Josh Cox | Far from Water / 2024

where do we go from here?

by Douglas Messerli

 

Josh Cox (screenwriter and director) Far from Water / 2024 [5 minutes]

 

You might describe Josh Cox’ micro-film of 2024 as a fast finger painting of a scene any gay boy might have experienced in the process of coming out. Two young friends (Arid Dominguez and Lucas Nealon) rush to the ocean to experience something that is obviously outside of they daily lives. They pull off their t-shirts and strip down to their jockeys, their eyes all the time intensely focused on one another’s youthful bodies. They jump into the ocean and enjoy themselves in the manner in which it now seems to be required in all young gay coming-out films, pushing and pulling each other into and out the water.

    But it is during the approaching storm as they sit on the beach that it happens. Suddenly one of them becomes so overwhelmed with the sensual experience of other male that he can no longer resist and turns to kiss his friend, who willingly obliges.

     They dress and ready themselves to return, but the other boy finally is determined—unlike so many boys of his age—to open up the situation which might often later turn into forgetfulness and denial. In the dark skies of reality about to embrace them, he suddenly shouts out, “You mean you’re not gonna even talk about this?”

     “What?”

     “You have nothing to say, after all, about all that? And there’s nothing, nothing to say about that?” Its rhythms are even a bit Beckettian, the word “that” being the subject obviously they cannot openly express.

       “Do you regret it?

       “No.”

        A fly buzzes nearby and the credits rise.

       Perhaps there is nothing else to say. But, of course, for young gay boys on the verge of coming out, there is still everything to be expressed. Was this simply a typical heterosexual experiment, an expression of affection for a best friend? Does the other’s intense kisses indicate a radical change in their relationship, a movement toward the sexual that has always before remained unsaid? Will this momentary expression of love be repeated? Will the other admit that it’s not just a hormonal moment in a young heterosexual’s movement toward sex? Clearly, the questioner is gay, desiring to make the situation far more formal than just an “incident.” But are they both willing to move in that direction?

       These and others are the intense questions that any young gay boy must face over and over again as even his straight peers explore the full sexuality to which they will probably never admit.

      The ultimate question on the young inquirers’ mind is something he cannot even say: “Where do we go from here?”

     These boys, in high romantic metaphor, have clearly drunk of the waters of exquisite love, but may not ever be able to swallow the experience they have just undergone or return to the ocean to engage themselves again with the wild expressions of nature.

     As they trudge back home they are still so very far from the water which will wash their desires clean.

 

Los Angeles, October 29, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (October 2024).

Kieran Galvin | The Burning Boy / 2001

the fire within

by Douglas Messerli

 

Kieran Galvin (screenwriter and director) The Burning Boy / 2001 [11 minutes]

 

Australian filmmaker Kieran Galvin’s tale, like so many others, is of two close friends, boys who attempt to impress one another with their macho stories and behavior. In this case Ben (Cameron Ford) and Chill (Josh Roberts) reiterate the pattern while fooling around at the pool. Chill, obviously a straight boy and the more dominant of the two keeps making demands of his friend, for example, insisting he tell him five amazing facts.

      These are kids who love sexual innuendo, so it begins with the fact the Whales have the largest penises on the planet, Chill inevitably insisting that no, he does, etc. But finally, tired of the macho talk Ben adds one further “fact,” a darker element that pervades this short film: “You can’t kill yourself by holding your breath.”

      Soon after, as the boys lay out in the sun, Chill notices some serious marks on Ben’s back and enquires about them, the boy responding that he just accidently hurt himself. But already we suspect that either he has been beaten by bullies or, more likely, by his own father.

      And when he readily agrees to later on lather up Chill’s back with sun tan lotion we begin to realize that Ben has far more serious feelings for his friend than the simple teenage friendship; that he, in fact, is a highly closeted gay boy—perhaps being punished by his father or others.

      Chill jumps into the pool again, Ben after. Within moments, however, Chill has pulled off Ben’s swimming suit, the boy pleading for him return it.

