Monday, January 27, 2025

Martin Edralin | Hole / 2014

sexual fulfillment

by Douglas Messerli

 

Martin Edralin (screenwriter and director) Hole / 2014 [15 minutes]


Billy (Ken Harrower) is a physically challenged man who has hardly any use of his legs and suffers significant difficultly with his arm motions. Just to watch him rise in the morning and struggle into his pants is painful for those of us who take these motions for granted.

     A few frames later, as he sits up in his wheelchair, his handsome caretaker Craig (Sebastian Deery) arrives, apologizing for being late but having brought his patient some more food. He wheels the chair near the bathroom door, as Billy scoots out of it and shuttles his body across the bathroom floor, pulling off his clothes, again with great difficulty, before Craig lifts him up and plants him into the bathtub where he showers and washes his patient.


    Billy announces that in the evening he will be going to a movie.

    Craig dresses him, makes his bed, and evidently prepares a meal which we watch Billy eat, before his caretaker leaves him for the day. 

     That evening we indeed to see Billy maneuvering his motorized wheelchair down a city street. The “movie” to which he’s headed, however, is not a motion picture, but a small porno theater, where he watches the screen for a while, simultaneously eyeing the glory hole. Billy, it is clear, is also a gay man in need of some sexual relief.

     Finally, a penis appears in the hole, which Billy, slightly leaning over, is only too happy to suck off. But when the man on the other side of the hole finishes and makes it evident that he is perfectly willing to fellate Billy in turn, the problem arises. Billy cannot stand in order to receive the desired sexual fulfillment.

     The next day we watch as Billy scoots about what seems to be a giant Goodwill store where he apparently works, stocking the shelves with porcelain figures.


     On the subway back home, we watch him staring at a young heterosexual couple who are holding hands and looking very much as if they about to speed off home and into bed, with great envy. Soon after, he again seems to be waiting outside the porno shop.

    Back home, we see him imbibing in several beers. Obviously his life, given his appearance and physical disabilities, is a lonely one. And, in a real sense, his sexual being is nothing more than serving as a kind of open hole, the mouth sucking off others without being able to enjoy the pleasures of another serving a similar act.

     Craig returns to find Billy drunk, Billy suggesting it’s time for his bath, while Craig insists that he’s taking him to bed. But this time, as Craig lifts and cradles him, Billy insists “I like you,” meaning it in a far different way from Craig’s repeat that he likes him too. And when Craig is ready to deliver him into bed, Billy refuses to let go, Craig having to pull away from the arms trying engage him in bedtime sex.

      The incident seems to have further reverberations when the next day a new caretaker, Grace (April Lee) shows up instead of Craig. “Where is Craig?” Billy wails out. “Oh, I don’t know. I just go to where the agency sends me,” Grace answers in a rather official and certainly not a delicate or elegant manner.


   With her Billy is a different man, preferring, as she prepares him for the shower, to attempt, unsuccessfully to undress himself. Billy attempts to call Craig later that afternoon, with only a call back answering machine.

     As evening approaches, we see Billy, again on his motorized wheelchair attempting to ring up Craig, evidently, at his home address. No answer.

     But this time the disabled man refuses to be shuffled off into the hands of yet someone else. He camps out at Craig’s door.

     When Craig finally arrives, asking what Billy is doing there, the man answers: “I need you to help me. I don’t have anyone else to ask.”

      In the last painful scenes, we see Craig and Billy in the cramped into a porno booth, as Craig helps Billy so stand in order to have fellatio performed on him in return for his sexual favors.


     It’s hard to describe this as a graceful situation, but certainly Craig has performed in—puns cannot be escaped—an uplifting manner as one can possibly imagine in such a situation. As one of the film’s IMDb commentators simply and forthrightly expressed it: “We all need love, intimacy and sexual gratification. Billy too.”

      Canadian director Martin Edralin’s sensitive and honest film reveals that there are few places these days where LGBTQ cinema is afraid to take us. And I believe we are all better for it. I only wish some straight people might take the time out to watch this sensitive short film.

 

Los Angeles, January 27, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (January 2025).


No comments:

Post a Comment

My Queer Cinema Index [with former World Cinema Review titles]

Films discussed (listed alphabetically by director) [Former Index to World Cinema Review with new titles incorporated] (You may request any ...