Daniela Ambrosoli | Papa & Dada / 2021 [documentary]

gay pops

by Douglas Messerli

 

Daniela Ambrosoli (director) Papa & Dada / 2021 [documentary]

 

Swiss documentary director Daniela Ambrosoli followed the lives of four-same sex couples over several years, intimately questions her subjects on the experiences of raising children. Christian and Mimmo Iannuzzi, Tim Kelleher and Josh Reed, John Lam and John Ruggieri, and Brian and Ferd all shared their lives and stories, revealing that although their experiences with adoption and using surrogate mothers were very different, that in raising their children these parents were very similar to the more traditional male and female gendered families.

    As the official film website summarizes it: “At the end of the day, exactly the same as that of the conventional family unit with father, mother, and child, they eat together, go on family outings, and the fathers help their children brush their teeth and tell them bedtime stories.

     Homosexual men, however, are basically two methods of getting children. As in Mimmo and Christian’s case, they can use surrogate mothers, with the couple did, the surrogate mother Kelly Klassen sending them regular ultrasound pictures or audio messages of the heartbeat of the unborn child. These two fathers paced the floor during the actual birth that is similar to most heterosexual expectant fathers.

     Tim and Josh, however, decided to adopt, suddenly coming home with a new baby which they wondered aloud about their sudden “acquisition”: “It was strange to suddenly have a baby without having witnessed the pregnancy. We asked ourselves, are we allowed to have a child?”

     Brian and Ferd sought out internet tips and advice, but unlike the experience of heterosexual couples, they found so little information that they created their own platform in 2014 to provide gay men information, now one of the major places for gay, bisexual, and transgender fathers to seek out necessary information.

   The noted ballet dancer, John Lam, whom Ambrosoli also shows in short dance scenes and his companion John Ruggieri discuss the tough challenges and joys in becoming fathers. They were also a bit taken aback by the wide range of characteristics you are allowed to choose from: “You can choose the level of IQ, for example—but all we wanted was a happy, healthy child,” comments Ruggieri.

     The director also interviewed Argentinean choreographer Demis Volpi, who at the time was working on a ballet piece based the children’s book, King & King, in which two princes fall in love. He argues, however, that it’s not about homosexuality as much as it is about universal love, a view that is echoed in Christian and Mimmo’s comment: “Being a parent simply means giving love. Period.”

      Director of the noted 2014 Swiss film The Circle—about the lives of the early rights couple Ernst Ostertag and Röbi Rapp—Stefan Haupt observes, "The traditional family image, consisting of man, woman, and child, is still very much with us – but it is undergoing profound change."

     My only criticism of this fine documentary is that the chosen fathers, in this case, were mostly well-to-do and able to afford the often very high costs of surrogacy and even sometimes adoption. It might have been useful if we could visit the same questions about men desiring children who lived more middle-class and even working-class lives.

 

Los Angeles, February 1, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (February 2025).