Evgeny Afineevsky | Oy Vey! My Son Is Gay!! / 2009

heterosexual hysteria about a gay love affair

by Douglas Messerli

 

Martin Guigui, Menahem Golan and Evgeny Afineevsky (screenplay), Evgeny Afineevsky (director) Oy Vey! My Son Is Gay!! / 2009

 

This comic movie is also what I might describe as a film of heterosexual gay hysteria, which is hard to imagine even being produced in the 21st century, when gay marriages along with a general acceptance of gay behavior were assumed. But somehow some movie directors of the period didn’t get the message, and Evgeny Afineevsky’s film, starring the generally watchable but always exaggerated Lainie Kazan playing Shirley Hirsh, whose son Nelson (John Lloyd Young) has just announced that he is seeing someone is the perfect example, along with her husband, who together become the full expression of true queer hysteria.

      Of course, in the heteronormative world of Shirley and Martin (Saul Rubinek) it has to be a woman, and worried about what kind of female her son has picked out (she has forgotten to even ask if she is Jewish), Shirley soon pays a visit to her son’s apartment, finding a man, Angelo Ferraro (Jai Rodriguez) there instead of a woman. To protect his lover, Angelo announces that he is Nelson’s decorator, and when their mutual friend, Sybil Williams (Shelly Burch) arrives to take a bath in Nelson’s Jacuzzi, Shirley naturally assumes the Playpen model of the month is Nelson’s new girlfriend.

     Her husband Martin, although amazed, is absolutely delighted, and now has a new fantasy given the magazine his wife has laid out before him. Queer dysphoria has seldom been made so obvious. Where does Nelson go from here? Uncle Mosiha (Eddie Levi Lee) immediately appears and asks it Martin is already going to the toilet. Shirley claims the magazine as her own, and Moshia suggests that she take it away if she wants her husband to do some work in the plant. Unhappy relationships are at the heart of Jewish families.

     Shirley actually likes the shiska, but also knows that if Moshia finds out, he’ll disinherit her husband and fire him on the spot, with no future with the company for which he has so long worked for the possibility of inheriting.

      It’s the usual problem in standard comedic films, money versus love.

     Meanwhile, we discover that Martin’s uncle Max (Carmen Electra) is a kind of transgender being who is still married to his sister, who he bought, as he claims, “on wholesale.”

      Nelson attempts to tell his mother telephonically that his real love is Angelo, without success, given her selfishly driven view of life, her own attempts at remaining young and her simple refusal to hear her son’s statements, her “supersizing day cream” being of far more importance. Again and again he attempts to tell her he’s gay, but each time she interrupts. There is no way of getting beyond the force of her motherly, fully heterosexually-demanding love. Even she, however, announces, given her incompetent servants, that she is hysterical. “I love you, I love you, I love you, bye bye,” says it all.

       Where can we go from here? Well, Angelo feels rejected and perhaps recognizes this late in time that the “whole damn world is not yet ready.” His frustration for an elderly man like myself who came out fully in 1970 is fully felt, his hurt makes me cry. Why in 2009 wasn’t the world yet ready? Why, I might ask, are we still having to face these problems in 2025? This isn’t a truly funny movie.

      We can’t quite forgive Martin and Shirley their endless social, religious, and personal dilemmas, even if they gradually work their way out to acceptance.

       Nor can Angelo forgive his own lover’s reservations, and his reluctance to invite him to the family wedding, where they might announce their relationship. Finally, Nelson agrees to let his lover come to the family wedding where supposedly his domineering mother will announce her son’s relationship with his non-existent girlfriend Sybil. Even Nelson’s attempt to tell his mother that he is bringing someone “very special” to the wedding is drowned out by her own selfish assumptions. There appears no way to get beyond her force of powerful discourse. If she might ever stop talking long enough to hear others, her world would be crushed.

     Shirley is convinced he’s bringing Sybil to the wedding, and argues that if he is serious about her, they need to be serious about her as well. So what if Moshia falls in a faint on the floor, and her husband Martin is out of a job. If her son is happy, they’re happy.

     But they’re disconcerted when Nelson brings his “decorator,” who has even created his own rainbow yarmulke. We have entered another world which no one in the synagogue has quite yet imagined. But Nelson’s sister quickly recognizes her brother’s relationship, particularly when Angelo grabs Nelsons’s hand as the married couple slip on their mutual rings. And finally in the midst of the sacred ceremony, when his mother can no longer speak, Nelson whispers in her ear that he is gay.

