on their round of bars.

    This is the way so many gay relationships fall apart, through moments of paranoia, of fears of aging and loss of youthful good looks, of the lack of the other mate’s full attention. So many gay men, who were never taught to comprehend their worth regarding their social and workplace gifts and talents, have come to depend on only their good looks, their youth. Edu is terrified of his seemingly disappearing hairline, while Tristán has such a full head of curly red hair.

     Well, they’ll talk it out in the morning. Edu returns to the bathroom to squeeze more of the hair-restoring agent on his already full head of hair.

     What Edu can’t know, as he slowly tears down Adri’s drawings of himself posted across his walls, is that pissed by the women’s constant questions about why Edu has not joined them, Adri walks against a red light into his death.

     Edu’s cracked cellphone screen cannot even permit the joys of the pictures of their past relationship.

    Pixels are the bits and pieces that together form the image displayed on your screen, and it is precisely such tiny fragments which have pulled apart the full image of their loving sexual relationship.

    Spanish director Jordi Núñez’s short film is not profound, but certainly reiterates the problem of letting the daily minutiae of life destroy the full picture of what is actually happening.

 

Los Angeles, December 27, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (December 2024).