Mickaël Weber | Nos sens (Our Senses) 2024

love too late

by Douglas Messerli

 

Lilian Duché and Mickaël Weber (screenplay), Mickaël Weber (director) Nos sens (Our Senses) 2024 [27 minutes]

 

French-language director Mickaël Weber’s Our Senses is a true tear-jerker about the issues I discuss in my 2011 collection of films gathered as a small omnibus in “How to Lose Your Best Friend.”

      Poor Arthur (Jean-Baptiste Lamour) is already quite aware that he is about to lose his best friend simply because Tony (Morgan Malet) is going off to school in Canada for a year. But, in the meantime he has not only become aware that he is deeply in love with Tony, but has even announced his being gay to his father.

      Meeting up with an openly gay friend, who truly might be a better match for him, he admits how he has fallen so deeply in love with Tony, and is troubled by how to tell Tony before he leaves. Tony, apparently a straight man, is convinced that Arthur is also straight, assuring himself that his friend has fallen in love with a new woman.

      The society in which these individuals live seems quite tolerant, everyone agreeing that if you love someone you ought to express it. And in long drunken party night with Tony, Arthur finally admits he is in love with a straight man without naming him. Again, all seem comfortable with the fact that their friend has just come out to them.

        When soon after, however, Arthur admits to Tony that the unnamed straight man is himself, at first  if a bit taken aback, Tony still seems comfortable with the situation. But later when they attend a movie, Tony suddenly turns to Arthur and kisses him, before escaping in rejection of the situation.

 

        What quickly becomes apparent is that Tony is himself attracted to Arthur and is a closeted gay man. But back at the university they attend, he cannot admit that anything happened in the movie theater, denouncing his friend suddenly as a faggot.

         The underlying hate of contemporary society once more reveals that the fears of homosexuality are still quite near the surface, and admitting anything about oneself in a world in which you still feel as a rejected outsider is not an easy decision.

         Arthur is obviously distraught about the situation, losing his friend and secret lover in the very same moment. Yet Tony visits him, not to apologize but to finally admit that the love suddenly showered upon him is something he actually desires but is still fearful to accept.

         After a quite powerful lecture about even in these times how difficult to is to accept what society basically doesn’t want to accept, the two kiss, realizing their love for each other, even though it is utterly fleeting since Tony is about to leave for a year. In the very last moments of this film, at least, his father calls, perhaps with a positive response to his email announcement of being gay.

        In some respects, Our Senses is pure soap opera; yet there is enough truth in it, and the acting is so powerful that we realize despite all the surface acceptance of LGBTQ+ individuals in contemporary society, it is nearly impossible for the general heterosexual world to comprehend the sense of shame and separateness gay men and others still feel every day of their lives. If such issues have been hammered home in hundreds of such LGBTQ works, they are still superficially felt by the general populace, the gay movies themselves seldom seen except but by those who suffer such consequences. How to bridge the gap—particularly when inexplicably you fall in love with someone who has difficulties with excepting his sexuality or simply is straight—is nearly impossible. How to explain the centuries of isolation, dismissal, and hate that have layered themselves upon our consciousness.

         This may not be a truly profound film, but it is another important retelling, so well performed and filmed, that we appreciate what it argues, and we can even still drop a few tears for the characters who suffer such experiences, particularly at a time in their life when they should most be enjoying the sexual entry into the adult world.

       Lamour is such a beautiful long-haired boy, one wants to put one's arms around his neck, brush back his bangs, and award him a long kiss. But that is what such romances, which this most certainly is, are all about. And as usual in such works, love is fully realized far too late.

 

Los Angeles, July 18, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (July 2024).

Unknown filmmaker | Come As You Are / 2010 [commercial advertisement]

strike out

by Douglas Messerli

 

Unknown filmmaker Come As You Are / 2010 [commercial advertisement]

 

Perhaps the lamest of all gay ads was the 2010 McDonald’s commercial touting the line: “Come As You Are.”

     A young teen is sitting at a McDonald’s booth waiting as his father purchases their order. In front of him is his class graduation picture, and soon after he gets a call from what appears to be his boyfriend, the cute boy almost stroking the figure on the picture as he speaks.

    He quickly announces he has to hang up as his father returns with their food. His father, seeing the school photo, asks if it’s his class graduation photo, to which the boy responds positively handing over the photo for his dad to glance at.

      His response is a young gay boy’s nightmare. “You look just like me at your age. Let me tell you, I was quite the ladies’ man! Too bad your class is all boys…you could get all the girls.”

      These words, obviously, are just what a 17-year-old who might be on the brink of coming out would love to hear on an outing with father to the local hamburger joint. Perhaps you can come to McDonald’s “as you are,” as long as you don’t let your dad know of your true sexual interests. This is truly the “don’t ask, don’t tell” theory of life.

 

      The cute kid smirks, knowing that he’ll have to put off talking about the issue with Pappa for while longer.

 

Los Angeles, July 18, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (July 2024).

Unknown filmmaker | Sometimes, It's More Than Just a Ride / 2017 [commercial advertisement]

drop me off second

by Douglas Messerli

 

Unknown filmmaker Sometimes, It’s More Than Just a Ride / 2017 [2 minutes] [commercial advertisement]

 

In this short gay commercial made in The Philippines, a cute young gay boy is sitting in the backseat of an Uber car when the smiling and quite aware drive suggests he stop off to pick up another customer.

 

     There is some slight resentment by the young man as he sends up text messages on his cellphone, but when he gets a look at the rider who soon joins him, everything changes, as he quickly messages of just how good-looking the second Uber rider is, unsure that he can even keep his hands off of him. Afterall, as he texts, the boy has been a long-time crush.

       Almost sweating the encounter, he asks the Uber driver to turn up the air-conditioning.

      Whereas previously he’s told the driver to drop him off at his destination first, he now suggests that he’s in no hurry, and the he can be dropped off second.

      But the bemused driver reminds him that it’s against policy to do so.

      Why is there so little traffic, he ponders, as they speed toward his end of the ride, reaching it soon after. As he begins to get out of the car, however, his fellow rider puts hand on his shoulder, startling and delighting the cute boy. He’s simply told, however, that he should get out on the left-hand side of the auto, as the second rider opens his door and exits for a moment, as the boy thanks him for the few more seconds of pleasure.

      The final credit suggests “Sometimes, it’s more than just a ride.”

 

Los Angeles, July 18, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (July 2024).