no resolve
by Douglas Messerli
Enrique De Tomás and Venci Kostov
(screenplay), Venci Kostov (director) El hijo (The
Son) / 2012 [22 minutes]
If the relationship between father and son in
Ben McCormack’s Family Outing seems impossibly complex by film’s end, in Venci
Kostov’s film from Spain it is so perverse that it becomes even difficult to
entirely explain.
We
happen to know that just before she utters these sentiments on the phone, he
has been thrown out of a class, and storms out before the teacher can actually
force him to leave. While she is saying these very words he is in the nearby
bedroom fucking one of his fellow students, Luis (Mateo Rubistein), with whom
he pretends to study each afternoon. After he fucks Luis, he pushes him up
against the wall, slapping him hard for having looked at him in the classroom
and possibly hinting where he lives.
That evening the perfect son joins a group of urban terrorists who go
about town breaking into and trashing local businesses. We observe him and his
gang through a surveillance camera in the back of the shop. Soon after we see
his or another group associated with it driving through a gay car stop in a
park—common in urban centers in Spain and South America—name-calling and
mocking various groups of gay men, some engaged in sex, others just waiting to
be picked up or cruising the place. Eventually they jump upon an auto in which
two men are engaged in sex, bashing in the front windows, and pulling the men
out of the car and fucking one of them.
In
the midst of the melee, we see Pedro threatening the gang members and pulling
the man away from their arms, helping the man into the car before driving off
with him. The man is Paco (Pedro Casablanc), Pedro’s father who works to break
up the violent gangs—the reason, so he tells Pilar, he is out late so many
nights.
They arrive home together, Paco making up some story as Pilar serves him
up a bowl of her lentils. Paco sits at the table in anger, finally demanding
the boy tell his mother what he was really doing that day, the boy responding,
“Why don’t you tell her where you were?” Paco slaps the boy, reporting that
they have the surveillance evidence to prove he was one of the group who
trashed the small Chinese-run business which we observed being destroyed.
Obviously the “terrorists” with whom the perfect son is involved are
homophobic, xenophobic thugs.
Basically ignoring his comments, Pilar tells the boy to take a shower,
glowering at her husband for his comments as the boy retreats to the bathroom.
As he showers, however, we observe the father entering the bathroom and
watching the son for a long while before he pulls open the curtain, thanking
the boy and reaching out his hand to caress him, Pedro pushing the hand away as
he has done formerly at the table. “Get out,” he demands. “Is that what you
want?” asks Paco, as if there might have been another reality.
The question suggests that Paco has perhaps been abusing his son, and
that the son’s seemingly contradictory behavior, both his desire for gay sex with
his fellow student Luis and his retaliation against his father by trashing the
shops of immigrants and stalking gay men are related. Both father and son are
gay, but Pedro clearly resents what he may believe has “made him” a homosexual.
We cannot be certain, but we are led to suspect that the contrary forces at
work in the boy’s life, the perfect son who is equally the evil punk, are
connected to his father and his relationship with him.
At school, despite Pedro’s stipulation, Luis approaches him insisting
that he can no longer remain with his parents and suggests they both run away
together. Pedro pushes him off, reminding him of his demand to never be seen
with him at school, but this time Luis pushes back telling him that he’s simply
a coward.
If Pedro’s tense relationship with his father and his wild,
unpredictable behavior sounds somewhat familiar, the film hints at a similar
pattern as the English teacher at the school speaks of Rimbaud, hinting of
difficulties in the boy’s relationships—obviously having to do with another
older man playing the role of father, in love with a young boy, Verlaine. In
the same class other “friends” of Pedro can be seen passing notes to one
another with Nazi symbols. And together they confront the boy they now mock as
“Peter” (he who denied Christ) outside the school building, perhaps for his
behavior the previous evening, suggesting that he join them again that
evening “looking for baits in the park.”
He
refuses the boys as tensely gather round him, breaking away only as a teacher
approaches. A moment later Pedro jumps on his motorcycle, joined by Luis and
drives off. It is clear now that everything about his life has now been
revealed to his former “mates.”
If
nothing else, the film has not loaded up yet another set of contradictions, of
oppositional forces which seem nearly impossible to resolve. The boys, Pedro
and Luis speed away, followed by a car filled with the gang toughs. When they
reach Luis’ home, he insists that they will both leave that night, Pedro
appearing to agree.
During this same interchange we see Pilar cleaning house, reaching into
a high cabinet to bring down hidden clothing, apparently to wash. From one
folded denim shirt a VHS tape falls out. She sits and watches it, the tape
apparently showing scenes from their wedding—that is until it cuts to a scene
from a gay male porno tape. She attempts to move it ahead upon which for a
moment it returns to the church, but then quickly shifts again to the porno
scene.
Luis kisses Pedro, the boys committing to meeting up that night, as he
drives off to his own home, the car full of thugs still apparently following.
At
this point Kostov’s movie makes a seemingly radical shift to a car in which
Pilar and her husband are traveling, she explaining to him that Pedro has been
working so hard at school, but that there have been some weird things....”I
think Perdito likes to see naked boys. Like that skinny friend of his.”
For a moment the film flashes back to Pedro in the garage caring
momentarily for his motorbike before returning us to the car with Pilar and
Paco, he driving into the park, explaining to his wife about how the night when
he came home bloody that he had been in this park. She’s frightened, reaching
for the car door handle as if at any moment she might run. As they drive slowly
past shirtless men, he tells her that “it wasn’t the first time,” Pilar
beginning to cry.
Back in Paco and Pilar’s auto she suddenly begins to hit him demanding
why he has taken her there, why he has told her all these things, asking
“Haven’t I been a good wife?” and pounding him again and again as she declares
her life to be over.
When they arrive back at the garage to their apartment they immediately
discern Pedro’s body on the floor and run to it, Paco holding his son somewhat
as in a pietà while Pilar cries out in despair with the realization that her
good son is dead.
Of all the family films I include in this selection, Kostov’s The Son
and another Spanish director Miguel Lafuente’s Mi Hermano (My
Brother), which I discuss below, are the most unforgiving of failed and
forbidden familial relationships. In both works, as I suggest above, there is
no possible resolve, no forgiveness for the sins of loving what both family and
society has deemed the wrong people.
Los Angeles, September 19, 2021
Reprinted from World Cinema Review (September
2021).
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