Rolf Silber | Echte Kerle (Regular Guys) / 1996

accepting the label

by Douglas Messerli

 

Rolf Silber and Rudolf Bergmann (screenplay), Rolf Silber (director) Echte Kerle (Regular Guys) / 1996

 

Tossed out of his house when his fiancée, Uschi-bear, takes up with a body-builder, packs his bags, and throws him out of the house, Christoph Schwenk (Christoph M. Ohrt) goes on a drunken spree, losing most of his luggage and all his inhibitions along the way. Somehow, perhaps without even knowing it, in his search for liquor he wanders into a gay bar where he passes out, waking up in bed cute gay mechanic named Edgar (Tim Bergmann).

     The macho self-confident cop Christoph is thrown for a loop since Edgar suggests that whatever happened was not without Christoph’s willingness. He returns to his former apartment just to pick up his car, but that soon is stolen by notorious car thieves who some of the cops of been stalking. Meanwhile he and his partner Mike (Oliver Stokowski) return to their newest stakeout, over a hair dressing salon where they believe money is exchanged by a renowned Russian mafioso. They are joined by the newest cop, Helen (Carain C. Tietze), who lays to rest the rumors that she’s screwing the police captain and has relatives in City Hall. Mike attempts to be nice to her, but Christoph, confused already by his sudden “wake up” call, is further threatened by a female colleague.

     Sparks fly, but not out of bitterness rather than attraction. Mike takes her for dinner, but it’s not really a date and she’s not attracted to him. He is equally puzzled when he observes her meeting up with another woman with whom she shares a kiss (actually her sister with whom she is temporarily living).

     Confusion abounds, as Christoph has no choice but to take up Edgar’s offer and move into a room in his back-of-the garage apartment. Christoph still doesn’t know what happened in the bedroom affair, and is even more terrified by the handsome Edgar’s attempts to get him back into his own bed. And everywhere he looks in Edgar’s apartment, even inside the cupboards there are pictures of well-build handsome nude men. Yet there is something so appealing about Edgar as his attempts to accommodate not only a straight man, but a cop behind a shop that fixes up stolen cars that even Christoph is charmed, as he moves further and further away his colleagues at work. 

      He takes a drive with Edgar in a classic red sports car that he has refurbished, spotted by the comic team of police Kallenbach (Rudolf Kowalski) and Deichsel (Dieter Brandeckeer), who not only recognize that it is their own Schwenk driving but that they have previously questioned Edgar.

    Nonetheless, the longer they live together, the more Edgar is able to help Christoph shed his despicable treatment of women, particularly when on the job Helen lists for him a litany of his behavior characteristics that represent the very reason why any woman might wish to leave him, including indifference to her feelings and his lame attempts have ignoring his girlfriend for weeks by buying her yet another teddy bear, the last of which he has brought with him to Edgar’s as if it his nightly icon of love and safety.

      The two actually learn to get on together quite nicely; at one point, as Pip Ellwood-Hughes describes the event in Celluloid Closet puts it “Edgar ignore(s) Christoph’s boundaries by climbing into the bath with him. Whilst initially uncomfortable for Christoph, it proves to be a turning point in the character’s relationship allowing them to move beyond the usual barriers to a state where they understand one another better.” Actually, when Edgar joins him in his bath, Christoph is so uncomfortable that he gets up and leaves. But strangely he soon returns and rejoins him in the tub; after all they may have already had sex together. What does it matter.

      A surprise visit from Edgar’s mother, who observes that Edgar’s new roommate, whom she believes is his new lover, has cleaned up the place and brought it into “order” (“law and order, as Edgar jokes early in their relationship), thoroughly approves of his choice. The only problem is that now that his mother has taken over Christoph’s room, the cop must share Edgar’s bed again. Nothing happens, except that he finally discovers that Edgar does even remember whether or not he had sex with him that long ago drunken night. He’s angry about the forgetfulness of the even,

and we’re not sure that isn’t also someone disappointed to discover that he may still be a virgin with it comes to other men. And, finally, the two of them even try out a kiss.

      Edgar even becomes a bit jealous of Marco, Edgar’s beautiful boyfriend, but later must warn him to keep away from him since Marco is involved in stolen auto parts and is being carefully watched by fellow policemen, including Helen who has mug pictures of the beauty.

      And eventually when his fellow colleagues discover his new address, they are convinced that Christoph must be gay, labelling him and teasing him in the men’s locker room the next morning.

One argues that he isn’t gay, but another reminds them that he “sleeps with a fairy.” Another claims he “swings those hips better than Madonna.” “Guys hold on to your valuables, here she comes.”