      In the next frames, the action has turned to what seems to be a nearly abandoned house. There Ben asks Chill why he always talking about girl’s tits, and Chill confronts his friend about how he’s observed that Ben has been checking out the boys in the shower, even himself. Ben, of course, denies it, but as they sit on the floor together, Chill puts his arm around his friend’s shoulder saying that it’s okay if he wants to touch him.

      Ben’s dreams seem to have come true, but he is also terrified of the situation, as Chill turns to him and moves forward with a kiss. The boys kiss once again. And Chill suggests that he’s perfectly willing to have sex with Ben.

     Ben suddenly bolts in the full realization of what the act means, Chill suggesting it’s okay, that he knows Ben “wants to do this.”

     The terrified boy pushes Chill to the floor, accidentally knocking him out; and in the rush out of the place, he overturns a lantern, setting the place on fire.

      Only after he has run for a short while, does he turn back to see the place entirely on fire!

      Ben runs off in true terror, in time coming to the ocean. Walking about the rocks for a long while, he sits as the sun begins to set. He undresses and moves toward the water, as we fear for his life. But he only stands there, looking out in the darkness, his arms around his own body in the chilling night.

     The director gives us no reason to perceive these incidents as occurring in anything other than the context of realism; yet the melodramatic turn his story takes make it seem almost like a feverish dream, which, in turn, might allow us to see it as a kind of metaphoric drama about coming out, including the necessity of symbolically killing off your relationship with your best friend and love, before facing up to the cold reality of who you are. Certainly, I’d rather read it that way as opposed to yet another gay tragedy rooted in the difficulties of young males accepting their queer identities.

      It seems, as Vito Russo showed us, that by the start of a new century, when this film was made, the number of LGBTQ bodies killed in motion pictures had been stacked so very high that yet another might have turned the screen permanently black. Surely, even in the Australian outback the realization of one’s sexual fantasies can end better than yet another gay boy’s death—if we read Chill’s reciprocation of Ben’s feelings as defining him as gay.

      In some respects, this film reminds me a little of Galvin’s fellow Aussie filmmaker Peter Michael’s 2016 short film Bro, where—without the tragedy—a gay boy’s straight best friend agrees to try out sex with his buddy if only to keep the relationship they have intact. What a difference 15 years can make. In the immediate post-AIDS world of Galvin’s film discovering oneself to be gay was still too often perceived as a significant issue of life and death.

 

Los Angeles, June 22, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (June 2023).

Barry Digman | Chicken / 2001

the challenge

by Douglas Messerli

 

Audrey O’Reilly (screenplay), Barry Digman (director) Chicken / 2001 [3 minutes]

 

This Irish micro-drama says in all in three minutes. Mick (Darren Healy) has brought another boy Kev (Niall O’Shea) to the beach for the day, and they’ve been drinking, putting rocks to cans of empty brew, and god knows what else. It’s getting cold. Although the beach is on one side, a train tracks is on the other with regular one-car hitches coming by at a regular pace.

     Kev is obviously not a macho sort in the way Mick is, who can grab a cold can and nearly open it with his teeth or at least a knife stuck deep into its guts. Kev attempts to follow his challenges, but mostly without success.

     Mick even calls him a “regular momma’s boy,” but still offers him his coat since it’s getting cold.

     Yet to prove Kev’s not a mamma’s boy Mick demands he play a game of mumbly peg with his knife. To make sure he’s not terrified by the game and somewhat protected, Mick splays his own hand over the other’s boy’s, starting slowly as he hammers the knife between the fingers. As a train approaches, he speeds up faster and faster, counting out the knife stabs until he can hardly speak them at the speed the one-car liner seems to be approaching.

     The train goes by, the camera looking down upon the boy’s hands, each atop the other. Blood oozes out of one of their matching fingers. Mick puts his fingers between Kev’s fingers the way one does when grasping another’s hand and puts his left hand into Kev’s hair, pulling his head close in a gentle hug.

     This is, quite obviously, a display of masculinity, of power, of refusal to admit what is nonetheless quite openly displayed male-on-male love.

 

Los Angeles, October 30, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (October 2023).

