Philipp Karner | Here We Are / 2023

making friends

by Douglas Messerli

 

Philipp Karner (screenwriter and director) Here We Are / 2023 [19 minutes]

 

This quirky Austrian short in English pairs two very different people in Vienna, a British tourist Markus (Daniel Quincy Annoh) and a Hungarian street performer, András (Kristóf Gellén) who are both having one of the worst days of their lives.

     Wandering the museums, monuments, and Vienna streets, reminding himself of his lover’s abusive taunts, particularly the words “You’re boring,” Markus tries to gain strength by listening to a ridiculous self-help tape which ties to convince him that he too is a rock star. But obviously, it’s not working on the utterly depressed young man, who had planned on the trip to Vienna with his boyfriend to propose marriage; he had even bought a ring. But now he is alone, a being who he himself describes as always desperately wanting to be a relationship, but when he is, desires just as fervently to be free.

      Tired of museums and worn out, he listens to an Hungarian guitarist sing a lovely song in his original language. A few people move forward upon the song’s completion and throw coins in his guitar case, but Markus is still a bit in awe, and before he can even get together the idea of handing the performer some money, András has already packed away his instrument and moved off.       Markus continues on his way without any destination, at a loss of how to continue the trip to Vienna on his own.       

     But suddenly, near a cathedral, he runs into András again. This time Markus pulls out a bill and, after telling the performer how beautiful he thought the song was, tries to hand him the money. But András is offended that he is simply handing him money as if he were a beggar and refuses to take it. Markus is ready to shuffle off, even further upbraided, until András calls him back, apologizing for his behavior, trying to explain it’s been a bad day, as if Markus did not feel the very same. András insists on buying him a coffee, taking back the money Markus still has in his hands and telling him to watch his instrument.

      He returns and the two begin to talk. András admits to having done a really bad thing, so bad that his girlfriend has thrown him out of their share apartment. When Markus asks what it is that he’s done, he admits to having slept his girlfriend’s best friend, believing that she was cheating on him. He admits now that she probably wasn’t cheating and he knows he’s fucked up. Markus nicely analyzes the situation: “You were afraid. You hurt her before she could hurt you.”

      András admits that he’s probably right. But when he asks if Markus has a girlfriend, he replies that he’s not in relationship, which rightfully makes any wisdom he has about the situation questionable.

      The conversation having come to an end, András reports that he has to go pick up his clothes, and prepares to leave Markus, but suddenly turns back to surprisingly ask if he has any thing he’s doing that afternoon, and if not, might he join him.

 

     Tired of museums and, frankly, with nowhere else to go, Markus tags along on the long trip via tube and bus to the housing project where András and his girlfriend lived. He tries to ring up the girlfriend, but she refuses to answer, as the two sit waiting for her response. Suddenly Markus admits that what he said previously was bullshit, explaining the facts I’ve outlined above.

      When András asks why he didn’t explain that to him previously, Markus answers: “I hate having to out myself all the time. …And I want not to care, but there’s no telling how people will react.”

       András reacts: You know what. I think the fact that he said you were boring says more about him than you. I mean, who the hell says that to people? You should be angry. But the problem is you actually believe him. Otherwise you wouldn’t be sad. Who the hell cares what he thinks, or what anyone thinks?”

       “Only a straight guy would say that. When you’re gay, you always hear what people think about you. From early on. You’re…confronted with it. People’s opinions of you

       Markus’ answer is perhaps one of the most profound statements in this short film, and explains a vast difference between gays and straights that seldom gets spoken of. You wouldn’t know what that means.”

       Finally, András gets the call, and his girlfriend comes to the balcony high above to berate him. But the two are finally let into the building where they collect his clothes. They return to the street carrying several suitcases and bags.

      Markus insists on calling him a car, explaining it’s been an inexpensive trip since he has had no one to spend money on. As the car comes and they pack András’ possessions into the trunk, Markus suggests this will be the last time he sees him, with András suggesting that he might someday visit London. And suddenly, he turns and hugs Markus close. He gives him his phone number, and leaves in the car, as Markus walks forward ready to make his way back to the center city for yet another museum, monument, or walk down Vienna’s picaresque streets.