      When told he’s not wanted in the men’s shower, Christopher forcibly enters, kissing Kallenbach on the lips, admitting “I’m really hot for tough guys like you two.” “You think I’m gay. Okay then I am. A word with three letters. G-A-Y. Got it?” But one by one he names all the despicable behaviors the others: one “Leaning on the same hooker for quickie.” One of them never pays for a meal. Deichsel uses his handcuffs after work, perhaps explaining why his wife had another black eye. “So from now on I’m the gay guy in this sideshow.”

      Yet he and Helen have been slowing falling in love on their newest stakeout, and they soon cannot contain themselves when Mike takes a break. They sneak off to another room to fuck. But during their sexual splendors Mike returns to tell them that another car thief is just outside their window. They arrive to late to catch him, but clearly Christoph has convinced her that he’s now a changed man, truly in love and sensitive to her feelings.

      Soon after, closing down this quite fabulous comic cinema, Edgar shows up in his red sports car to pick up Mike. “Yeh, that is my new boyfriend,” he tells Kallenbach and Deichsel. Mike is gay, a secret he has long kept, but now feels free to admit. He proudly gets in with Edgar as Helen and Christoph join them in the back seat. As they drive off, Kallenbach and Deichsel note how complicated the world has become and imagine retirement in Greece.

      In many respects, Rolf Silber’s film, shot still within the AIDS crisis, was way ahead of its time. When a straight man can suddenly not be embarrassed to claim a gay identity, even if it’s applied to him, we know something radical has happened.

 

Los Angeles, December 19, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (December 2024).

George Abbott and Stanley Donen | The Pajama Game / 1957 [Dance only]

carol haney

by Douglas Messerli

 

George Abbott and Richard Bissell (screenplay), Richard Adler and Jerry Ross (music and lyrics), George Abbott and Stanley Donen (directors) The Pajama Game / 1957

 

Although Carol Haney worked with Gene Kelly on the dance numbers in both of his great films Singing in the Rain and An American in Paris, and danced in the chorus of Kiss, Me Kate, her only starring role on film, as a dancer and actor, was in The Pajama Game. Sadly, her early death at the age of 39 did not permit her to show her skills in other roles.

   

    In The Pajama Game’s “This Is My Once a Year Day” and, particularly, in “Steam Heat,” we recognize Haney’s immense talents. Dancing with two male dancers, Haney performs the latter number of hissing s’s with the controlled lateral slide and cool frenzy that parallels the lyrics. Fingers spread and shaking somewhat like a tambourine—a familiar Bob Fosse trope—the three reveal that “steam heat,” even when they pour more cools on the boiler, is not enough to keep them hot. In their jerky motions they uniformly suggest their shivering desperation for love. Lifting their hats up and down, the trio gives the sense of moving train constantly changing in perspective as they slip to right and left. Near the end of this almost jittery dance, the two men collapse, skittering across the floor toward Haney as if they have finally blown their tops or boiled over.

 

Los Angeles, April 11, 2011

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (2011).

Walter Lang | The King and I / 1956 [Dance only]

 

yul brynner and deborah kerr

 

Ernest Lehman (screenplay, based on the musical by Oscar Hammerstein II and Richard Rodgers, based on the book by Margaret Langdon), Walter Lang (director) The King and I / 1956

 

I’ve seen the film musical The King and I dozens of times, and I still don’t know whether Yul Brynner and Deborah Kerr can actually dance, but in the case of “Shall We Dance?” does it matter? If this isn’t a great dance number, I have no way of defining the genre.

    Dressed absolutely beautifully, he in a royal red open coat and matching jodhpur-like pants, all woven through with gold braids, she in a beautiful silk gown with many underlays of bustle and skirts, the two began the dance with what has almost become a subgenre of dance numbers: one teaching the other how to do it (think of Barbara Streisand in Hello, Dolly! or the lesson in how to Cha-cha-cha given by July Holiday’s two friends in Bells Are Ringing). But it quickly shifts, as Brynner recognizes there is something different in their positions from the other waltzers he observed.

     With that shift the couple spin away on an exhilarating “1-2-3 and” rhythm that takes them around the huge palace room again and again until they literally run out breath, only to have the King announce: again!

     Over the years in amateur and professional productions of this work, I have seen dresses slip to the floor and the dancers nearly stumble, but never did I think it ridiculous or have I ever laughed. The joyful sense of liberation this performance gives to both the dancers and viewers is at the heart of why dance is such a profound experience.

 

Los Angeles, April 16, 2011

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (April 2011).

Sebastián Miló | Camionero (Truck Driver) / 2012

the model school

by Douglas Messerli

 

Sebastián Miló (screenwriter, inspired by the story “A la vencida va la tercera” by Yomar González, and director) Camionero (Truck Driver) / 2012 [29 minutes]

 

In the 1970s, so the movie explains, the Cubans set up boarding schools wherein students spent half they days in classes and the other half working the fields nearby. Like any such institution, the rules for the students were strict, but bullies could always find the way to gather a gang about them and torture the weaker.

