all dressed up
by Douglas Messerli
Sam Langshaw (screenwriter and director) One
Night Only / 2017 [11 minutes]
Living in a small suburb near Sydney, Australia,
Tyler (Tom Mendes) and his best friend Erica (Ellen Wiltshire) glam it up,
painting themselves with heavy make-up and dressing up in glittery frocks, as
they plan a New Year’s trip to the city on the internet-invite presumably of a
well-to-do Sydney businessman Theo (Tim May).
The
wide-eyed country boy and his female friend arrive at the adult party looking
more than a bit freakish to the “sophisticated” partygoers. Theo meets his
guest a little taken aback but nonetheless attracted to the young flesh Tyler
represents.
At
one point in the party—a party in which Erica and Tyler feel quite out of place
with the older, more-subdued celebrants—Theo suggests his new “friend” meet him
upstairs in the bedroom. Tyler is excited to possibly began a relationship with
this handsome older man, but at the same time is somewhat dismayed for the
response they’ve so far received. But when, after a few kisses, his new
would-be lover suggests he go the bathroom and wash away his eye make-up, revealing
that he’s not “into femmes,” Tyler grabs his bestie and quickly escapes the
event.
The
young boy is understandably distressed about the situation, the evening having
lost all of its joyfulness through the word “femme” thrown at him as it
probably has been for most of his young life. Even today many gay men shutter
at extremely feminine versions of themselves; and I too have done so in the
past. In a world that still awards men for being masculine, a great number of
gay men have been schooled to enjoy the very traits that heterosexual couples most
prefer, obvious sexual distinctions between the masculine and feminine,
increasingly over the last several decades is something that has been somewhat
worn away by younger generations.
Standing on a bridge, metaphor of where these two outsiders—both
culturally and sexually—have arrived at in their lives, they encounter a group
of younger celebrants also glammed up, but with less stellar results. The new
group invites the two to join them, a young femme boy, who looks similar to
Tyler, eyeing him for a possible new sexual encounter.
This film by University of Sydney film student Sam Langshaw was released
soon after his first film, Amsterdam, another film about outsiders who
find one another in a most unlikely party. Langshaw went on to work for Warner
Brothers Australia and recently has moved to London where he works as a script
reader and developer.
Los Angeles, December 3, 2023
Reprinted in My Queer Cinema blog (December 2023).
.png)
No comments:
Post a Comment