Sam Greisman | After School / 2015

love of a different kind

by Douglas Messerli

 

Sam Greisman (screenwriter and director) After School / 2015 [7 minutes]

 

Throughout much of US director Sam Greisman’s short film After School, the central character, 15-year-old Jack (Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick), sits quietly alone or even in the company of his best friend from childhood Danny (Dante Palminteri) without speaking, at moments appearing to be almost autistic in his one-word and simple responses of agreement.

     We see him at lunch, sitting a few tables over, with his eyes fully attending to the popular Danny’s every movement, but he doesn’t dare approach. After school he meets up with Danny and even accompanies him to his room, but during the school day he remains apart, primarily because his friend is older, perhaps 17, a young man on the cusp of change, who can’t wait to get away to college.

     But as they sit in Danny’s room, after school and apart from the peer differences it enforces, Jack is still tongue-tied, with finally Danny about ready to emphatically find out whether or not something has changed with their relationship. But his comments are interrupted by his mother calling him into the other room.

     Through Jack’s point of view, we hear only intense arguing without being able to get the gist of their discussion; apparently, she has let out his puppy into the neighbor’s yard where it has been killed.

    Danny is horrified by the fact as he returns to the room, his mother assuring him that they will get him a new dog, her son shocked by what he describes as her “heartlessness,” the fact that she is simply ready to dismiss the matter with the lure of new acquisition. In front of Jack and to her face, Danny shouts, “Get out of my room you fucking cunt!” surely one the most truly profane statements I’ve observed in gay films coming from the mouth of a teenager. She slaps his face and leaves.

      Danny turns away in tears, Jack attempting the console him by putting his arm gingerly up to his shoulder. What surprises him is that Danny totally embraces him as the two hug deeply as Danny lets his tears flow, as Jack does as well—although perhaps for a different reason, for the love, now flowing between them, but which we will never again experience. The love Jack is sharing, he senses, is of a different kind from that to which Danny is so openly responding.

      We sense Jack’s problem, the reason why he has been avoiding his friend, and why he is now a boy of so few words: he is confused over his increasing feelings of love concerning Danny, and in this very moment and the private burial ceremony of the dog later, he is probably the closest to expressing those feelings for Danny that he will never again be. For Danny appears to be unself-consciously heterosexual, not even able to imagine why Jack has suddenly become so removed and quiet. As they stand before the tree where he has buried the pet, Danny puts his arm around Jack saying, “I’m glad you’re here,” Jack replying, “I am too,” even if it is for very different reasons.

      A moment later Danny suggests that it looks like Jack’s mother has arrived to pick him up, and he should probably go back and attempt to make it up with his mom.

      That is the end of this small film in which very little happens. But director Greisman (who incidentally is actor Sally Fields’ youngest son) suggests that for Jack these moments are nonetheless highly momentous and painful, something he may remember the rest of his life, and will continue to trouble him even after Danny has gone off to college. Often, it is the unrequited loves of life that are the most difficult to forget.

 

Los Angeles, February 3, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (February 3, 2023).