 

 

Kyriakos Chatzimichailidis | Οι άντρες δεν κλαίνε (Men Don’t Cry) / 2001

the accusing ghost of a sexual past

by Douglas Messerli

 

Giannis Tsiros (screenplay), Kyriakos Chatzimichailidis (director) Οι άντρες δεν κλαίνε (Men Don’t Cry) / 2001 [18 minutes]

 

On a rainy winter night, a soaking wet man, Ilias (Themis Panou), rings the bell of Petros’ (Petros Lagoutis) home. He quite literally pushes his way into the house and collapses onto the couch, heavily coughing. Petros, startled but nonetheless vaguely attracted and simultaneously frightened makes tea, as the other roams the place, evaluating the man he has come to visit through the objects cluttering his home, including a large golden sculptured dildo and a plastic tree that holds the pictures of many of the gay men with whom the somewhat rotund Petros has had sex.

     Ilias is disappointed that Petros does not remember him, but recognizes that his body has changed in the years since they met at a gay bar. And slowly throughout the film, in black-and-white, blurred glimpses, we do see Petros piecing together their long-ago encounter.

     Understandably, Petros is finally angered by the night-time intrusion and begs the intruder to leave, offering him money. But Ilias does not want money, he wants shelter, and suggests that Petros take him in, arguing that we won’t be a bother, will sleep on the couch, and even do the dishes. One almost wonders if he isn’t asking for a long-term relationship that was denied him that long-ago night.

     When Petros offers him even more money to leave him alone, Ilias gradually reveals his real intentions for the visit. The entire “attack” and scree is based on the fact that in Ilias’ mind on that long night ago Petros infected him with AIDS, from which he now suffers.

     He argues that he knows it was Petros because he himself is straight. He and his friends used to visit the gay bars simply to mock and frighten the gay men, but that night….he had his first and last homosexual encounter.

      As the title hints, Petros does indeed break down in tears with the revelation, by film’s end almost becoming Ilias’ patient, asking what it feels like to be so sick, the answer being quite self-evident as he serves up a meal to his host.

      In the end I find this work quite disturbing in its assumptions and argument. Although we might easily accuse Petros of having sex without warning his partners of his illness, it appears he has not been tested and has no idea that he is infected. And I might add that we have only the word of a brute abuser, who admittedly and somewhat proudly restates his past behavior. Moreover, if it has been several years since their encounter, why has Ilias still not had any symptoms? That might indeed be possible, but somewhat unlikely. In fact, this film seems almost homophobic to me, centering on a heterosexual who enters a gay man’s house to blame him for his sexual activity as if his own intentions and involvement had no significance. The rant of a straight man for infecting him with AIDS sounds far too similar to the attacks on gays during the worst days of the epidemic, people having not quite yet recognized that, in fact, AIDS was not a gay disease, but a sexually-transmitted plague which can afflict all those who have unprotected sexual contact. Unless Ilias is a heterosexual virgin with Petros being his only sexual partner ever, it is just as likely that Ilias would have been infected through one of his female friends or through the needles of the drugs we see him injecting in Petros’ bathroom.

      Perhaps these are the very issues that writer Giannis Tsiros and Greek director Kyriakos Chatzimichailidis were attempting to bring up in their naturalistic, purposely crudely-filmed documentary-like work. But unfortunately, Petros is not intelligent enough to bring up any of these possibilities or to basically challenge the assumptions that the film puts forward through Ilias’ voice. In the end Petros appears simply as a whimpering, chastised child, rightly punished by the beautiful dying man for the excesses of his past life.

     And without any moral pointers, I find this quite unpleasant film to be an expression of the heterosexual phobias of the day instead of an insightful exploration it might have been of a one-time sexual encounter that deserves further probing and explanation.

 

Los Angeles, April 17, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (April 2023).

