Nathalie Álvarez Mesén | Filip / 2015

a comfortable place

by Douglas Messerli

 

Nathalie Álvarez Mesén (screenwriter and director) Filip / 2015 [11 minutes]

 

The gentlest and truly most innocent of all of all these films is Costa-Rican/Swedish director Nathalie Álvarez Mesén’s Filip starring the wonderful Josef Waldfogel as the boy who shares the title’s name. Like many younger brothers, particularly in homes such as his in which the father appears to be missing, Filip clearly idolizes his older brother Sebastien (Simon Reithner) to the point that he listens and responds more to him than to his otherwise clearly loving and patient mother who teases him to discover if he has a girlfriend.

      The bond between the boy and Sebastien however is so strong that in its focus on sports (the older plays soccer) and the elder’s interest in cartooning that there seems to be little room in the life of 7-year-old for girls. But then many boys of that age have no time for girls.

      Particularly when Sebastien’s friend Stor comes over to the spend the day with him, the boy becomes so physically engaged with both of them, leaping between them jumping over their seated bodies, and jabbing and punching them—often a boy’s way of demonstrating his love—that we sense his desire to keep in male physical contact. The two of them, seeming to recognize his needs, allow him to interrupt their adult communication until, literally worn out he falls to sleep and is put to bed.

       But when he awakens in his own bed alone he peeks through the doorway into the other room where the light is still shining to catch another glimpse, perhaps, of his beloved friends only to observe his brother and Stor gently kissing one another.

        The sight almost seems to awe him, while obviously creating a deep sense of confusion. Nothing is said about the incident, but he seems removed the next morning, a bit uncommunicative, and proceeds throughout the day to be walking almost in a kind of dream, obviously trapped in his own thoughts as he struggles to makes sense of what he has seen.

        On his way home he observes a couple of slightly older boys bullying and mocking a young boy who appears to be even younger than he, pushing him down upon the playground concrete and striking him as they call him a “faggot.” Does Filip even know what the word means?

        Surely he senses its significance and as the young boy walks away passing near him he follows his motions with an intense stare as if he is almost identifying, as Álvarez Mesén’s camera already has, his relationship to the other.

       That night we watch him rise from his sleep and walk down the hall, peering for a moment into his mother’s room before turning and carefully opening the door of his brother’s bedroom, entering, and attempting to awaken him to announce that he can’t sleep. Sebastian turns back the covers, and Filip crawls into the warm bed to cuddle up to the warmth of his brother’s body. It is as if, even if he has not resolved the riddle of the male kiss, he has resolved where he feels most comfortable and safe. He has found a place where he feel at home.

     To describe this, as one commentator has, as evidence of his being gay, is I think an unnecessary conclusion. But surely if he does find himself more attracted to males as he comes of age he will not fear it and feel far more comfortable to enact such a kiss which as he has now witnessed.

     

Los Angeles, June 21, 2021

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (June 2021).