Roger Tongue | Two of Us / 1987, 1988 (re-release with new ending), 2004 USA

two out of twenty

by Douglas Messerli

 

Leslie Stewart (screenwriter), Roger Tonge (director) Two of Us / 1987, 1988 (re-release with new ending), 2004 USA

 

That Roger Tonge’s Two of Us was ever produced seems almost inconceivable to a US viewer. Imagine if the United States had a governmental channel such as the British Broadcasting Corporation—for example something like a television production wing of the National Endowment for the Arts—whose executive producer, disturbed by President Ronald Reagan’s response to the AIDS crisis, decided to produce a film about a teenage gay couple who, having contracted AIDS, were about to die because of the President’s refusal to release funds for AIDS research. Or, if that seems too much of a frontal attack to Reagan himself, what if someone in such a governmentally connected program decided to write a script aimed especially at high school students wherein two 16 year old Indiana high school swimmers, finding themselves attracted to one another and being bullied and mocked by their peers, decided to run off together to California where they live near the beach, sometimes sharing their tent with a runaway girl, thoroughly enjoying one each other’s company, with the boys managing to elude the police and living happily together until they came of age. And just for fun, the director decides to change the time period to the 1950s, when consensual sex between homosexuals was still against the law. What are the chances of such a movie being made in 1987 or 1988?*

    I can assure you that such a film would not only been rejected out of hand, but that no US citizen would possibly have been so fool-hardy to create or propose such a work to such an institution. Indeed, as we know, no such institution even existed in the US.

    Yet in Great Britain, playwright and screenwriter Leslie Stewart not only wrote a work aimed at young adults, but she found a willing director in Roger Tonge, who since the late 1960s had directed and produced the BBC series Scene, a mix of documentaries, dramas, and family-oriented works directed toward high school and college students.

    In their film the high school junior Phil (Lee Whitlock) is going steady with his girlfriend Sharon (Jenny Jay) who like many a high school sweetheart demands his total attention. Phil is a popular student on the school swimming team. But somehow he has remained friends with Matthew (Jason Rush), previously a school swimmer who dropped out of school for his senior year because of the continual bullying he received from fellow classmates for his apparently open expression of being gay.

     Even Sharon’s friend Vera (Kathy Burke), despite her belief that Matthew might be the man of her dreams, perceives that Matthew and Phil’s friendship is a strong one that often pulls him away from Sharon just at the moment she wants him to join her in extracurricular activities or to just show off her “conquest” to her friends. Certainly, anyone who perceives Phil’s gentle sensitivity realizes almost immediately that the gum-chewing, constantly chip-consuming Sharon is not the right girl for him.

    Early in the film we observe Phil’s and Matthew’s camaraderie and the movement of the eyes as they shower together after a swim. Phil is almost ready to dump his girlfriend any time Matthew calls, yet he has no understanding of why he is drawn to his male friend and no comprehension of how to define that admiration and deep devotion.

     One day in school, however, when a teacher attempts to bring up the issue of homosexuality in the classroom, things quickly get out of hand as Phil’s homophobic classmates begin to throw epithets out one by one to show their disgust of faggot perverts as the teacher attempts to regain the conversation by also noting that, first, homosexuality is against the law, and secondly, statistics suggest that 1 out of every 10 individuals will eventually seek out a same-sex relationship. Before he can get his students to think carefully, given their homophobic preconceptions, one particularly nervous kid jumps up demanding which two out of his 20 fellow classmates are gay. The teacher, eventually quieting him, begins to read a letter from a gay person expressing the difficulties he has had in being coming to terms with his sexuality. But before anyone but a few sympathetic girls can react, the classroom bell rings determining the end of possible insights about non-normative sex.       

     Clearly something has hit home for Phil, who stays after for a moment to talk with the teacher. The instructor, however, is busy, having to babysit his daughter so he doesn’t have the time for a chat. But it is clear that the question behind the boy’s tentative attempt to communicate is related to the same kinds of question that the hero of the American CBS School Break special of the same year asks in What If I’m Gay? He too seeks out the advice of a school advisor without much success. 

      Fearful about what his attraction to Matthew portends and attentive to the growing suspicions of Sharon, Phil attempts to steer clear for a while of his boyfriend. But watching him make a 

perfect high dive into the pool pulls him back into his friend’s orbit. After a first kissing session in the shower and a commitment of “womb to tomb” friendship, he brings Matthew back to see Sharon, introducing them to each other: “Matthew meet by girlfriend; Sharon meet by boyfriend,” making it clear that he now perceives them as having equal status in his newfound bisexual reality.

