Mark Pluck | Hornbeam / 2022

strangers in love

by Douglas Messerli

 

Daniel Lane (screenplay), Mark Pluck (director) Hornbeam / 2022 [16 minutes]

 

Two middle-aged men (Daniel Lane and Christopher Sherwood) meet up in a rural English parking lot, driving a short ways to have gay sex. The latter discerns immediately that the first is a gardener and presumes that he’s snuck away his wife and kids. He admits that he is living with his parents.

     But he is also a difficult lover, immediately commenting on the other’s bad breath. And soon after the driver of the red van takes the rider (Sherwood) back to the lot, he apologizing for “wasting” the other’s time.

      Hereafter, since the characters are not given names, I’ll refer to the first man as the driver, the more difficult other as the rider.

     The two meet up again, despite the failure of previous night, the next evening, the driver suggesting that the other simply seemed like a nice guy. They talk a little, the fussier rider making it clear that he’s closeted, still presuming that his friend is married. Just as they begin kissing a car drives up behind them, flashing its lights, the rider presuming the driver has brought him to an “dogging” area, a public place where others can watch sex or participate with a third party.

     The rider, terrified of the situation, demands they leave immediately, the driver suggesting that they tease the doggers a bit, flash their own lights back. Indeed, their car won’t start right off, which further frightens our rider, but eventually they move away.

      At least, they have something now to share, to laugh about. And they determine to meet up again the next night, our rider insisting however the driver not take him again to the alley where they encountered the “doggers.”

      On the next occasion our rider finally asks the driver about his gardening talents. He explains that his grandfather was a gardener who worked for a large estate and taught him as a child all the Latin names of the plants. When the rider points to trees nearby, the gardener immediately describes them as pinus spetalis or hornbeams, a European species of the North American beech tree. The driver even sings a song about his “Johnny” who he doesn’t want to forget him very soon.

      It now appears that their meetings are becoming quite regular, and they are discovering new things about one another. The rider can’t believe that his friend has chosen to listen to classical music, something only old people or his schoolboy friends do. Suddenly he becomes convinced that his friend must be a Tory. “I can’t believe I’ve been kissing a Tory boy!”

      The so-called “Tory boy” retorts back that he hadn’t known that he’s been kissing a “champagne socialist.”

      Later, after apparently having made love, the two are sitting together, the driver asking if the rider would dare to hold his hand in public. To his surprise, the hesitant rider says he could, that he might have a drink or two first, but he might. It is the most gentle and loving moment of this short film, the only time when the two have not been on the move, so to speak, getting to know each other almost the way a rider in a taxi or rented car might get to know the life of his driver over a long voyage.

      Driving either later that night or on another meet-up, the gardener explains he seems to have obtained his first garden designing job. And he suggests that they get something it eat.

      Back at the parking lot, the rider suddenly admits he really likes the other, but realizes, he argues, that it’s all a bit ridiculous, that this is as far as their relationship can go since the other is married.

     There is a pause as the driver slowly reveals that he is not married. “You assumed I was, and, I don’t know, I just didn’t say anything.” He further admits he’s in a relationship with another guy.

      The rider leaves the car and walks over to ocean near where they’ve stopped. Eventually the driver joins him, now admitting that he’s been in the relationship for 12 years or so, but hints it just isn’t meaningful anymore. He can’t just leave his friend, he explains, because “I guess I don’t want to break his heart.”

       The illicit lovers hug one another good-bye. And the next night the driver waits once more with his van. His friend understandably does not show up and when he calls up his rider, the phone in now hooked to a machine that reports he is no longer available.

        The presumptions that both of these men have made about one another were mistaken and destroyed any love that might have helped them to turn their meetings into a true relationship. It is as if they truly had been speaking different languages, living in different worlds, separated by conflicting cultures.

        Mark Pluck’s quiet and subtle film was nominated for an Iris Award.

 

Los Angeles, November 11, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (November 2023).