Eileen Tracey | A Particular Friend / 2023

the denial of the natural

 by Douglas Messerli

 

Eileen Tracey (screenwriter and director) A Particular Friend / 2023 [15 minutes]

 

Yet another revelation of the abuses of the Roman Catholic Church, A Particular Friend takes place at a Northern Ireland conversion-therapy center, presumably where homosexual-sinning young priests are sent to get cured.

    The figures involved are Father Brady (Liam Burke), Father Brendan (Stuart Dunne), Father Gibson (Desmond Eastwood), Father Matthew (Brian Milligan), and Father Cillian (Chris Robinson) have evidently all had a “particular friend” in their lives, suggesting a homosexual relationship which, according to the tenants of this small and very isolated strict retreat, have taken their minds away from Christ and their duties as priests.

     Yet, the images and sexual alliances of the past, no matter how much the priests prostrate themselves in the grass for forgiveness, continue to haunt their heads. And some go evidently even further in their continued transgressions, especially when Father Matthew discovers two of the priests together in a bedroom sitting in discussion on a priest’s bed. Instead of overlooking the transgression, he reports it, sending the younger man into a spin of guilt and further isolation.

      And finally, it ends with the complete abandonment of the faith by a priest nightly visited in his mind or in reality by his “particular friend.”

      The closeted world of the priesthood is again revealed, as it was in the film I recently reviewed, The Devil’s Playground (1975), as a society which creates repression, self-hate, and torment.

      Belief should not require the absence of the body. And righteousness, in my view, is not achieved by abandoning the body’s natural needs. Where in these men’s lives is the love celebrated as the most important aspect of human life by Christ? One might have thought through the ages of endless literary works, operas, and musical compositions, that we have learned love is not merely a spiritual thing. Yet the Vatican cannot seem to come to terms with this reality.

 

Los Angeles, December 3, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema (December 2024).