      Drunkenness and general family chaos follows as his parents attempt to assimilate the “problem.” Immediately, they start blaming one another for their son’s,” predilections” citing their uncles and cousins as example of perhaps men who didn’t prefer to marry, the usual miscomprehension of parents suddenly faced with a gay child. My own parents, so I was told by my sister, came back from my own coming out ceremony wondering whether or not having dropped me as a child made me gay, or whether or not some ancient car accident when my mother was pregnant might have caused the “illness.” In other words, it was a disease, a condition that needs to be explained instead of a natural phenomenon that might be accepted. My parents were troubled idiots from 1970; but these individuals from 2009 might have been imagined to have matured into a greater awareness, but evidently not.  

     In the midst of proving his virility, Martin finally fucks his wife after many a long year. But what that says about the subject at hand, their gay son, I have no idea. It’s still another example of heterosexual hysteria. Okay, he can, if only he would, still shtup his wife. Glad to know it. But the film has gone far off track, or perhaps is simply expressing its terror of gay relationships.

    And now Martin is even terrified to be in an elevator with a gay man. I guess we’re supposed to sympathize with his situation, but at this point Afineevsky’s film has grown into such a homophobic disaster than I can’t quite deal with it. Does his character feel that he’s being attacked by a gay man for even sharing a small, overloaded elevator stuffed with mean executives, given that a paisley frocked gay boy exists within? Perhaps gayness is a significant force to with which straights have to adapt or, at least, accept as being among them. Even his dominant wife realizes that her husband has truly become homophobic, and demands he enter a gay bar to “face his fears.”

    Inevitably, several young and older men are perfectly happy to flirt with our recalcitrant anti-hero, who covers his tracks by suggesting he’s simply there for research. But Skip, another elderly patron, would like being Martin’s “bicycle seat,” at which point Martin attempts to escape the bar only to discover his brother-in-law Max amongst the crowd. And in the bathroom it cuts even closer to the heart when a drag queen, a fellow-office worker Noodleman, recognizes him. Martin has floated down into a rabbit hole from which there is no escape, people from his own long normative-life popping up to remind him that his world is not the only vision possible.

     In a fit of his own hysteria, Martin admits that his son is not like any other others. Perhaps he simply doesn’t understand women, since for most men they make so sense whatever. Which, of course makes no sense at all to Shirley. We have now entered another planet, wherein even heterosexual couples cannot explain their relationships, as Martin attempts to recall his gay encounters, it was “kind of exciting,” forbidden and enticing, the world all gays know it to be. For the first time in his life Martin has awakened into another world which he cannot simply comprehend. “It was uncomfortable and weird, but it was also erotic.” Yes. Yes. That is the gay world indeed which Martin has suddenly discovered, suddenly singing out “I’m a gay man.”

     Shirley’s response, “This is all happening to somebody else,” a true sign of total unease and displacement.  But oddly enough, Shirley is determined to go into her son’s life and learn to live with it, not the lesson you receive from so many other films. She might be a control freak, but she is also loving and caring and desirous of understanding something outside of her narrow purviews. So, in a sense we forgive the overbearing woman she is, as she and her husband both struggle to comprehend who their son might be in a world they never imagined.

      But the gay jokes still continue as Noodleman meets ups with Martin again in the office elevator, whispering, “I didn’t know, you sneaky little devil you.” Like a Dantean world Martin is meant to suffer all his fears and doubts. This is after all, despite its generally caring message, still a work of gay hysteria.

      Shirley, in all of her endlessly good intentions, introduces her husband to the head of The National Society for Gay People. Despite their good intentions, he admits he feels “shocked,” “disappointed,” “horrified,” summarizing it as “a nightmare for our family.” Clearly, even the erotic experiences at the gay bar have done nothing to relieve his homophobic horror. And by this point in the movie, I have to admit, this terrified couple is frankly getting on our nerves. My parents behaved similarly, and frankly never fully accepted the reality of my life, but fortunately I didn’t have to live with their own tortures to which this film keeps demanding we attend. Such close-minded people should be left in peace for their own ridiculous inabilities to accept another human being for his own existence, but this film can’t let up—at least not yet. Making everything worse, Uncle Moshia appears at that very moment, Martin, in total despair, inviting him into their impossible conversation.

      When they ask him about sex, Moshia immediately suggests the boys should go to a whorehouse to fulfill their sexual needs. “There is nothing healthier than a healthy hooker for a healthy sex life style.” The comedic situation becomes even more misogynistic when he suggests that “girls should be encouraged to stay virgins until they are married,” a proposition to which the gay boys easily agree. Even Martin has to admit he’s pretending to be on another planet at this moment.