     Of course, neither likes the sudden equality, and Sharon, in particular, now sends word around the campus that Phil is queer since he apparently cannot give up the known homosexual Matt.

     Meanwhile, even on his way home Matthew is tortured by a torrent of projectiles being thrown from the upper stories of the high rise in which he lives. And when he finally reaches the safety of his apartment his infuriated father is there to greet him, having just discovered his son’s gay porno magazines hidden under his bed.

 

    Now both outsiders for no apparent reason, they have little choice to but imagine a better world, which for them is anywhere but the place in which they currently are trying to come to terms with themselves. Together, they pack up their belongings, a folding tent, and enough money to temporarily survive on, and head off into what they can only imagine is a wonderful new world of adventure as they thumb their way to Seaford on the Sussex coast, where many new couples spend their honeymoons, as Phil describes their destination to an unsuspecting driver. Presuming that one of them is meeting up with the bride at their destination, he goes on to a long rant of how he abuses young girls. But when Phil quite innocently and joyfully corrects him—“no, it’s our honeymoon”—he immediately pulls the car to a halt, almost heaving in horror, as he shouts: “It’s against the law.” Matthew shouts back, “So’s rape.”

      Their honeymoon paradise, predictably, is out of season, but it doesn’t bother the two in the least, who just happy to finally be able to have each other to themselves without the torrent of abuse with which they’ve just been faced, couldn’t be happier.

      In a warren of closed-down beach cabins, they find one open only to discover another person already has taken up encampment, Suzie (Zoë Nathenson), a free-wheeling runaway who, if nothing else, is completely open to sharing the space with them with no strings attached. She also has the advantage of knowing her way around the place, keeping clear of those who might cause trouble and attending to the food stands where she can nab free eats.

      She even shares their tent, insistently sleeping in between them for warmth. But they have now become desirous of just being together and finally, although they admit their fondness for her, send her away. Soon after she his captured by the police and bundled off, presumably from whence she came.     

     The boys themselves have been caught cuddling together in the tent by policeman, who instead of arresting them, thankfully, just forces them to decamp. Besides, to keep the authorities off their own necks, the writer and director have whipped up an unbelievable sidebar of the plot wherein the boys kiss and cuddle but aren’t ready to touch their penises. They’re romantics, they claim, not yet ready for sex.

     So all is not perfect in their conjugal paradise. Phil is still having some difficulties in leaving his previous identities in the past and, unknown to Matthew, finally telephones Sharon, who without hesitation is speeding their way, so he finally admits, to recapture her “fella.” When asked by Matthew, what he plans to do by bringing her to them, Phil admits he hasn’t the vaguest idea.

      Despite her refusal, he insists that she confront Matthew, witnessing the remnants of their relationship as well. She does so, but as quickly as she can, pulls Phil off and with tickets in hand intends to drag him back home.

      As Matthew slowly takes down the tent, folds it up, and begins to pack it away, obviously determined to continue on his own into the new frontiers which Phil is not yet ready to embrace, we see the train speeding across the landscape. It is a sad ending, but almost inevitable given the circumstances of the British societal attitudes of the day.

      Fortunately, that ending was the second one forced upon the studio in its re-release the following year in 1988. In the original 1987 version, Phil shows up, joining his now truly life-time friend for a swim in the ocean. It appears they might be able to hold out at least until they grow of legal age or, despite Phil’s sea-sickness, make their way across the English Channel where they will be safe.

     In the same year, in June 1987, Thatcher addressed the Conservative congress in Blackpool, emboldened by the rise in homophobia created in part by the AIDS/HIV crisis and commentary in the right wing press, arguing her belief that "Children who need to be taught to respect traditional moral values are being taught that they have an inalienable right to be gay. All of those children are being cheated of a sound start in life. Yes, cheated."

     To waylay further attacks, BBC, which had originally planned to air this film during the daytime hours, changed it to nights. And the next year, the Thatcher government issued Section 28 which called for banning the “promotion” of homosexuality by local authorities and in Britain’s schools which meant, when put into practice, that teachers were prohibited from discussing even the possibility of same-sex relationships with students. Libraries were forbidden to hold material that contained gay or lesbian themes.

      Without knowing the precise schedule of the plans for enacting that horrifying provision, one can only conjecture whether the BBC movie was an early response for what the media knew was soon coming or another example of what Thatcher saw as how children were being cheated of their traditional moral values. 