       This is an LGBTQ film in which gay and straight come together out need and form a kind a temporary bower of love that is just enough to get both of them past the current bump in their lives. And in that sense it is a rare picture in which sexual boundaries no longer truly matter.

 

Los Angeles, August 8, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (August 2024).

Justin Nicholas James | Hearts and Hotel Rooms / 2007

room no. 8

by Douglas Messerli

 

Justin Nicholas James (screenwriter and director) Hearts and Hotel Rooms / 2007 [13 minutes]

 

Jimmy checks into a hotel room, no. 8, where Brian is already waiting, the two planning for a full night of sex. Just as quickly the film rewinds itself, taking them to the bar where they met allowing us the witness their meet-up.

    Now in the hotel bed, they fall back into the pillows enjoying each other’s beauty. But then Jimmy has second thoughts. His argument that there are only 2 million male homosexuals in the US (his guesstimate), and the fact that the two boys have met-up and come together among such a small pool of choices has to mean something. He’s afraid of blowing it on a one-night stand. We can’t be together forever, he argues. Nothing can be forever. We’ll get bored, and we’ll fight. So he wants this night, perhaps their one and only night, to be unique and special.

     He makes up his mind to “do it,” but it’s got to be memorable. They consult a fortuneteller, who agrees that they are the perfect choice for the evening. But in the very next scene, we see Jimmy sitting in the room alone with no one there. And we realize that this is the second visit, the year later they will soon plan together to once again meet up. He waits, taking off the ring Brian has previously given him.

     Back on the first evening, Brian has gone to purchase some special candles. And finally, the boys kiss and make love. But the cameraman has evidently gotten and tired and gone home.

     Just as suddenly it is morning and they’re leaving the room, both of them having a feeling that they’re now missing out on something, while promising to meet back in the room on the next August 8 in room 8—coincidentally, I swear, the very day in which I chose to review this film.

      Now that year later, Jimmy sits alone, trying to write a letter to the missing Brian.

    Finally, we see Brian walking down the hall, but by this time Jimmy has left. He finds Jimmy waiting for a taxi in from of the hotel, and puts the ring back on his finger.

    However, there is a problem, it seems to me, in the very premise of this short by US director Justin Nicholas James. The more you work to make something special, I’d argue, the less magical will be the result. If you find someone, as these two evidently have way back at the bar, who seems right, my advice is go straight to bed and enjoy the pleasure, then sit down and make a schedule to meet up again. The movie seems to lose its way while the boys debate whether or not they should have sex, visit a fortuneteller, swim in the hotel pool, go shopping, etc., all in the hopes of finding the right ingredients to make the night memorable

      The biggest question, moreover, is why can’t they go home together the next night, or if they’re still living with their parents, why can’t they meet up again the next day in a new location or even the hotel itself. Why wait another year? Evidently, they are both travelers, perhaps to Mexico, since the hotel is called Hotel Del Flores. The film makes no attempt to explain why they can meet up only in a hotel and need to wait an entire year to have sex again.

 

Los Angeles, August 8, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (August 2024).

Joseph L. Mankiewicz | Suddenly, Last Summer / 1959

american consumers

by Douglas Messerli 

Tennessee Williams and Gore Vidal (screenplay, based on the play by Tennessee Williams), Joseph L. Mankiewicz (director) Suddenly, Last Summer / 1959

 

There's a wonderful moment in Willard Carroll's excellent film comedy, Playing by Heart, when an acting teacher responds to yet another rendition of Catherine's monologue in Suddenly, Last Summer: "If one more actress saunters into this class and recites Catherine's 'Native boys ate Sebastian' speech, I am going to puke." Angelia Jolie, playing Joan, who is about to do precisely that, escapes from the room in horror.

    I kept thinking of that line throughout my revisit to the Joseph L. Mankiewicz version of Suddenly, Last Summer yesterday. But I was having too much fun to feel any gastrointestinal disorders. For, beyond the absurdity of William's "poetic" play, the film version is simply a hoot. I can well understand why Williams—despite penning, with Gore Vidal, the screenplay—utterly denied any involvement with this fiasco, describing the work, like the teacher in Carroll's film, as something that "made [him] throw up." Yet, for all that, Suddenly, Last Summer is quite in keeping with, and is perhaps the best example of his perverse comedies, even if the perversities of this film were not the same as the original.

