Stéphanie Anne Weber Biron | Fragments / 2015

the eccentricities of an undesirable drone

by Douglas Messerli

 

Stéphanie Anne Weber Biron (screenwriter and director) Fragments / 2015 [19 minutes]

 

Chloe (Weber Biron), a young would-be filmmaker, tries to convince he bestie male friend, Sam (Douglas Smith) to be in her next film. But he is convinced that it’s all just an excuse to getting him to make out with her. She tries to reveal the absurdity of the situation, that she wouldn’t hire a full film crew just to make out with him in a movie. And before he knows it, the New Orleans boy is involved with another boy, Alex (Connor Jessup) whom he inexplicably discovers as he is dressed up as a lion, sharing with Alex who that he just failed to get into medical school.

     Actually he’s done well in almost all of his tests, except for the bio exam; and incidentally, he hasn’t walked out of a high school production of The Wizard of Oz, but is working as a mascot for his uncle.

   Alex, a hypochondriac, coincidentally has just been accepted to med school, but doesn’t really want to be a doctor. His controlling father has handpicked most of his girlfriends, insisting that they should all be models. Alex just happens to have a couple of bottles of beer in his knapsack and the two boys sit down to talk. Perhaps his father, Alex suggests, is a pervert who is living viciously through his son.

      But the thing is, Alex suddenly admits, is that he is gay.

     Sam suddenly has a weird question that he poses to Alex: “Why do gay guys have lisps. Is it from sucking cock?” He immediately realizes the stupidity of his question since girls suck cocks and they don’t have lisps. And neither does Alex. Alex suggests that some people just naturally talk that way, but others might do it to be recognized among themselves. But it is the question itself that reveals Sam's fear that being gay might turn him into someone that he not that is important here; not the half-ass answer to a meaningless question.

      His filmmaking girlfriend suddenly sends a message via a drone: “She’s wet and she wants to fuck.”

    While this short film, I am sure, sees its eccentricities as absolutely original and delightful, most audiences I would argue would easily see through Weber Biron’s fey disconnected scenes and heavily theatrically ladened sets as a kind of youthful adulation of slightly daffy love films such as Francis Ford Coppola’s One from the Heart (1982) or even Martin Scorsese’s After Hours (1985). The first has a gay sensibility without actually involving any LGBTQ+ situations, while the second has a straight plot that quickly turns into an underground gay, lesbian, and BDSM fantasy.

      Here the director sings Shaffer Smith’s, Sony Bono’s, and Charles T. Harmon’s memorable “Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down),” after which the two proceed to have a very open discussion of how women truly do like men with slightly larger cocks and how being rejected for not having a larger cock destroys men’s egos. Presumably we are witnessing both the end of the relationship and the open feminism of Chloe, who doesn’t yet quite perceive that perhaps her Sam has just fallen for a gay boy.

      Sam’s reaction is, simply put, that he’s not use to girls to talk as straight-forwardly about sex as Chloe does. Which makes it quite apparent that she is the very opposite of the kind of girl Alex’s father keeps wanting him to date. But as she points out, his attitude also hints at the kind of male viewpoint that perpetuates that males still control the discussions of sexuality.

    In short, Sam has just proven himself somewhat incompetent regarding both his possible heterosexual and gay relationships. Perhaps he has just met up with the wrong people, and needs someone with more normative values. But clearly the cute Sam is out of place in the current world in which he exists.

      The open-minded Chloe, to give her credit, suggests that perhaps Sam should try out sex with Alex, despite Sam’s denial that he received any sexual vibes from the gay boy. Something has obviously happened in between, as we finally begin to understand that perhaps this film does truly represent “fragments” of their friendships over a longer period of time, which is also to say that perhaps the director is simply too lazy to make the links.

      In any event, our open-minded hero, Chloe argues that she simply wants the best for her man, and that everyone understand that you can love more than one person, sounding a lot like sexual cliches she’s picked up in some liberal sexual handbook. Mind you, I’m for her; this may be one of the first truly open-minded women when it comes to trying out gay sex that someone has represented in film for a long while. Someone who openly wants her boyfriend to question traditional sexual roles is someone who can join my corner anytime.

   Yet the whole set-up of this film, centered on a sort of one-sided dialogue, seems highly disingenuous. As the boys suddenly share their excitement for a new Steve Reich album we feel as if he have been transported to perhaps the back halls of a Julliard School for music dorm, as the boys kiss and, of course, fall immediately (or finally) in love, with Chloe’s drone zooming down presumably to congratulate them and wish the good luck. This is after all, just Chloe’s movie.

 

Los Angeles, June 22, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (June 2024).

 

 

Robert G. Vignola | When Knighthood Was in Flower / 1922

 the boy's second husband

by Douglas Messerli

 

William LeBaron (screenplay, adapted by Luther Reed from the novel by Charles Major), Robert G. Vignola When Knighthood Was in Flower / 1922  

 

The first of Marion Davies’ cross-dressing films of the 1920s was Robert G. Vignola’s production of When Knighthood Was in Flower (1922), described at the time—with a budget of  $1,500,000—as the most expensive film ever made. Davies’ companion, William Randolph Hearst, also the film’s producer, featured the film on more than 650 billboards in New York City, 300 subway advertising placards, and in special sections of department stores that sold souvenir books of the  original novel by Charles Major. The film was the second most popular film of the year and Davies was declared the most popular female star of the year, while Rudolph Valentino was named the most popular male figure.