      The LGBT community immediately decried the implementation of such recidivist provisions, many regularly protesting parliamentary sessions. On May 23, 1988, activists stormed the BBC offices, handcuffing themselves to a TV camera and disrupting a broadcast of the Six O’Clock News. In Manchester more than 20,000 people marched against the provision, actor Ian McKellen among them, publicly coming out as a gay man.

       The clause was not revoked until June 2001 when Scotland voted it out. In 2003 it was repealed in the rest of the United Kingdom. By that time, surely, the middle-aged Phil and Matthew had already sent up a London flat or flown off to Paris to start new lives.

      

     *You might recall that, in 1989, during the Reagan administration museums that had received NEA funding to exhibit art works by Andres Serrano (who had created a photograph titled “Piss Christ) and Robert Mapplethorpe (a homosexual who had recently died of AIDS and created photographs of nude gay males) did, in fact, create a huge row in Congress, resulting in several members threatening to gut the National Endowment for the Arts Funding and, despite an eventual temporary compromise, resulting in the Endowment’s refusal to fund controversial performance artists Karen Finley, Holly Hughes, John Fleck, and Tim Miller (who came to be known as the NEA Four), all of them having ties to the LGBTQ communities, whose works were described as obscene. Today all of these artists, the two artist photographers and the performance-based artists are widely recognized for their numerous contributions, none of which is now perceived of as being obscene by the artistic community or most museum and theater-goers. My husband Howard, in fact, was on the NEA panel that originally chose to fund Serrano and was formerly the president of the board of the Washington Project for the Arts which took on the Mapplethorpe show when the Corcoran Gallery of Art cancelled it because of the controversy. That year I refused to apply for a NEA grant from my Sun & Moon Press—despite the fact that my press had received NEA grants for the previous 9 years—writing letters to the Head of the Literature Program of the NEA and to several senators and congresspeople explaining my decision to protest their decisions. Even today I cannot quite forgive Dianne Feinstein, the only one who answered my letter, for her statement that she supported the NEA decisions concerning the four rejected artists.  I later became acquainted with John Fleck and Tim Miller and published a play by Holly Hughes.

 

Los Angeles, February 26, 2021

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog and World Cinema Review (February 2021).

 

 

A. P. Gonzalez | Clay Farmers / 1988

the standoff

by Douglas Messerli

 

Michael Moore (screenplay), A. P. Gonzalez (director) Clay Farmers / 1988

 

A full 17 years before Brokeback Mountain director A. P. Gonzalez and writer Michael Moore created Clay Farmers, a western-based film far more convincing than the sheepherders’ romance of 2005, Brokeback Mountain.

 

   We never quite know for sure whether or not the drifter, Mike (Nicholas Rempel) working as a temporary hired hand for Dan the local farmer (Todd Fraser) have sexually consummated their obvious homoerotic attractions for one another. Indeed, the few paragraphs written about Clay Farmers all seem to suggest the two are just friends whose attraction for one another is still in the early stages. Yet these handsome boys joyfully touch, hug, and rough-play with one another in a manner that is far more explicitly sexual, and immensely more sensuous, than the two fun-loving cowboys romping in nature after their one-night romance represented in Ang Lee’s Brokeback. Just because we haven’t (and won’t be) invited into their “tent” does not mean that Mike and Dan aren’t on their way to becoming the homosexual couple that their neighbors, particularly the mean homophobic next door drunk Jim Antonelli (Asbury Ward), imagine them to be. I’d argue that if we don’t perceive them as a couple Gonzalez doesn’t even have a story to tell. For, it is ultimately Mike’s inability to commit to a longer relationship, once faced with the hostility of the isolated community in which he has found himself, that is central to his film.

      Gonzalez, in fact, goes out of his way to show through his beautifully-shot images of their partial nudity as they work side-by-side planting and weeding the rows of crops—as well as in their gentle shaping of the clay-hewn art works that Dan creates in his spare time—that those two are natural pair. That clay work, representing images of dwarves, half animal and beast figures, and a large feminine figure with the head of a man clearly spells out the characters’ perception of themselves as bisexual beings at home in their bodies and an imaginative space that does not tie them down to normative definitions of existence.

      In many ways, however, this is not really the story of a budding romance between two hot farmers but a tale of the terrible abuse by Antonelli of his two boys and wife which the local community abet in their silence. Although Dan does not own the farm which he has contracted to manage, he too is a local, and he warns the newcomer Mike, who has clearly already gotten on the wrong side of Antonelli even before the film has begun, to stay away from their neighbor and to keep quiet about his behavioral abnormalities.