     I mean, how often can you get to see Katherine Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor, Montgomery Clift, and Mercedes McCambridge play over-the-top versions of themselves? Hepburn is particularly effective as the slightly mad—by film's end, thoroughly mad—Violet Venable. Descending, via open elevator onto the set, she begins her conversation before she can even be seen, and exiting her throne, dives in to a dithering performance wrapped up in her most New Englandy hauteur, endlessly repeating herself just to hear the intonations, apparently, of her melodramatic reading of the text:

 

                   Strictly speaking, his life was his occupation. Yes, yes, Sebastian was

                   a poet. That's what I meant when I said his life was his work because

                   the work of a poet is the life of a poet, and vice versa, the life of a poet

                   is the work of a poet. I mean, you can't separate them. I mean, a poet's

                   life is his work, and his work is his life in a special sense.

 

     In "A is B because B is A" logic, Mrs. Veneable sweeps across rooms, sits, stands, sweeps again, and pulls Dr. Cukrowicz (the forlorn, slightly drugged-out Montgomery Clift) into her primordial garden where, in perfect gothic comedic form, she feeds flies to her Venus Fly Trap. No drag queen could play her better! 

     Recovering from his 1956 car crash, Montgomery Clift, with a now grimacing, reconstructed face—and who, in reality was now reliant on drugs and alcohol—stumbles through his role with an over-serious demeanor that often makes us wonder whether he has lost his way into an earlier film such as A Place in the Sun or I Confess. The long scenes were so exhausting for him that the director had to cut after every couple of shots before moving on. But then, any viewer might share the same experience in this monologue-driven frenzy. I had seen the film, fortunately, several times earlier, so it did not destroy my comprehension to break up the long retellings of past history on which this film depends in order to give myself short breaks.

 

    Dr. Curkowicz, as performed by Clift, is so dense-headed ("What do you mean, by 'using people?' What do you mean by 'bait?'") that one wonders whether, by film's end, if he has really put together the facts that Sebastian is a gay man who has used his cousin Catherine and before that, his own mother, as a decoy to attract young men. It is almost as if the doctor himself had undergone one of his own lobotomies.

    A few years earlier, of course, Clift might well have played the beautiful Sebastian, whose face we never see in Mankiewicz's movie. No wonder, perhaps, that Mrs. Veneable confuses him with her son at film's end. So badly treated was Clift by director and producer, rumor has it, that once she had spoken her last line and was assured her services were no longer needed, Hepburn spit into Mankiewicz's face!

     Mercedes McCambridge gets to play the greedy, empty-minded Mrs. Grace Holly, pouring southern syrup upon her gravel-throated voice in a way that she had last attained in 1954's Johnny Guitar. In this film she is a delight as a clumsy-footed loon told by son, daughter, and doctor over and over again to "shut up."

     And Elizabeth Taylor—well she's allowed to be Elizabeth Taylor at her very best and howling worst. The long last monologue in which she tells the story of how the Mexican boys gathered around Sebastian to play on instruments constructed out of tin cans and other metals before chasing him through the streets and attacking him to devour his body, is perhaps one of the most absurd monologues of all time. And the visual accompaniment to her tale, in its menacing depiction of, as Vidal described it, "overweight ushers from the Roxy Theater on Fire Island pretending to be small ravenous boys," is so ludicrous it makes one cringe.  

      Is it any wonder that Mrs. Venable wants Catherine's "obscene babbling" to be "cut out of her brain" and nearly all others think she is mad? To give her credit, Taylor whips herself up in a proper frenzy through method acting (evidently, she focused on the death of her former husband, Michael Todd), screeching out the final horrific memories she has sublimated for so long. Her performance is also "over-the-top," but one can forgive her that since the story itself is like something from outer-space, all heated up in the white Cabeza de Lobo sun. The understated reaction by the venal hospital administrator to her hysterical-laden history reaches the heights, almost, of camp: "There's every possibility that the girl's story is true!"

     In a strange way, however, Williams' story was on target, for certainly he had chosen the right metaphor for the consumerism in which Sebastien and his partners engaged. Using a kind of bait-and-switch "come on" to attract "customers," the beautiful man in white paid boys for the use of their bodies; their decision, accordingly, to pay him back by fully consuming him might even be described as a literalizing of what he sought. For isn't capitalism, by nature, a kind of cannibalistic act?