     If nothing else, this swashbuckling costume drama was extremely convincing in its portrayal of King Henry VIII’s (Lyn Harding) court, some of the movie actually filmed outside of Windsor Castle in England.

     Davies plays Mary Tudor, the King’s younger sister, an independent thinking 16-year-old who quickly falls in love with a jouster, Charles Brandon (Forrest Stanley) who, when he beats out the villainous Duke of Buckingham (Pedro de Cordoba), is offered a position in the King’s guards. Mary’s first lady-in-waiting is Lady Jane Bolingbroke (Ruth Shepley) and Brandon’s pal is Sir Edwin Caskoden (Ernest Glendinning), the latter of whom is immediately sent of the Henry to arrange a marriage between his sister and the agèd Louis XII (William Norris) of France.

      Mary wants nothing at all to do with the elderly French King, and secretly arranges for a meeting with Brandon, who teaches her to dance and in general charms her so completely that, against all restrictions, she rushes off to the major prognosticator of the day, Grammont (Gustav von Seyffertitz) who foretells that she will marry Louis and will find happiness only upon his death.

      Buckingham, who has been closely watching Mary and Brandon, attempts to capture Mary as she returns from her illegal visit, but Brandon intercedes, killing several of Buckingham’s henchmen. In revenge the Duke arranges to have Brandon arrested for the killings during a ball held at court; when Henry hears of the charges, he sentences Brandon to be locked away in the Tower and tortured.

     Mary, however, manipulates her brother so that he frees him, planning her own escape with Brandon, dressing herself as a young boy.

       Rushing off to a seaside inn before escaping to the continent and perhaps to New Spain to where Brandon has been ordered to go into exile, Mary as the boy orders up a full meal as Brandon goes off to arrange for their voyage. Course ruffians, also dining at the inn, spot the attractive young man, mocking him for effeminate ways. Their leader, who finds the boy to be pretty as a lady even toys with him sexually, while Mary, to save herself from his manhandling, finally pulls out a sword and duels with him. Davies actually does a credible job of playing an early Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. as Brandon, who has returned, is restrained by the blackguard’s friends and forced to observe. Finally, he breaks free and kills the bully only be captured by Henry VIII and his soldiers who have followed in chase.

       Once more, Brandon is locked up, this time sentenced to death.

 

      The very next morning Henry’s current wife Queen Catherine (Teresa Maxwell-Conover) descends upon the girl with the King’s tailor (William Kent) who serves this movie as the gay sissy, placing before the diffident girl sheath after sheath of fabric, all of which are dismissed by Mary, as she tosses the full rolls out the door and, finally, upon the tailor himself. Come to pay a visit to his sister, Henry is outraged by her behavior, insisting that he will see his sister married that very day and orders Brandon to be beheaded.

      In order to save Brandon, Mary agrees to marry the old French King but only on the condition that she may chose her second husband, if Louis XII were to die, Henry reluctantly agreeing just to escape the family scandal and the important ties with France if she were to refuse Louis’ offer.

      But meanwhile Brandon has just been sentenced to publicly decapitated, and in order to postpone the act, the court fool keeps climbing the steps to the beheading stage and jesting to his audience until Caskoden arrives to save the day.

 

     The long scene in which Mary and Louis parade through the streets of Paris on their way to their wedding is quite remarkable, with a full carriage in which Mary sits, a horse on which Louis is uncomfortably perched and continues to almost fall off, and vast crowds to cheer the couple on.

     The scenes that follow, as Louis attempts to demonstrate, quite unsuccessfully, his youthfulness might come directly out of the paintings of Jean-Honoré Fragonard or François Boucher as he plays games of blind-man’s bluff. Mary seems to have him well in control, even insisting that he cannot share her bed. Yet she is vexed by the presence of his nephew Francis I, who is determined to marry the English bride the moment his uncle dies and hopeful that he may sexually compromise her even before Louis’ death. She warns Caskoden of the situation, demanding he send for Brandon immediately.

 

     The King’s death comes before she might even have imagined, and Francis immediately locks the Queen away in her bedroom, appearing through a hidden door to have his way with her; but as in all such romantic tales, his plans are foiled as Brandon arrives, clumsily climbs to Mary’s balcony, ties up Francis, and escapes with Mary, the two racing away on horses, foiling the French guards by leaping, horses and all, in the river’s waters from a bridge, and returning to England already married.

       Having forgotten his promise to Mary, Henry is just as determined to have his sister marry Francis, but she and Brandon arrive to remind him of his promise, backed up by Cardinal Woolsey (Arthur Forrest). When Buckingham declares that no royal can marry a commoner, Mary simply demands her brother name Brandon a Duke, which Henry immediately does, our story ending just as Grammont had foretold.

        This film was restored in 2017 with music, incorporating Victor Herbert’s original songs, by Ben Model.

    

Los Angeles, May 4, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (May 2022).