     In this case the bully is Yerandy (Reinier Díaz) who has gathered around him a group of mean boys and girls who literary go out of the way daily to torture the weakling of school, Randy (Antonio Alonso Ramírez) in every way possible, from nightly near-rapes, where Yerandy pisses into Randy’s mouth and the boys gather and spit into the sleeping boy’s face, to raids on his locker, from where they steal the foodstuffs his poor mother has brought him. No matter what he’s doing, they are there to shove and slap him, and lob objects and food in his director. There is hardly a mean trick they miss. And when the teachers do observe something amiss, they are sure to also blame Randy.

     Yet this out-of-control school wins an award for being a model institution, one to be imitated throughout the country.

     Observing all this Raidel (Héctor Medina), who at first remains quiet about what he sees; after all, any who even speaks to Randy, nicked the “camel” because of thinness, is labeled a fag and opens themselves up to equal torture by Yerandy and his gang. Raidel, however, begins speaking to and standing up for Randy, at first without incident.

      But when they finally come for him, something he has been praying they won’t do, he is ready. As he says in his role as narrator throughout the film, he is not afraid of them but of the consequences. For when they do come, he takes out a knife he has been sharpening throughout the film and stabs Yerandy and others to death, one by one.

     If they question him, he realizes that there can be no right answers since no one to verify what he has seen, and Randy himself, as he admits, has long ago died inside. Randy has expressed his desire to become a truck driver in order to move away from all such beings he has encountered through his life.

      But now Raidel is taken off from all the other adolescent torturers to be imprisoned in what he surely realizes, as he breaks down in tears, will be a far more horrendous world of where the strong torture the weak endlessly until they break.

      Cuban director Sebastián Miló has created a raw and revealing movie about the effects of bullying and homophobia, although the latter is downplayed in this work, and there is no obvious evidence of Randy’s being gay, except perhaps for his deep love and dependence upon his mother.

 

Los Angeles, December 19, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (December 2024).

 

Josef Steiff | Emerald City / 2024

hitched

by Douglas Messerli

 

David Bobrow (screenplay), Josef Steiff (director) Emerald City / 2024 [21 minutes]

 

Paul (Havon Baraka), a black man, and Rigo (Alan Vazquez), a Mexican-American whose parents were deported when he was a child, meet up on their hitchhiking paths, Rigo to nowhere, Paul apparently to the PCH (the Pacific Coast Highway), actually both made-up stories. In truth Rigo later explains he is following the instructions of the goddess of death, Mictēcacihuātl, to whom he daily prays, and Paul, who left a high-paying New York job, was supposed to meet up with some border guards who, at least through his internet connections, totally understood who he was.

      Of course, they’re on a journey that they don’t even quite know they’re taking to the Emerald City, where various van-dwellers have gathered, and, more importantly, a trip into in each other’s arms and bed.

     At first the two, polar opposites in personality, don’t quite get on. Rigo is silent, secretive, gnomic, self-reflective, and spiritual, while the secular Paul is outgoing, friendly, and feisty—particularly when Rigo criticizes both his method of trying to hitch a ride and the cleanliness of his tent. In short, Rigo immediately sees through Paul and perceives what even his new friend doesn’t realize about himself Paul is not simply seeking an escape from his corporate job, but an escape from his own closeted self, not just sexually but in every other way in which he and the society have done everything they can to wipe away his existence, as if he were an invisible man for the 21st century.

     Despite their differences they hook up, traveling together, finally picked up by Penn (Arasha Lalani), an extremely friendly woman of East Indian heritage, and Steve (Bob Riordan), who, in an attempt to describe the duo, throw out a number of famous pairs (i.e. Tonto and the Long Ranger, Bevis and Butthead) until they finally settle of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Both Rigo and Paul recognize themselves in the latter.

    It is this friendly couple who insist they visit Emerald City, where they finally recognize that the voyage undertaken was actually to find one another, as they slip into Paul’s clean tent to settle down for glorious sex.

      Rigo admits to the guide of his true voyage, and Paul asks if he might go along. But Rigo doubts he can go there just because he has nowhere else to go. Yet as he hooks another ride the next morning, he signals to Paul to join him, and the two carry on together as the notorious couple of the old West. We recognize that his couple are a pair that cannot now ever be severed.

      US director Josef Steiff’s movie is beautifully shot, focusing endlessly on the wistful landscape, the beautiful eyes of Vazquez, and the picturesque stature of the handsome Baraka to create a quite memorable short movie.

 

Los Angeles, December 19, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (December 2024).