Nikita Khripach | Real Fantasies / 2020

i am, therefore i think

by Douglas Messerli

 

Nikita Khripach (screenwriter and director) Real Fantasies / 2020 [18 minutes]

 

New York University student Nick (Jared Anthony), as many of his fellow NYC peers do, drops in for a workout at the local Yoga studio, where he encounters Yoga teacher Troy (Mark Ashin) who, as he speaks of various the positions, their function, and their meaning, seems to pay special attention to Nick.

     Nick is gay, living with another gay student Ricky (Xavier Miller) who spends most of his time on the internet checking out possible meet-up dates. Certainly, he is the polar opposite of Nick, who is not at all searching for a quick trick but, nonetheless, is on the lookout for a more serious relationship. Throughout the film we never see Ricky leave his bed.

     In a sociology course, his professor suggests that culture itself is a fiction, often of disturbed minds. But even as he listens to these somewhat troubling words, Nick lets his own fantasies carry him back to the cute Yoga instructor. That evening he waits outside the door of where Troy teaches, pretending to have just passed by as he meets up with him, Troy inviting him out for a drink. While Nick talks about the inflexibility of his body, Troy reminds him that Yoga is about the balance of mind and body, not the flexibility of positioning. The two seem to hit it off, and as they leave Troy shouts out, “Well give me a hug, cute boy!” It certainly appears to Nick as if this is beginning of a possible relationship.

      Back in his room, Ricky suggests that they have sex, become “friends with benefits,” an idea that Nick immediately rejects. Besides, it is clear he has a more spiritual relationship in mind, a union of body and mind, suggested by Troy’s comments. In class he begins to have sexual fantasies of Troy.

      But this time in his Yoga class, Troy completely ignores him, spending far more time with the women. Perhaps Nick’s just not Troy’s type, or perhaps he’s even misread Troy’s sexuality. Whatever has happened, Nick clearly is convinced that something has changed, and he’s hurt, without even bothering to provide a proper goodbye greeting as he leaves the place, throwing his tip into the jar Troy holds while speaking to another female student.

      US, Russian immigrant writer and director Khripach as created a charming and truly innocent character in Nick which he now turns into a somewhat S&M-oriented and vengeful figure which simply doesn’t ring true for me. Stewing in frustration, he allows Ricky to paint his nails black and even smokes a joint before engaging in sex with his swinging, somewhat overweight roommate.

     At breakfast, he runs into Troy with the same woman from the night before, Kristin (Georgia Sumner), a trainee in Yoga who is about to begin her own classes. Troy, so it appears, might be involved with Kristin, yet he also notices Nick’s newly painted nails, “I simply love (extending the word in grand exaggeration) your nails,” calling them “edgy.” He certainly appears to be gay, so perhaps Nick just isn’t his type.

       “Life is a paradox,” declares his sociology professor, “often it doesn’t seem to make any sense, but our job is to find some.”

       Our confused hero arrives home to see his roommate fucking someone in his bed. Nick washes the black paint off of his nails. Clearly, there is sense of disgust for the more open sexual world which he has been finally ready to embrace.

       In reaction, Nick catches Troy alone after a class, enters the backroom space and moves in directly to kiss him, Troy accepting the kisses, but pulling off, suggesting he should be “gentle.” Instead, Nick demands Troy kneel, which perceiving it as a kind of jest, he does. “This is, a, quite amusing,” Troy responds as Nick ties up his hands behind his back, picks up a belt, and proceeds to flog him. He throws down the belt and leaves.

      In the very next frame, we see Nick waking up in his own bed, observing a woman leaving Ricky’s bed. Clearly, things aren’t always what they seem. We recognize that Nick’s S&M beating of Troy was likely just a fantasy. He turns to Ricky: “A girl? Seriously.” Ricky replies with the popular cultural perception, “Gender’s just a construct.” Well…there are still important differences, I might argue. Is culture itself, as Nick’s professor has argued, also just a construct by a few dangerous white men?

      Nick shows up for another Yoga class, and Troy greets him with a hug as he continues to advise a young woman. He puts them through their positions, the “warrior,” the “tree,” and asks them to let their bodies sink into the floor. He quotes Albert Einstein: “The world we’ve created is a product of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing out thinking.” Troy insists, as have so many others throughout this film, that “all is mind.” As Troy turns away from them, we see the image of belt-marks upon his back.

      Khripach’s film might almost be seen as a kind of satiric puzzle, forcing his audiences to wonder whether or not the world is made up of self- and group- created constructs and fantasies as Plato centuries ago argued, or whether the world contains innate qualities, even “elective affinities” as Goethe would have it, which are imposed upon us, determining how we interact with the world and others and how we perceive that reality of which we are merely a part. Can there even be such a thing as “real fantasies?”

 

Los Angeles, May 23, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (May 2023).