Aretha Iskandar | Raphael / 2020

mentor for living

by Douglas Messerli

 

Aretha Iskandar (screenwriter and director) Raphael / 2020 [13 minutes]

 

A rather meandering and somewhat meaningless half-love tale about a frightened and rather inert young man, Fred (Paolo Schoene) who is brought to life through a short romance with an actor, Raphael (Daniel Straube), who teaches Fred to be far more spontaneous and to enjoy his life, which he claims is as short as the click of cigarette lighter hitting flint that creates its brief flame.

     This work, mostly without dialogue, shows the usual gay activities, the two dancing in a club, laying in bed, bicycling, and generally playing in nature—all of which is what supposedly allows Fred to grow stronger and surer of himself.

      A long time passes in which they no longer see one another; why they broke up we have no clue, except it appears that Raphael’s relationship with Fred was never imagined as a long-term one. But Fred, it is clear, is still in love with Raphael and, more importantly, thankful for all the confidence he has instilled in him.

      He bravely makes a telephone call to meet up again with his old friend, mostly just to tell him how important Raphael was to his life. Raphael is friendly, but a bit diffident, and we don’t actually get to hear what Fred tells him, although we heard him practicing previously before his bathroom mirror, so perhaps he simply repeats some of the same stock phrases.

      And, of course, we never discover what precisely is Raphael’s reaction. But it also appears, in this brief meeting, that Raphael, despite his advancing career, is not quite the model that Fred perceives him to be. Raphael is clearly into light drugs, smoking a joint during most of his conversation with Fred. And we wonder what might his real life actually be. Is he as free and easy as he claims he is? Does he have other relationships? Or is everything for him a temporary experiment in the process of his determinedness to live a fully untethered life?

             Unfortunately, Iskandar’s film is merely a tribute to what he has done for Fred, and doesn’t explore what may be the most important questions that it hints of, the short film sputtering to an unfulfilling conclusion, its fire having, just as Raphael’s cigarette lighter, having been quickly extinguished by a lack of script and action. Pretty pictures do not make a narrative.

 

Los Angeles, December 17, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (December 2024).