Eric Mueller | This Car Up / 2003

kismet

by Douglas Messerli

 

Eric Mueller (screenwriter and director) This Car Up / 2003 [16 minutes]

 

Minneapolis businessman Pete (Michael Booth) and bike messenger Adrian (Brent Doyle) could not be more different, so it appears. Pete, up in his 45-story office, calls up for a delivery of information, imagining for a moment being anywhere but in his office, perhaps on a tropical island. The heavily tattooed-and-pieced Adrian, going about his rounds, imagines himself in a white shirt behind a desk, suggesting that perhaps they are simply at the opposite ends of the worlds in which they would each like to be living.

     Both, however, firmly believe in chance or fate, Pete pulling out his old magic eight-ball to get the answer to his unstated question: “Will I soon meet someone with whom I will fall in love?”; and Adrian, upon a finding a quarter just outside of Peter’s office towers, tossing it again and again to find out the answer to a question that we suspect is similar to the businessman’s self-query.

     Unfortunately, Pete’s magic ball keeps responding “No,” and Adrian’s quarter keeps coming up heads when he obviously has hoped for tails and vice versa.

     This mostly silent film by Eric Mueller programmatically splits up the screen into four frames: one the lower left showing us the in-time office-bound experiences of Peter and the lower right showing us Adrian mostly making his way through traffic on his bike. On the upper left we catch glimpses of Pete’s thinking and imagination, while on the upper right we observe Adrian’s thoughts, the top two images also being represented at moments as a kind of casino slot-machine, indicating that each man is hoping to win love with—which becomes increasingly obvious—the other.

     But in their first go-round, the keep missing their encounter, Pete leaving the office to take the elevator down at the very moment that Adrian arrives with is package he delivers up to the office secretary.

     As Los Angeles Times reviewer Kevin Thomas observes: “The filmstrips further express the lives and longings of the two men. On a smoke break by his building’s bicycle stands, the well-tailored Pete takes note of Adrian and soon realizes that he is attracted to him beyond his look, so very different from his own. Will the wheels of fortune spin in Pete’s favor, permitting another encounter with Adrian?”

     The quartet of images reveal them on the next day both taking outings in the park and, without realizing it, resting near trees nearby one another. They are so close that we observe, at one point, a man with a dog speeding through both their frames. This time we observe that they indeed do share a great deal in common, particularly in their interest in one another, in one glorious moment their panels aligning up like the planets, when both spot a nearby male couple greeting one another, as their minds return to the moment of the day earlier when they shook hands. A moment later we observe them both conjuring up the image of the other.

     That evening as both prepare Italian meals for themselves we recognize just how much these two actually do have in common given our ability to see what TV stations they are both watching and how they lay out in the couch, hit the bed at the same moment.

      The next day at the office, Pete can’t get Adrian out of his mind as the delivery boy suddenly shows up to his office—without a package. Pete suddenly realizes that Adrian has been attracted to him as much as he to Adrian, and with a wink he speeds his visitor off to the elevator, where Pete sheepishly admits that he was about to call for a package. Adrian, asks “Why didn’t you?” Peter answering that there are certain things you simply have to leave to fate or chance. Adrian prefers the word fate, as the two fall into a deep embrace. Suddenly, we lose the upper two panels of the film. The two continue their dual interaction until the door opens, the image turning into one full image of the two in the elevator still kissing in the clinch.

     If it is clearly not a very profound film, This Car Up is a nice excuse for believing in kismet when it comes to gay love.

 

Los Angeles, March 16, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (March 2023).