    

Los Angeles, March 25, 2012

Reprinted from International Cinema Review (March 2012).

Richard Brooks | Cat on a Hot Tin Roof / 1958

bricked up in boyhood

by Douglas Messerli

 

Richard Brooks and James Poe (screenplay, based on the play by Tennessee Williams), Richard Brooks (director) Cat on a Hot Tin Roof / 1958

 

There are surely a great number of perverse comedic effects in the film version of Tennessee Williams’ play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, beginning with the earliest scene, in which the handsome former star athlete, Brick Pollitt (Paul Newman) drunkenly sets up—in his arrangement of jumping hurdles—the scene for his own downfall. Brick is anything but the solid rectangular form his name suggests but is rather like a plate of jello. Awash in his own feelings of sorrow for himself and, particularly, on behalf of his enchanted youthful past, he drinks endlessly until he can hear the “click,” when the waves of self-pity and sorrow, guilt and desire, suddenly disappear into the depths of his unconscious mind. He is a still a boy, as his father, the imperious Big Daddy (Burl Ives) declares, at the age of 30. And he will someday, if he cannot change his ways, be a boy still at the age of 50. He is, in short, bricked up in boyhood, unable to face his role of a man living in the world of the present, pouting his way (and oh how Newman can pout!) through life.

     His beautiful cat-like wife, Maggie (Elizabeth Taylor), on the other hand, is equally perverse in her determinedness to remain with him, despite his complete dismissal of her constant sexual readiness, to bear out the hot stare of the sun on the tin roof of the Mississippi mansion in which Brick and she, along with Brick’s brother, Gooper (Jack Carson), sister-in-law Mae (Madeleine Sherwood), and their four children have gathered to celebrate, purportedly, the 65th birthday of Big Daddy. Some of the best comic lines, in fact, are given to Maggie, who impatiently withstands the assaults of Gooper and Mae’s “no neck monsters,” who, through Mae’s careful plotting, spend the entire film insensitively marching, trumpeting, singing, dancing, waving, and shouting their way through the abyss of these touchy adults. Despite his declared pleasure in the fecundity of the female species, it is clear that Big Daddy cannot bear their presence—nor, for that matter, the presence of his forbearing, ever cheerful wife, Big Mamma (the wonderful Judith Anderson). No matter how much one loves children, these are clearly dreadful examples of breeding combined with the machinations of their mother to keep them constantly on view with the hope of dramatizing that fecundity (she is pregnant with yet another) to Gooper’s parents as opposed to the barrenness and lovelessness of Brick and Maggie’s marriage.

     Gooper and Mae’s outrageous maneuvers to inherit Big Daddy’s millions and land is often hilarious, as they, piece by piece, lay out the evidence for Brick’s incompetence and Gooper’s patient facility—he’s a lawyer who has helped with Big Daddy’s affairs as the old man has grown ill. Armed with stacks of legal documentation and wills, hiding around corners to overhear incriminating evidence, Gooper and Mae are like some comic spies right out of a story located in the Balkans. Somewhat like her children, Mae whines and pleads, cattily attacks and smugly stands her ground in her attempts to make their claim for Big Daddy’s bucks.

     The only problem, as the play begins, is that Big Daddy, having just returned from a visit to the best clinic in the state, is declared by the doctor to be cancer free, and the self-centered barrel of pork and self-made satisfactions intends to live forever, perhaps finding himself a young lover to get pleasure out of life! The doctor, however, makes the mistake of telling the “truth” to the sons. 

     If the relationship between Brick and Maggie is a strange and mysterious stand-off (there on the wide screen is one of the most handsome heterosexual actors of the day, denying even the touch of sinuous, sapphire-eyed sex goddess), the relationship between Big Daddy and Big Momma, if possible, is even more absurd. The years of abuse between them has created, particularly in Big Momma, a kind of scab which protects her from any infection of possible love. She is a tough as Maggie, as audacious as Mae, is a kind of dragon-lady pretending to be a pleasant old Southern belle. As she herself admits, “We never were a very happy family. There just wasn’t much joy in this house. It wasn’t Big Daddy’s fault. It was just…you know how some families are happy.”