       That is difficult since the youngest of the neighbor’s boys, Gary (Liam McGrath), despite his father’s admonitions, almost daily crosses over from the Antonelli farm boundary to hang out with the two younger farm workers, in part because they teasingly treat him like a pestering younger brother, and, as we later discern, because they offer a sense of belonging and protection that his own home life doesn’t offer. Mike even notices marks on the boy’s body clearly from abuse, and tells Gary that if his father even touches him again to come to them, a statement representing the very kind of offer which Dan has warned him previously can only lead to problems.

        Indeed, the way writer Moore and director Gonzalez have structured this narrative, we know almost from the first frame of the work that there ultimately will be a showdown between the farm workers and their irritable neighbor. A trip to the local bar makes it clear that there are tensions between the town folk. Barkeeper Trapper (Diane Conway) keeps a rifle beyond the bar to take care of any fights that might break out.

      Evidently, however, Dan and Mike have made at least temporary friends with the others who inhabit the bar by buying rounds of free drinks and offering up their friendly and upbeat personalities. But the first scene in this bar still remains tense when Antonelli enters to begin drinking in earnest alone at the bar, leering at the two friends throughout his obvious determination to become inebriated. Dan moves to the jukebox to put on what is evidently his favorite song, Will William’s “What Love Can Do,” a gender free song that seems just as appropriate for gay men as the heterosexual country western audience for which it was probably written*:

 

You love me, I love you

What more is love to do?

Kiss me and hold me close

Let’s see what we can do.

 

So give your heart to me

I promise you I’ll be true

I’ll give my heart to you

Let’s see what love can do.

 

       Gonzalez’s camera focuses, for the first time, on the Antonelli farm as Jim attempts to return home. His wife and the children’s stepmother, Terri (Dolores Dwyer), obviously herself a common victim of her husband’s abuse, has already locked the door, with Jim calling out for Randy (Aaron Denney), his eldest son, to open up. They too refuse, cautiously peering out a backroom window to observe his whereabouts.

       The confrontation continues with Jim ultimately attempting to break his way into their small, prefabricated house. It appears that Randy undoes the lock, as both boys run to the barn to seek protection, Randy grabbing up a rifle. As Antonelli moves in to beat his wife, she hits him over the head with a bottle, knocking him out, while Gary runs to the farm workers’ place next door, calling out their names but unable to find them.

       When Gary returns home, he finds his brother lying on the barn floor, dead. Either the boy, in loading the gun, has accidently killed himself or his father has killed—accidentally or out of fury—his son. The Antonelli parents choose to describe the event in a third way, that Gary accidentally killed his brother, despite Gary’s insistence he is innocent and that he found his brother already dead.

 

     Perhaps the only major flaw in this movie’s logic is that the very next morning Gary escapes his family farm—despite his father’s quite emphatic warning that he must never again communicate with their neighbors—to hang out with his young working friends. At first, he says nothing about the recent incidents on his farm, but he gradually does reveal that


his brother has died. To relieve the tensions they all feel about that news, Mike suggests that they take a break from chores and try out the local swimming hole, no swimsuits needed. As the gay boys joyfully slip out of their dirty clothing, Gary shyly and perhaps recalling his father’s warnings, hangs behind remaining in his underpants until the simple pleasure of the sun beating upon their naked bodies forces him to also strip, the three now swimming together in the only idyll this tough little movie allows. As they lay out in the sun to dry, Gary tearfully comes over to Mike to share the full story of how he is being accused of accidently killing his brother, again insisting upon his innocence. As Mike gently caresses the boy in consolation, Jim Antonelli, sneaking up upon their brief escape to nature, angrily demands the boy get dressed and return home with him.

     Once more, the audience seems to be more savvy about what is in store with regard to what superficially appears as a pedophilic encounter than are the characters. But then one commentator seems to argue that they are not even fully cognizant of their own sexual predilections.

     Further, while Mike momentarily contemplates a confrontation with Antonelli, Dan again admonishes him, insisting that what happens in their neighbor’s lives is not something in which they should interfere.

     This time Mike attempts to explain just what Gary is experiencing. In a long and quite emotionally stirring scene which reveals that as a child he too had been the subject of abuse, he expounds that it is not simply a temporary moment of suffering for the boy but something which he will have to suffer for the rest of his life. Sitting near the ocean, Mike angrily faces off with his friend:

 

“You don’t really know what’s going on with Gary, do you? All you see is marks on his skin. His brother didn’t kill himself because of that. You don’t even think about the marks he’s got in the inside, do you?” When Dan argues “Of course I do,” Mike continues, “Naw, all you see is some dumb kid who wants to hang around and get in your god damn way. That’s not why he’s around. I mean do you know what it’s like to be hit every day and to have to make up stories about where those scars came from. You don’t get over it. You carry it with your goddamn life. ...He don’t even know what he’s being hit for.”

