Nick Rowland | Slap / 2014

trying to explain transsexual behavior

by Douglas Messerli

 

Islay Bell-Webb and Nick Rowland (screenplay, based on a story by Rowland), Nick Rowland (director) Slap / 2014 [25 minutes]

 

Young teenage boxer Connor (Joe Cole) is in love with Lola (Skye Ourie). He’s good boxer, winning most of his amateur bouts, due to his father’s training. Lola invites him to her birthday party, which he reluctantly accepts.

     What he hasn’t told anyone is that he is also a transgender man who likes to put on make-up and dresses, and does just that for Lola’s party, arriving basically as a drag queen and outing his secret desires to a group of his peers.

     Even before his public presentation, however, he is faced with his gay friend Archie (Elliott Tittensor) running from a group of homophobes set on beating him, knocking on his door to be let into his house. Connor seems frozen, desiring to save his friend, but at the same time unable to yet reveal his secret. Archie pounds at the door, as Connor slinks down the staircase, horrified of full revelation.

  Yet finally, he can longer accept the fact that his friend is being beaten, and runs, in full dress and makeup to his defense, quickly scaring off the two offenders. Archie can hardly believe his eyes, once he can again open them after being somewhat beaten. Yet Connor invites his friend in to mend his wounds, still in full female attire.

    Archie cannot help but laugh, explaining that his friend doesn’t exactly look like a girl, Connor shouting back that he doesn’t want to look like “a fucking girl, do I?” How does one explain the transsexual to even a gay man. Most transsexuals are not homosexuals, and although gays love their covert performances, they realize that generally the drag queens or even those who simply dress up in female costumes are not necessarily interested in their same sex as bed partners.

    The tough boxer Connor, begs his friend to just “make him feel all right.” And Archie argues that it doesn’t matter. Yet Connor knows it does very much matter to the world in which he lives. Archie, however, asks one of the most tender questions possible, “How’d you do your eyeliner? It’s good.”

    Connor shows his gay friend his arsenal of make-up, relating that it’s on line; it gives you tips and stuff. And the two now truly bond sharing a world that no one in their world can communicate. It is as if together they are sharing a treasure world which Lola and Connor’s father would find impossible to accept.

     “How long have you been practicing for?” asks Archie.

     “Since I was a kid.”

     Suddenly, it as if the macho boy Connor has peeled away a secret ritual world he has been hiding within himself and enacting only in his bedroom.

     Lola shows up to his gym, having been told by Archie how he has saved his life, but of course Connor might well fear what else he might have said, although apparently he has just expressed the heroics of his friend.

     Yet Connor knows his secret cannot long be kept. Lola once more invites him to her party, saying “dress up, remember?”

     And so in this impossible narrow-minded world, Connor comes dressed to the party as a full woman, coat, dress, make-up, and full regalia of femineity.

      Lola is aghast, but the rest of his peers, seeing simply as a kind of outrageous costume finally clap into their midst, Lola even finally coming to terms with his appearance. But he knows they are applauding the ridiculousness of his dress, not the necessity. And in a sense, his mirror finally cracks as in the bathroom into which he has retreated his first encounters a drunken Lola, who tries to suggests his costume is “cute,” and then is sympathetically greeted by Archie, who simultaneously attempt to express his desire and love of his friend, which lands him a harsh slug, not a slap. At this point Lola reenters attempting to comprehend the commotion, only to have Archie explain that he hit him, and Connor expressing his horror that Archie tried to kiss him, Archie attempting to explain to Lola that this is not a mere “costume.” In a sense, Connor has suddenly been betrayed by both of those he most loves. Archie insists he’s gay, while Connor attempts to explain the inexplicable to a close-minded world: “It’s not like that.” When Lola discovers her own missing bracelet and a bottle of lost Chanel perfume in Connor’s make-up kit, it becomes clear to her that he’s more than a little “different,” but queer in a manner that she cannot explain to herself. It ends, obviously, with a series of slaps from Lola, and cutting off of his relationship with Archie. There now is no going back.

      The movie ends, unfortunately as it must, with Connor returning to the boxing ring and beating his opponent so brutally that even his father has to enter in to end the fight. Connor has sadly lost all perspective about what it means to be a male.

      British director Rowland explains his inspiration: “Growing up my idols were the likes of Eddie Izzard and David Bowie. I have always admired people who have the courage to express themselves in any way they want without it necessarily having anything to do with their sexuality. I’m interested in how people like to put others in boxes. If someone can’t be put neatly into a certain box, people don’t know how to label you and they freak out.”

      In this case, however, it is the performer himself that cannot accept his own problematic cross-over definitions of experience. The disjuncture will probably never be gapped.

 

Los Angeles, March 18, 2005

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (March 2025).