     Strangely enough, in this family of liars, Big Daddy is determined to get to the truth. He and Brick share, so they insist, a hatred of mendacity! And through an interlocution of Brick, the old man is determined to get to the truth of why his handsome son (even Maggie muses that as he gets more and more alcoholic his looks improve) has become a drunk who refuses to embrace his willing wife. As Ives, playing Big Daddy, huffs and puffs his way through the house, shouting out his hatred of mendacity, however, the film turns strangely self-referential, creating an odd feeling among the those might have witnessed the Williams play on which this perverse film was based.

     The long, drawn-out series of admissions Big Daddy elicits from his son are a mish-mash of excuses and explanations that simply don’t add up. Seems—according to writers Richard Brooks and James Poe, helped along by the merriment of the boys and girls at the Hays Office—that the two boyhood friends, Brick and Skipper had a kind of idealized relationship, wherein Brick depended upon the seemingly invulnerable grace of Skipper and Skipper depended upon the skills of Brick, a friendship transgressed upon by Maggie who could no longer endure their locker room camaraderie. Sick for one game, Brick is hospitalized, and Skipper is forced to play the game without him. According to Maggie’s account, without Brick he grew cowardly, unable to complete plays, fumbling throughout. The team significantly lost, and Skipper’s confidence in his own abilities was forever compromised. Deeply depressed, Skipper needed someone to rely on, inviting Maggie into his room. To Brick’s way of thinking, her entry was an outright seduction, a way to ruin his relationship with Skipper “by any means necessary.” But Maggie claims that Skipper was equally a partner in the proposed encounter; it was she who, at the last moment, got cold feet, afraid that instead of winning Brick that she might lose him in the act. She ran, leaving Skipper to fend for himself. Completely at odds, with no one to help him, Skipper called Brick in his hospital room, explaining the depths of his fear, his sense of emptiness. Angry, Brick hung up, refusing to answer the several rings of the phone, the pleas, symbolically, of a desperate Skipper, who later that evening committed suicide.

     So there! That explains it: Brick’s refusal to have anything more to do with his wife, his alcoholism—a product of his guilt for turning his back on his life-long friend. Huh?

     “Mendacity!” shouts Big Daddy. “There ain’t nothing more powerful than the order of mendacity!” We can smell it even through the screen. Men rarely kill themselves over a loss of a football game. They rarely commit suicide when a friend’s wife refuses to have sex. And a man does not usually deny his wife, particularly a wife as shapely as Elizabeth Taylor, over the death of an idealized friend—even if it represents a lost fantasy.  Even Big Daddy explains: “You didn’t kill Skipper. He killed himself. You and Skipper and millions like you are living in a kids’ world. Playing games, touchdowns, no worries, no responsibilities. Life ain’t no damn football game. Life ain’t just the high spots.”

     Inattentive readers might be forgiven if they imagine they have missed something. Even reading in—as I’m prone to do—upon this muddied narrative, it’s hard to glean the “truth.” Of course, I’ve read the play, but even if I hadn’t, I’d have to imagine that something was not being said, that the relationship between Brick and Skipper was not just an idealized boyhood friendship out of which Brick had never been able to emerge! No! There was something else going on in that locker room of which Maggie the cat got a good whiff. It’s that age-old love—at least in 1955, the date of the stage premiere—without a name. When Skipper, having batted out with Maggie, called Brick to name it, the boy just got scarred, that’s all, scarred to find out what he probably knew all along, that he and Skipper had a queer love deeper than his and Maggie’s could ever become.

     “This room smells of mendacity,” shouts Big Daddy in Richard Brook’s 1958 film, as he comes up from his basement tryst with Brick, ready to face what he now realizes are his last hours. He has squared off with the specter, is ready to wander his estate with his wife to take in the last pleasures of the world he has created. But the film—given the perversities of the Hays Office and filmmakers of 1958—must reel off just a few more lies: Maggie announcing that she has a life within her (both Big Daddy and Big Momma are perfectly willing to agree that there is life within her, whether it be a metaphor or a real foetus); but poor Newman has to almost choke on his last lines: “No more lies in this house,” he declares embracing his “unembraceable love,” fiddling with her to fix up the fib.   