 

     Returning to the bar the two now encounter a world that now stands against them, even Gary having been forced to admit to the community’s assertion that they forced him to join them. Mike is bloodied by Antonelli and others before the bartender ends the fight with a shotgun blast, the two young workers escaping back to their farm.

     Earlier in the film, Mike has shared with Dan his desire to get away from the farm and to move on to Los Angeles. A spat between the two ensues, with Dan suggesting that we might want to move on with Mike as soon as his contract with the farm owner expires within a couple of months, Mike allowing that he would stay for while if that would happen. In short, they seemed to have made a kind of commitment a more permanent relationship than what Mike has seemingly been running away from for much of his life.

      Now, however, despite Dan’s appeals, his friend is newly determined to get his final paycheck and speed back into the world in which he more acquainted. Dan pays him and gives him a homemade coffee cup he has fired in clay in one the film’s first scenes. The gift is clearly meaningful to Mike, but nonetheless he drives on, stopping only a short while just outside the graveyard where the Antonelli family is burying Gary’s brother. Before they might spot him, he pulls away, returning to the highway, pulling to the south.

 

      Dan, now alone, sits in the hollow of a tree branch playing his favorite song on his harmonica and is suddenly poked from behind by Gary, who joins him on another branch in the tree.

       In the world in which he lives, Gary can only hope to be consoled by those who stay behind in an expression of permanence that demands a repression of sudden judgment and change, while Mike can only wish that through a swift reversal of that behavior his lover will impulsively act to join him. It is a standoff as intense as any in the old west.

 

*The musical score by Robert Stine is excellent throughout.

 

Los Angeles, November 12, 2020

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog and World Cinema Review (November 2020).

Fotis Zampetakis | O Angelos ta Hristougenna (Angelos at Christmas) / 2021

a dark christmas fable

by Douglas Messerli

 

Fotis Zampetakis (screenwriter and director) O Angelos ta Hristougenna (Angelos at Christmas) / 2021 [18 minutes]

 

It’s Christmas in Athens, but if we expect a traditional Christmas tale, the fact that this film begins with a praying Christmas angel ornament falling over hints at seismic events of other possibilities.

 

    It’s Christmas in the city, with crowds of people, masses of children, and Angelos (Dimitris Georgalas), a 50-year-old handsome gray-haired man standing in a downtown bookstore eyeing a beautiful young boy reading a book which his mother refuses to buy for him.

      The camera pans down to show us the book through which he is leafing, an album of photographs of nude boys by photographer Wilhelm von Glœden who captured pictures of naked boys when such voyeurism and pedophilic attention in isolated Sardinia and other such spots did not produce the outrage as it would today. Is Angelo a pedophile, training he eyes on the young boys around him at Christmas Eve? This is a real possibility, we quickly realize, as three Albanian streets boys enter the store to sing a carol, the youngest of them collecting contributions in a Santa hat. The boy not only catches Angelos’ eyes but stares at it, almost demanding some interchange. 

      We can only wonder, is this child so very desperate that he’s willing to engage in sexual acts with older men just such as Angelos in exchange for money? Are we about to enter a pedophilic horror tale which will end in a tragic disaster for both man and boy? 

     Our fears seem to be confirmed, when Angelo follows the three out of the store, telling them they sang beautifully, and offering the youngest of them, Agim (Marios Nousias) 50 euros if he comes with them to his car, parked nearby.

        A man, clearly their handler, hovers nearby, and the older boys remind the younger that he’s watching, forcing Agim to refuse the offer.

        We breathe a sigh of relief. The man has not been able to lure the boy away from the others, although he realize that all these boys are involved in a scam of cute performances that perhaps puts them as much into the slavery of the man keeping watch.

        Angelos walks away, does some shopping, and returns to his car, opening the trunk to reveal several bags of Christmas shopping, including flowers—all suggesting a normality of behavior that seems oppositional to his previous actions.

      But there suddenly is the beautiful child, looking up at him with an angelic smile, obviously ready to take the chance for such a remarkable offering of 50 euros. In the next frame he is already in the car being driven off by Angelos.

