Damon Carasis and Nathan Larson | Saturday Church / 2017

get me to the church on time

by Douglas Messerli

 

Nathan Larson (music and lyrics), Damon Carasis, (screenwriter and director) Saturday Church / 2017

 

I know it is no longer popular to use the word “transsexual.” But I do feel it is still a useful word to distinguish between the transgender changes some people seek, which involves a much fuller alteration of gender. In most cases the drag queens and others who dress up as women are basically cis-gender, but like to explore and work within the context of other sexual possibilities. In the case of the young beautiful 14-year-old boy in Damon Carasis’ quite lovely film from 2017, Saturday Church, the young black man, Ulysses (Luka Kain) is simply interested in exploring the world of women’s clothing and the community of voguing than in undergoing a sex change. In fact, he quickly falls into a rather gay relationship with a young man named Raymond (Marquis Rodriguez).

      I suspect that most young gay men and lesbians go through a period in which they wonder about their own gender identity. In this case Ulysses’ father, a soldier, has just died, and his truly loving mother, Amara (Margot Bingham) has to undertake another night shift at her job in order to make enough money to support Ulysses and his younger brother Abe (Jaylin Fletcher).

      To look after her sons when she is not at home, she brings in her Aunt Rose (Regina Taylor), a woman who sees herself as kind and helping, but is, in fact, a kind of religious bigot. And she has no room at all in her life for a young man questioning his gender or even bothering to explore who he is. She quickly challenges him to become even more involved in her church by signing him up as an acolyte to the priest.

    Yet, like the mythical Homer character, this young Ulysses must find his way out of family life to undertake his own voyage. After one of her strict corrective lectures, the young central figure of this work escapes from his Bronx cage to the streets of downtown Manhattan where he accidentally encounters a group of young drag queens with whom Raymond somewhat explicably tags along who regularly attend what they describe as Saturday Church. Critic Sheila O’Malley, writing in Film Comment, nicely summarizes his other world encounter:

 

“Fleeing the stress at home, Ulysses takes the train down to Greenwich Village, where he wanders around aimlessly, staring at the people who come out of gay bars, trailing along after them. During one of these field trips, he ends up on Chelsea Piers, where he meets a group of gay and transgender people—Ebony (Mj Rodriguez), Dijon (Indya Moore), Heaven (Alexia Garcia), and Raymond (Marquis Rodriguez)—who take him under their collective wing, and drag him to “Saturday Church,” run by a trans activist named Joan (Kate Bornstein) who feeds and clothes the kids, helps with medical care, and provides them with a safe space, if only just once a week. Ulysses looks around him, agog, at the kids dancing, laughing, talking, and just being. The people Ulysses meets are older than he is (but not by much), and they razz him, but also support him. He is drawn to the gently flirtatious Raymond and the feeling appears to be mutual. Here, in this tribe, Ulysses can be himself. How could he ever explain any of this to formidable Aunt Rose? Or his mother, who has also made it clear she doesn’t want him wearing her shoes?”

      At one point, unable to find a place to spend the night, Ulysses prostitutes himself to a delighted older man, who fortunately wants only the sexual encounter with a young man and does not further abuse him.

      I think if this movie had just focused on Ulysses’ discovery of a new world, it might have been a quite superb realist film, demonstrating just how important it is for young boys to explore their own identities. But, alas, Carasis also wanted to create a musical, partnering with songwriter Nathan Larson to intrude into his film a number of unmemorable songs which interrupt rather than move forward his narrative. These musical numbers (and anyone who knows my writing will realize how much I love theater musicals) make little sense and truly offer no deep psychological insight into the characters who are quite nicely developed within the story itself. A theater version is planned for later this year, but have my doubts whether or not it will be able to heft itself unto a Broadway stage.

     In the film, upon realizing that her beloved Ulysses has gone missing, Amara fires her temporary solution to her own absence, Aunt Rose, while as expected, the voyager eventually returns home and falls into her open arms.

     What is revealed in this work is just how important volunteer church programs such as the one featured in this movie are to the survival of at-risk teens. And this film also makes quite clear why the kind of club membership and voguing featured in Paris is Burning, this film, and several others is popular. It allows young men and women to explore their own desires, to determine the limits of their identities, while also finding support (and sometimes a meal and a clean bed) with others who are not afraid of that youthful exploration. The Aunt Rose’s of the world should keep their church-going activities to Sundays, leaving Saturday or any other day of the week to those who are less self-righteous and closed-minded.

 

Los Angeles, March 22, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (March 2025).