Vasilis Kekatos | I apostasi anamesa ston ourano ki emas (The Distance Between Us and the Sky) / 2019

the bartering bride

by Douglas Messerli

 

Vasilis Kekatos (screenwriter and director) I apostasi anamesa ston ourano ki emas (The Distance Between Us and the Sky) / 2019 [9 minutes]

 

If there was ever a film that began more strangely—even odder perhaps because it does not suddenly drop us into an unexpectedly violent or perverse situation—I don’t recall. Greek director Vasilis Kekatos’ beautifully filmed The Distance Between Us and the Sky begins with a motorcyclist and an itinerant attempting to raise the money for the bus ride home discussing the latter’s origami creations of what he describes as “love birds” which he’s ready to sell to raise money for the trip.

      The seller of these handmade treasures, a gay man from Athens (Nikos Zeginoglou), is stuck apparently in a Greek outpost, Kypseli in the Ionian Islands, at a gas station, connecting up with someone of the internet for when he returns to the city. Showing him his dick, the guy on the internet suggests he won’t find such lovely meat in Kypseli, to which the other jokes, “Man, I’m not in Kypseli often enough to know what dicks are around.”

      Spotting the cyclist (Ioko Ioannis Kotidis), he asks if he can spare 20 euros for his bus trip home. When the man seems hesitant, he begs for at least some money for which he’ll raise the rest. Finally turned down outright, he tries to sell some cigarettes for a low price. The man turns away again saying he doesn’t smoke that brand.

      Not to be deterred he moves closer to his prey, almost whispering the words, “Pot. Weed. Hash.” The cyclist, turning back asks “Why are you slinging?”

       “Are you a cop?”

       “What if I am?” the black-leathered beauty asks as the two move closer to one another.

       “What if some innocent passerby came across it?”

       The dialogue suddenly gets crazier as he makes up some story about finding it, the junkie becoming addicted, that he found it, putting it under a stone. A tombstone that says “All Cops Are Bastards.”

        Clearly what began as a seeming request for cash has become a sort of strange game, a challenge to keep the other one off-balance and, most importantly, in one place long enough to intrigue and charm him without cracking his macho armor. A dangerous game.

     Finally, the cyclist, smiling, moves away once again, the other pulling him back with the unexpected, tender and almost effeminate switch to offering up his origami “love birds,” the “pocket parrots,” I mention above. This time the cyclist is intrigued and bites, asking how much. The seemingly desperate rider returns to his original offer: 22.50 euros. Unexpectedly, he agrees to purchase one, but the seller refuses, he must take them both or none. Since they are love birds the other will wither away without his friend.

      The buyer wants only one putting a ten euro between his fingers, but the seller refuses, it’s a no go without both, handing him back his money.

      As the cyclist trudges away, the other calls to him again, “so you’re going?” “Yes,” the other responds. Then you have no choice but to blow us up? he pouts, a strange metaphor, but somehow making sense as he pulls out a cigarette and again moves toward his friend, this time the camera pulling back to reveal the service station, a simulation surely of the memorable Esso station of the last scene in Jacques Demy’s romantic fantasy, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) where that film’s love birds meet for the very last time, after their love has long ago withererd away due to societal and cultural demands.

   The two move up close together, the cyclist asking if he has a light and other lighting the cigarette, as in an almost comical reference to Humphrey Bogart’s lighting of Ingrid Bergman’s cigarette in Casablanca, the cyclist puts the now lit flame end first into his mouth as the other moves in close to a kiss as he pulls it out of the other boy’s mouth in order to turn it around, the cyclist suggesting it would be a shame if the love birds burned up. The other replies: “Don’t worry they’ll fly away.” “Where to?” “Buy them, you’ll see,” answers the salesman, pulling back and tearing up because the smoke has gotten into his eyes.

      In a manner of seconds, this film has posted two romantic cinema references and one musical to make certain that we comprehend that what is really being sold and bartered here is not drugs or even paper birds, but human flesh, a desire that these two treat, albeit somewhat satirically, as seriously as hookers meeting up with their johns.

       The cyclist looks up to something just out of sight. “Could they fly that high?”

       “Up to that street sign. they could even fly up to the moon.”

       “To the moon, huh?” he looks ups to the moon in a moment of wonderment. “How much?”

       “A thousand euros.”