         The boy show some slight suggestions of fear, but is basically ready for the adventure wherever it may take him, even putting his finger to his lips to warn another boy, obviously of his street-pleading Albanian group, to say nothing about having seen him. Angelos puts his finger to his lips and playfully laughs in sharing the secret.

 

         Like many a pedophile, Angelos tries to make the boy comfortable, sharing names and telling him to get comfortable by taking off his coat. They travel a long distance, finally stopping for lunch in a wooded area, by that time Arim feeling terribly sleepy.

         There is a ring on Angelo’s telephone, while the movie suddenly permits us to catch a glimpse a stylish apartment, with people gathered obviously for the Christmas celebration. The young man on the phone, clearly Angelos' gay lover, attempts to understand why Angelos hasn’t yet shown up for the celebration. But the delayed lover reports only: “Nothing serious, don’t worry, something urgent came up.”

         The young man is clearly troubled, however, asking him to explain and wondering if he has his “pill,” perhaps another suggestion that the young man’s lover is prone to psychological problems.

         In a few intermittent clips, Greek director Fotis Zampetakis permits us to see intimate scenes between the adult couple in bed, reading together. We witness them kissing, all suggesting a fairly normative, older / younger gay relationship.

         Back at the road stop, Angelos assures his friend and the others waiting for him that we will be there by nine o’clock. “I’m hanging up now because I’m driving baby.” We have to wonder whether he is addressing his lover as “baby” or literally clueing him in that he is truly driving a “baby” to god knows where? It is a situation fraught with fearful possibilities.

       Even his lover suggests to another guest, “Lately, he’s been acting strangely.” Are Angelos' dormant desires taking over his previous socially acceptable gay behavior? In this work, answers are delayed.

       Previously, Angelos has asked if Agim has a family, and now the boy asks the man the same question. His answer: “I’m not married, I don’t have children, but my friends are my family.”

          The precociously innocent boy asks, “Is that where we’re going? To your friends, your family?”

          We fear for the answer which is never provided.

         The clouds swirl and, a bit as in a Brothers Grimm fairy tale, the car moves deeper and deeper into a dark forest where Angelos seems to be carrying the child away for some dangerous assignation. We now feel almost as we have entered into the horror film we feared we might be watching from the very start. The beautiful Agim has now fallen asleep, Angelos looking toward him with a slight smile on his face, the villain grinning over the child which may soon be his prize.

          Finally, when it seems like they could go no farther, the car stops, Angelos announcing ominously, “This is the end of the road for us, buddy.” As his eyes widen, we can see the child is now quite terrified. Where is he? And for what purpose?

          The screen goes black.

      Angelo walks forward, Agim following. Angelos turns to the child. “We’ve arrived. Don’t be scared.” But both the boy and the audience most certainly are at this point in the story.

          But something shifts. He hands him a set some object and points to a large house set in the midst of this dark forest, telling him, as they evidently previously agreed, to visit it. The boy moves off alone, while Angelo watches far afar.

  

        Agim rings the doorbell and an old man comes to door, the boy asking “Can I sing carols?” as the old man calls into his wife. Suddenly as the child sings, the older people momentarily turn young, the boy ringing the tiny bells Angelo has given him. They ask him to spend Christmas with them, and we realize, almost too late, that this boy is a gift to Angelos’ parents whom the elder has clearly left at an early age because of his sexuality.

       The angel has returned home to the family who has lost their child far too early, the mother praying for her real son wherever he is.

        Angelos returns to his contemporary Athens home, where the party is now being fully celebrated , kissing everyone with Merry Christmas greetings, Angelos attending to his boyfriend with love.

         This dark fable, although obviously playing with our justifiably psychological fears, reveals its audience to be the cynics, while proving that the innocent Angelos has “stolen” (but also, in the true meaning of that word, “raped”) the boy from the streets only to provide him with the family he himself was not permitted, because of his sexuality, to enjoy.

        Of course, the movie makes no sense at all. Can we truly expect the Albanian street kind to completely assimilate to an old Greek couple’s expectation of living a traditional heterosexual life deep in the forest? This is a fable, not social reality. The child is an imaginative figure of what most gay men might have wanted to be for their parents before their "beloved son" slipped into a world they never could have imagined. And it that sense, it rewards the notion of heterosexual exceptionalness. But why not? It’s Christmas, and Angelos is embedded in a world far from their powerfully destructive normative embrace. The homeless Albanian boy might be perfectly happy in their manger, where Angelos clearly never was.

 

Los Angeles, January 8, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (January 2024).