     

Los Angeles, April 20, 2012

Reprinted from International Cinema Review (April 2012).  

Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne | Rosetta / 1999

the booted child

by Douglas Messerli

 

Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne (screenwriters and directors) Rosetta / 1999

 

Rosetta begins with a huffy trudge down halls and a stairwell by the film’s hero, a young teenage woman, Rosetta (Emilie Dequenne) who has apparently just been fired from her job, a few days before the end of her training period. She is certain that someone has lied to her boss concerning her persistent lateness. Her employer coldly dismisses her, but she refuses to leave, locking herself eventually into a room before the police are called to boot her out of the building.

     Soon after, the Dardenne brother’s hand-held camera nervously follows her determined journey home, with a detour to an empty woodland where she has hidden boots and now hides her shoes. She knows that if she has anything of value, it must be protected. For at home—a dilapidated trailer—her poverty-stricken mother will do almost anything to get another drink, including prostituting herself. The young girl refuses to accept anything received from her mother’s male friends, including much-needed food, and returns to the woods to catch some fish for dinner from the nearby muddied stream. To bring in extra income Rosetta is forced to sell old clothing.

     Playing both mother and wage-earner, accordingly, Rosetta most definitely needs a job. But as she goes on the search, she, at the bottom of economic scale as a basically uneducated and underaged girl, is told no again and again. Is it any wonder that she suffers from an intense stomach ache, most likely a serious ulcer? As she falls asleep, this terrified youngster prays in the only way she knows how in her godless world: in dialogue with herself. “Your name is Rosetta. My name is Rosetta. You found a job. I found a job. You’ve got a friend. I’ve got a friend. You have a normal life. I have a normal life. You won’t fall in a rut. I won’t fall in a rut. Good night. Good night.”

     But as the directors make clear, Rosetta’s life is anything but normal, and she has fallen into a kind of rut, marching back and forth, from street to camping ground as if it were a military maneuver, in search of something that might give meaning—a job, a friend, whatever. In her switch from boots to shoes, repeated several times throughout the film, her very movements speak of her dogged obstinacy to survive.  Other than her fish, her diet, apparently, consists of Belgian waffles.

    She does, finally, make a friend of sorts: an equally young waffle maker, Riquet (Fabrizio Rongione), who has taken a job that she might have had. She has become so self-willed and suspicious of others, however, that she hardly speaks to him. In fact, we soon perceive, she has so few opportunities for joy—she does not even know to dance—that she does not truly comprehend love and kindness. Rosetta joins him for a chaste night in his ramshackle “apartment” only after a knock-down battle with her mother, who refuses to go to the Center where she might be cured, even temporarily, from her alcoholism.

     But soon after, when Riquet accidentally falls into the muddy river near Rosetta’s trailer, she refuses to help him back to shore until he is about to drown. She had wished him dead, she later admits, for then she might have given his job. When she discovers that he is selling his own waffles under the counter, so to speak, she betrays him, telling his boss and taking over his position.

 

     She is a good worker, but at the end of the day, after being chased down by Riquet, she again finds her mother dead drunk outside their trailer. The exhaustion of helping her into bed finally defeats her. She calls her boss to report that she will not be returning to the waffle stand. Lugging a propane tank to the manager’s office, she pays for a refill with the goal, we suspect, of blowing up her mother and self in their beds.

     For the first time in the film, Rosetta cannot bear her heavy burden, as Riquet, having returned on motorcycle, circles her in a taunt. Like Robert Bresson’s young Mouchette, Rosetta finally breaks down into tears, having apparently lost her strong-willed self-identity.

    At that very moment, miraculously, Riquet’s taunt turns to forgiveness and love, as he puts out his hand to help her up. At last this tormented young woman has a true friend, someone who may help her to survive.

     Without sentimentality—Rosetta, at times, is anything but likeable—the Dardennes, in this moving film, have created a major figure, an almost mute scapegoat forced to bear the sins of her surrounding society. Like so many of their maimed children and young adults of the Dardenne’s films, Rosetta’s life is redeemed through love. Through their work, moreover, art did truly change the world, as the Belgium child-labor laws were revised.

 

Los Angeles, December 10, 2013

Reprinted from International Cinema Review (December 2013).