Juan Gil García | Un Buen Hijo (A Good Son) / 2011

an attenuated life

by Douglas Messerli

 

Juan Gil García and David Hauslein (screenplay), Juan Gil García (director) Un Buen Hijo (A Good Son) / 2011 / [21 minutes]

 

In many respects the 1998 short film by Robert Little, despite its shared English title, A Good Son, bears little resemblance with the short film of Mexican director Juan Gil García from 2011.

    In retrospect, Little’s film seems retrograde in a year in which such notable coming out movies as Simon Shore’s Get Real, David Moreton’s The Edge of Seventeen, and P. J. Castellaneta’s sexually problematic Relax…It’s Just Sex appeared. In Little’s film the central character discovers in one afternoon that he is gay but chooses to remain closeted.

      But then, so too does the central figure in Gil García’s movie 13 years later make the same decision, although it’s also clear his circumstances are very different from the Southern California University student of Little’s work, and his desires are perhaps much more radical.

     The young farm boy, Ausencio, nicknamed Chencho (Hoze Meléndez), bound to his traditional macho father Clemente (Jesús “Chuy” Padilla) and his slightly more understanding mother Cándida (Laura Kaplun) is enchanted by the nearby small-town performances of the drag queen Katherine (Carla Aráncida), a kind of spider-woman whom he observes through a barroom window.

      Observing him at the window, Katherine invites him into her life and even promises to teach him, demanding he show her whatever talents he proclaims. His talent is so slight to be almost laughable, a few quick turns, an attempt to dance that looks more like a teenage turkey than a skilled drag performer which is his desire. But still she insists she will use him in her act, awarding him a red scarf and the promises of a mentorship.

       The father finding not only the red scarf in his bed but the pictures under his mattress of his idol Ausencio has collected, bans him from returning to the nearby village. He mother reassures him, quite strangely, that if he simply waits his time will son come, as if she were hinting that her own hard-working husband was soon to die.

        Although the boy packs his bags and appears ready to bolt from the farm immediately, he is late to the performance and bicycles home almost obediently, head bowed, as if giving himself up to his indenturement to a future that may not be as immediate as his mother has predicted.  

        Even if the situation is somewhat radically different, however, we sense the same sort of temporary abandonment of self-expression that we perceived in the earlier film. Being a “good son” is clearly not a route to escape for anyone who identifies as LGBTQ, or perceives oneself as being different. We can only imagine Ascencio working in the maize fields for years, perhaps his entire life with deep pangs of regret.

 

Los Angeles, November 21, 2021

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (November 2021).

Robert Little | A Good Son / 1998

a view from the roof

by Douglas Messerli

 

Robert Little (screenwriter and director) A Good Son / 1998

 

Very little actually happens in Robert Little’s 1998 film, A Good Son, yet, to use an anaphoric paradox, everything happens. A young man, Tim (Eddie Ebell), having drowned out the world on his headphones as he reads a book, is sitting in the stands with father (Ben Martin) at a Southern California University diving meet; the diver is his brother and sitting next to him is his brother’s girlfriend, Christie. His father attempts to return him, as he describes it, “to earth” in with the hopes he might observe the expert leaps and spins of the divers as they hit the water (both divers performed by the Olympic winning brothers Justin and Troy Dumais, the later listed as “Justin” in the credits).

     Suddenly Jack (Drew Bell), a USC student which we as suddenly recognize Tim to also be, sits down near to him and begins to talk with the boy, mostly asking questions such as what book he’s reading, what music he’s listening to, etc. They exchange the names of their favorite poets, Tim enjoying Eliot while Jack prefers Rimbaud, while recognizing that they are a year apart in the university, Jack being a senior while Tim is a junior. Before long Jack asks if Tim might be interested in joining him for a coke, and Tim, agreeing, tells his father that he’s taking a short break.

     The boys continue talking, Tim finding Jack to be an agreeable and knowledgeable person with whom he appears to share many interests. Before long Jack has managed to lead to him the roof—a place usually closed and unknown to most students—in order to take in a remarkable view of downtown Los Angeles.

    There the two boys, after taking in the view, sit down next to one another and continue their conversation. Just as suddenly as he first appeared to Tim, Jack leans over and gives Tim a kiss on the cheek.

