Liz Uys | FBoy / 2023

is sexual monogamy truly necessary?

by Douglas Messerli

 

Connor D’Angelo (screenplay), Liz Uys (director) FBoy / 2023 [15 minutes]

 

In the student movie from Chapman University, Liz Uys takes on a familiar subject in the gay community. How do young man who came out long after their high school heterosexual peers, find the time to properly explore their full sexuality before attempting, like their straight

counterparts, to seek out full time relationships?

    Or should they even be expected to repeat all the behavior patterns of heterosexuals? There are, after all, one might argue, actual social and perhaps even behavioral patterns engrained in the lives of gay men, that argue for a difference. Although it has now become popular for gay men to repeat the patterns of heterosexual life—marriage, children, pets, and even suburban living—do we need repeat what has also been shown in many a culture of having failed spectacularly? Is sexual monogamy truly necessary?

     I can hardly be a spokesman, having been married and fairly faithful to the same man for 55 years. But I can report that when our relationship began, having just had a full year in New York City to explore all my sexual desires, I was perhaps not at all ready to settle down and enter the imitation of the straight world gay marriage denotes. I too wanted more, more time to explore the many dark and joyful worlds of LGBTQ life. But fully accepting the world of the man I loved probably saved me, during those dreadful days of the 1980s and 1990s, from acquiring AIDS.

     In fact, both my husband and I, easily accepted in the straight world as professionals in the literary and art worlds, lost nearly all our ties with the gay world—one of the reasons you find me at 78 exploring the gay experience through film.

     In this short take, Finn (Zach Kelch) is that person who still is not quite ready to give up his full sexual exploration, while his boyfriend Lucas (Andre Heimos) is dead-set on the idea of marriage, children, and pumpkin patch visits. This irreparable difference between them—still represented as a lack of maturity regarding Finn’s position in this movie by Liz Uys—results in a breakup between the two at Finn’s home, where his accepting parents and slightly crazy podcaster sister Charli (Siena Solinda) want more information about the couple’s daily activities, not less.

    Lucas, seemingly comprehending his friend’s need to explore, moves on to his search for the heterosexual ideal, while we don’t quite know where it will lead Finn, who at least symbolically suggests a somewhat more coherent lifestyle by revisiting, no sex involved, a previous one-night fling.

     Although it is clear where author D’Angelo and director Uys hearts are on this issue, they nonetheless present Finn as a sympathetic character trying to come to terms with the gay values of today, while feeling the pull of those of the time before gay marriage served as such a beacon of societal acceptance.

 

Los Angeles, June 10, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema bog (June 2025).