       “A thousand euros? Come on, man!”

       “Make it 500 euros, and you can keep the love birds.” 

       “What happened to 22.50?”

       “You’re killing me man.”

       “You know what, you seem like a nice guy, all right 22.50 it is.”

       It turns out, however, that the cyclist has no money. He suggests the other simply hop on his bike and he’ll take him back to Athens.

       Still our bargaining friend can’t resist. “Screw that, I don’t do bikes.”

       When asked why not, he admits he’s simply afraid.

       “Come on, you can hold on to me?

       “And sit in the backseat? ...What if I fall and crack my head open?”

       “What do you suggest then?”

       “You take the backseat and I ride in the front.”

       The camera catches them riding off in just such a position of complete surrender into love, a song reiterating just those words.

        The Distance Between Us and the Sky deservedly won both the best Short Queer film and Short Film Palm d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 2019.

       

Los Angeles, October 18, 2021

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (October 2021).

Dave Solomon | Photo Op / 2015

until death do us part

by Douglas Messerli

 

Dave Solomon (screenwriter and director) Photo Op / 2015 [9 minutes]

 

An attractive and seemingly affable, yet obviously shy young Brooklyn photographer Jacob (Randy Harrison of Queer as Folk) shows up at the cafe which has recently become his regular spot. We know from the gathering of random clips he’s taken in the past that spaced every few moments throughout these early frames of US director Dave Solomon’s 2015 film that the other patron in the breakfast spot is Jonathan (Aaron Lazar) photos of whom, hand in hand with his lover/husband Jesse (Lucas Steele), Jacob has evidently snapped at a safe distance many a time.

     We quickly perceive that the reason why Jacob is now regularly haunting this place is that he is strongly attracted to Jonathan, but too shy apparently to tell him so.

      This morning, however, as he watches Jonathan reading the morning paper and soon after lowering his head into a brooding, perhaps even despairing position, he dares to snap a photo close

up, the opportunity simply being too powerful for him to rationally resist it.

       As Jonathan immediately stands to leave, for the first time Jacob actually speaks to him, apologizing several times for intruding upon his privacy and even suggesting that he’s seen him around the neighborhood, wondering if they mightn’t get together for coffee sometime.

       Jonathan smiles politely and forgivingly but at the same time displaying his wedding ring to indicate that he’s not available, clearly recognizing the invitation as a kind of sexual come-on. He leaves, Jacob trudging back with his Canon camera back to his apartment.

       We also have gleaned the reason for Jonathan’s profound sadness. Evidently a man has gone missing in Brooklyn, his lover Jesse. And we become somewhat suspicious of Jacob’s motives since he too asks for and briefly peruses the morning paper and surely, having photographed the two together in several instances, knowing that it is Jonathan’s friend who as disappeared.

      The minute Jacob enters his rather Spartan quarters, he switches on a blaringly loud piece of music, cuts out the new article about the missing Brooklyn man, and pins it to a wall of what appear to be numerous other photos and articles about Jonathan and the missing Jesse. And before we can even assimilate the strange shrine we have just witnessed, the camera pans left to the floor where we see a body bound in masking tape and rope, the man’s eyes covered over by a cloth tied around his head. Jacob releases the eye-covering but nothing else as we see the man, obviously the missing Jesse, suffering in pain on the floor.

        Jacob bends down and despite the muffled cries of his prisoner pulls off the man’s ring, putting it upon his own finger, presumably affirming to himself at least that he is now married to Jonathan.

        We have no idea whether or not he’s been feeding Jesse, permitting him toilet breaks, or even temporarily relieving his pain; and we have utterly no idea whether Jacob intends to permit him to live or what else he might have in mind. For he, already beyond those realities, exists in a madness which obviously consists of somehow replacing Jesse in Jonathan’s sexual attentions. And on this particular day he has, if nothing else, broken the verbal ice and actually spoken to his future lover.

     After stealing the victim’s ring, Jacob snaps his picture, seeing it apparently as another photo op.

 

Los Angeles, October 17, 2021

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (October 2021).