Dylan and Lazlo Tonk | Uitgesproken (Caged) / 2013

speaking out

by Douglas Messerli

 

Dylan and Lazlo Tonk (screenwriters and directors) Uitgesproken (Caged) / 2013 [14 minutes]

 

 David (Joël Mellenberg) and Niels (Josha Stradowski) are good friends, sportsmen who regularly run together and often play soccer with other boys of their age, like so very many high school or early college students still today, mostly a homophobic lot, led by Bas (Florus Hoogslag).

    When David’s girlfriend, Stella (Yldau de Boer) shows up with Tim (Leendert de Ridder), known by the others to be gay, he is trouble, particular when not only Bas but his equally homophobic girlfriend Angels (Rosa van Iterson) attack the group outsider.

     Subsequently, seeking out Stella, who has left after witnessing the verbal assaults, David tries to understand why she has shown up with Tim, her response being the honest statement: “He’s my friend.” But David can have nothing to do, he declares, with “fags.” When she wonders whether he might not already have been friends with someone gay, he declares he certainly would have been aware the fact. No, his friends aren’t fags, he continues in his homophobic rant. Again she leaves him, demonstrating her inability to deal with that aspect of his personality.

     Soon after, the boys seek out Tim’s bicycle, spray-painting it pink. When Niels protests, David takes the can away from Bas and proceeds to color the bike in an attempt to demean its owner.

     A short while later, David observes his friend Niels talking to Tim, and stays back in the shadows until Tim leaves before joining up with Niels. Nothing is spoken, but in the very next frame, walking with Bas and his other friends David comes across Tim and Niels, in open public, kissing one another. Even while recognizing their presence, the boys continue in their public display, obviously previously arranged to announce their relationship. When a shocked David confronts Niels with his having never spoken the truth, he ends his comments: “I thought we were friends,” with Neil’s responding, “So did I.” Bas warns him to never to again show is face in their territory—however that might be defined.

     Stella describes them as a cute couple, but David is not even ready to do battle. He is troubled and very quiet. This time Stella attempts to confront him, wondering what he is so worried about, particularly in the midst of his silences he approaches her desperately for a kiss, as if needing to prove his heterosexuality. She refuses, wondering what he is so nervous about.

     Running the tracks, he refuses even to recognize Niels, who now takes his runs in the later evenings. The two do not speak.

      Back in their caged off little box where they play soccer, David stands aside looking troubled. Bas teases him, wondering if he misses his boyfriend. “He was no good at soccer,” Bas proclaims, which having seen Niels and David score earlier in this short film, we know to be a lie. Finally, David can stand it no longer and calls Bas on his statements, who now accuses David as also being  a “fag,” David turning to him and responding as if he were a child, “No, you’re the fag.” In a sense, the word no longer has any specific meaning between them, just a filler for someone they hate.

     In the last scenes of the film, we see David joining Stella who’s talking Tim as they sit on the grass. Niels comes running by and David finally joins him.

     Dutch brothers Dylan and Lazlo Tonk have nothing truly new to say in their 2013 film. But it reiterates, if nothing else, that the behavior so many well-meaning individuals presume to have now been abandoned by most Western societies, is still very much alive and active in the personal worlds of young boys and girls in the school halls and sports arenas. Like all the cinematic predecessors and those films that followed which I’ve recounted in these volumes, homophobia is still alive and well on an international level. Societal niceties to not account for the real hate of LGBTQ individuals that survives in most western societies even in 2022, the year of this review. Perhaps the situation will never be resolved until everyone who is not afraid of various other sexualities speaks out, in this case including Niels and David, both of whom have attempted to hide the issue out of fear and others’ hate.

 

Los Angeles, December 14, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (December 2022).