     In the next scene we see the now quite recalcitrant parents ringing the doorbell of their son’s apartment, having brought orchids to Angelo. The parents don’t at all like Angelo’s wonderful canapes nor Angelo’s brilliant main dishes. They drink plenty of wine, thanking him for his terrific meal, but finally and painfully their son Nelson attempts to explain who he might be to his parents:

‘How can I explain to you what I am what I am any better than I can explain what you are?” That is perhaps the most profound statement one might make to one’s parents. “You have to understand, this has nothing to do with you. I am who I am, probably since I was born….I don’t feel I have to be dishonest with myself just so you two can feel comfortable.”

     When his mother challenges him about how does he know, Nelson explains that his relationship with Angelo is not his first one, and he simply knows now who he is. Now his father is perhaps even more disturbed and wants to have a few private moments with his son. He takes him to a local sports bar where he thought they were always “on the same page,” but Nelson makes it clear that they were in different books, his father enjoying the sports game, while he always like the “players.” His father, probably similar to my own father if he could have expressed his feelings, suggests that if he might have opened up to him earlier, they might “have fixed this.” But Nelson makes it clear, that was precisely why he didn’t come to him earlier, “I’m not broken.” He points to the soccer players, saying you know some of those guys are gay, the only thing that’s broken is that they can’t come out.

     Yet the parents in this film are still unable to come to terms with their son’s sexuality. They seek out a doctor Herman, whose wisdom consists of normative blanket of comfort, blaming yet again the mother for her lack of attentiveness, and the child replacing his mother with his father. Bad Freudian psychotherapy that is, in fact, totally nonsense. Even Shirley suggests “if you ever go back to med school, I’ll pay for it.”

     Still not accommodated to the sexuality of his son, Martin calls up Sybil, you remember her, the Playpen model, to encourage her to have sex with his son. She argues that it’s truly impossible since he’s gay, but Martin still can’t quite assimilate the situation, and the encounter turns into his own sexual compulsion as he attempts to have sex with her, which again reveals his own frustrations, related, of course, to his inability to accept his own son’s sexual orientation.

     As she leaves Martin’s office, she runs into Uncle Moshia who recognizes her as the gift of God’s beauty. She quickly kisses him and escapes, describing him as “a real man,” whatever that might mean in this endless confusion and misunderstanding of sexuality.

     After all we’ve been through, Shirley wants to meet with Angelo’s parents, another entire dimension that I’m not sure this already hysterical film needed to prove its point. But here we are with Angelo’s father suggesting he has no desire to meet “the other parents,” and his wife arguing that it is nice gesture. We already know we are entering a territory in which there is no turning back.

     But where can they meet? The Ferraros are terrified of any Italian restaurant where they might be seen by friends, the Hirschs afraid of any Chinese restaurant where they would be recognized. Shirley doesn’t like raw food, so a sushi place is out of the question. Besides the Vietnamese, the Korean, and the Thais are excluded because they all buy from the Hirsch’s. They finally settle on a Russian restaurant, which serves only vodka.

     The two women, mothers of Angelo and Nelson, share photographs, while the reluctant fathers wait for their drinks, not at all seemingly interested on the youth of their own now lost sons. But the men, almost in competition, bring out their own pictures of their sons engaging in sports. Their patriarchal interests become immediately apparent until it breaks down into Nelson as a cheerleader, Angelo playing a character in Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Julius Ceasar in what Martin describes as a skirt. Their macho world is gradually falling apart before their very eyes as they realize their “boys” where already moving into a world which they themselves could not easily embrace.

    Their meet-up does not end amicably. Little in this hysterical film ends up with a reasonable possibility. Shirley returns home ready to put her face into a gas oven, although they have only an electric stove. Angelo and Nelson seek an island where they will be free, although Angelo reminds him that there are no islands like that.

       But in the last segments the two men are on TV as one of the first same-sex couples demanding rights to adopt a child. When they meet with local objections, both families leap into the fray to help their sons, and together, the Hirschs and the Ferraros finally are joined in a battle that is far more important than their regrets and problematics. Finally, they become proud grandparents of a new generation, the men smoking cigars in reward of the successful adoption of the child by Nelson and Angelo as if they had just concluded a mafia deal. That is, in fact, the height of the hysteria that this film felt was needed to take its audience into the embracement of a simple relationship between two men. Forget it, Mr. Afineevsky, I might argue. We have all mostly been there long before you imagined it.

 

Los Angeles, March 16, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema (March 2025).