      For a long while Tim just sits in place, Jack finally standing and walking a few feet away while Tim remains sitting in apparent astonishment. He doesn’t bolt, even when a janitor suddenly appears on the scene asking why the boys are there yet allowing them to remain a short while longer before he closes up the rooftop door. It is as if Tim has hit a pane of glass like a bird dropped in his tracks to consider how to recover before taking flight.

      Finally Tim stands, Jack asking if they might at least change phone numbers. Tim claims he has a poor memory for numbers. They have no pens or pencils, so Jack says he’ll give him his e-mail address, but as they begin to go back down to the swim meet, Tim suddenly suggests they leave separately—after all his whole family is waiting below. It is almost as if the two have had sex and may prove the fact by appearing together in public immediately after.

      He returns to find his brother, his girlfriend, and father all standing by their car, the father suggesting they were ready to leave without him.

      As they are about to drive off, Jack again appears, the car slowing down, the father apparently wondering if the stranger has something more to say to his son, but seeing no sign of recognition in Tim’s expression, Jack says nothing, and the car drives off.

        It’s a sad story actually. Two obviously gay boys might have started a relationship had it not been for the evident reluctance on Tim’s part to assert a friendship with the other boy. Yet we also know by his refusal to give himself away even a little, in his near-desperate insistence on remaining the “good son” to his father, that something momentous has just happened, something that he has changed him forever. We now recognize Tim is no longer the “good son” compared with his athletically-achieving brother who has found a serious girlfriend. Tim is now a different person than he previously was.

         This is not really a story about a new relationship between two boys, but concerns one boy’s new relationship with himself. If Tim does not meet up with Jack again, there will be other such young men in his future.

         Finally, this is a story about a father who not only will soon no longer recognize his son, but a man who perhaps has never quite known his child. Had he been less attentive to his other son’s athletic achievements he might have noticed that Tim went off with Jack and that, in the boy’s final refusal to recognize his new friend, something of great significance had happened between  them. It is almost as if his son, turning back to look at where he had just been (a sudden vision of Sodom), had been turned to stone. The son named Tim whom the father drives back home is no longer the same boy he drove to that event. Nothing has outwardly changed, but inwardly everything has. 

 

Los Angeles, May 8, 2021

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

 

 

Damian Overton | Arlo and the Sea / 2023

message without evidence

by Douglas Messerli

 

Damian Overton (screenwriter and director) Arlo and the Sea / 2023

 

Recently I have been encountering a great many LGBTQ short films that instead of using dialogue have returned, quite strangely, to the techniques if silent cinema, employing narrative voices instead of intertitles.

      These are often very lovely to look-at works, as is Australian director Damian Overton's Arlo and the Sea, with quite lovely-to-look-at actors, who remain voiceless, thus not giving us a real clue to their acting abilities. Perhaps it’s simply cheaper. You buy pretty boys for their looks instead of their acting talents.     

      The pretty boys, as in so very many gay movies these days, lay out on the beach and smile, sometimes pretending to engage with the other.

     Consequently, since we have no voice involved we are dependent entirely upon the storytelling-like narrative, which frankly, in most cases, is quite empty. Arlo (Ruben Russo) a young man who loves the sea, falls in love with Finn (Paris Moletti). How they meet, what is the basis of their love, and most importantly since this is the film’s apparent theme, why Finn leaves him is absolutely and almost insistently not established. This reads like a fairy-tale of disappointment and resilience.

      Poor Arlo goes into a deep depression, as in many a gay 21st century gay films bathing fully clothed in a bathtub under whose water he sinks for endless minutes.

      Despite the funk into which Arlo retreats after the disappearance of his magic lover Finn, life goes on for Arlo, who, we are told, will eventually discover another lover.

      The end. Good for the myth, but how this film empties out everything else but pretty pictures and an overly-annunciated narrative voice (Kieton Beilby) doesn’t give me a clue why I should care about anything that happened to Arlo or what he might do in the future.

       This film, along the several others of these narrative-told movies, are some of the emptiest cinematic productions I have ever encountered. I never much liked the New Critical Theory dictates, but I certainly must agree, in this case, that a story should show us instead of tell.

       And I have to admit, like Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind, frankly Arlo, I don’t give a damn.  

 

Los Angeles, November 21, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (November 2024).