Kenya Gillespie | Give / 2023

give and take

by Douglas Messerli

 

Kenya Gillespie (screenwriter and director) Give / 2023 [16 minutes]

 

This highly sentimental film is further made nearly insufferable by using as its narrative a bad poem by Scottish poet Carol Ann Duffy. If the director had been able to create a real script, the film might have almost engaged us. But the story of the young composer Adam (Bryan Mittelstad) and the classical singer with whom he works and evidently had a relationship, Patrick (Joem DeCandio) is instead presented as a kind of memorial to their sexual interactions.

    For reasons rather unexplained Patrick walks out of their relationship, leaving a longing Adam to attempt to compose logic and music for their breakup. The two seemed to hook up in the perfect coupling, composer/pianist with the wonderful singer. The film, in fact, begins in a church where Patrick is singing and Adam is accompanying him on the organ, and you almost immediately think of the possibilities of these two coming together and even marrying given the setting.

     But obviously their close friendship and sexual bonds are broken. If we only knew why. If we only knew what their relationship was truly about, it might help. But poet Duffy’s poetic narrative gives us no clue:

 

“Give me, you said, on our very first night,

the forest. I rose from the bed and went out,

and when I returned, you listened, enthralled,

to the shadowy story I told.

 

Give me the river,

you asked the next night, then I’ll love you forever.

I slipped from your arms and was gone,

and when I came back, you listened, at dawn,

to the glittering story I told.

 

Give me, you said, the gold

from the sun. A third time, I got up and dressed,

and when I came home, you sprawled on my breast,

for the dazzling story I told.

 

Give me,

the hedgerows, give me the fields,

I slid from the warmth of our sheets,

and when I returned, to kiss you from sleep,

you stirred at the story I told.”

 

    Unfortunately, in this film we are missing the story, which is truly necessary in film, despite its focus on the visual image.

     I advise you to leave this film behind unless you are into pretty boys running through fields, breaking up, and walking up to the ocean waves in despair.

 

Los Angeles, April 26, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema (April 2025).