Michael Haneke | Caché (Hidden) / 2005

who knows what?

by Douglas Messerli

 

Michael Haneke (screenwriter and director) Caché (Hidden) / 2005

 

For much of the early part of Austrian director Michael Haneke’s film Caché (Hidden) the viewers are shown an almost still front shot of the comfortable, book-lined home of television literary host Georges Laurent (Daniel Auteuil) and his book-publishing wife, Anne (Juliette Binoche). At first it almost seems like the director is attempting to test our endurance; but there is just enough movement and light, an occasional bicyclist, passing cars, and, eventually, human figures, that we realize this intense scrutiny of the building in the Laurent’s life is an attempt to create tension. And we soon are introduced into their about-to-be frightening world when a tape arrives on their doorstep—a tape very much like the one we have just observed on the movie screen. But as the couple reviews the video on their television set we suddenly watch anew as what at first appeared as an objective, nearly eventless portrait is transformed into a subjectively terrorizing enactment as they attempt to “read” what we have previously simply witnessed. Who has sent the tape, and why?  

    Soon after, a second and third tape arrives, these wrapped in paper with a crudely drawn cartoon-like pictures of a child with a long red tongue and a chicken with a bloody neck, these cassettes showing Georges’ childhood home, a street scene and the hall of a lower class apartment building. Again, the frightened couple can only wonder who is sending video tapes of aspects of their private life. Is it an attempt at blackmail, an act of voyeurism, or some coded message of events to come? The very presence of the tapes begins to take its toll on their usually placid lives. The police, who have no evidence of wrongdoing, refuse to be involved. And suddenly, Georges begins to have suspicions of the perpetrator that he will not share with his wife. Receiving the third tape, he attempts to hide it from his wife and the friends they are entertaining, but she announces to the group what has been happening, creating further divisions between them.

     Is Georges hiding something? What does he know about these cryptic messages that he cannot trust telling his loving wife?

     As Georges travels back to his mother’s home, it becomes apparent that a great deal that has previously seemed peaceful is secretly disturbing, surviving in a kind of hidden life within Georges’ quiet and thoughtful outward personae. How can he not know, for example, that his mother’s health has severely deteriorated, and that she cannot now even leave her house? Has he been so long of touch with his apparently loving mother (Annie Girardot)? And why is Georges suddenly having nightmares about a young Algerian boy who his father and mother once had hoped to adopt after the boy’s parents had died? And what happened to that boy, Majid (Maurice Bénichou)?

      A street sign in one of the tapes leads Georges to a nearby town where he finds the hallway like the one in the video; knocking on number 47 he encounters a man about his age, at first unrecognizable, but soon, it is apparent, perceived as the Majid of Georges’ childhood memories. Although he accuses Majid of having sent the tapes, the now elderly man denies any knowledge of tapes or drawings, and, as Roger Ebert has proposed, we believe him, in part because of the gentle acting skills of Bénichou, who, in fact, seems to be at first pleased that Georges has even come to see him. The encounter, however, ends with Georges threatening the former friend.

     Another mailed tape shows that encounter, and the pained tears of Majid in its aftermath. How has that very interchange been filmed without Georges having been aware of it?

    Georges and Anne’s son Pierrot goes missing for a night, his parents convinced he has been kidnapped. With the police Georges returns to Majid’s door, where Majid and his son, (Walid Afkir) are arrested before being released. Pierrot returns home, unharmed, having spent the night with an unknown friend, now angry with his mother for what he has misinterpreted as a love affair with a mutual friend, Pierre, who has simply been physically reassuring Anne as she, in a restaurant, reported Georges’ silences.

     When Georges revisits Majid, the suffering childhood friend slits his throat before the bewildered visitor, and Georges rushes from the room without calling the police. Later, visiting Georges the son also denies—and again we believe him in his firm denial—any involvement in filming or mailing messages.

     Little by little, accordingly, the director has seemed to build up the plot of a potential thriller which might be solved only through our perception or gradual discovery of who is sending the tapes? Yet when Georges, like a guilty boy, is finally forced to tell Anne why he had suspected Majid of the tapes, we discover a deeper, psychological drama centered upon guilt and the refusal to face it.   

     As a selfish six-year-old, not wishing to share his parent’s love with the young Algerian intruder, Georges has told lies about the boy, first concerning the boy throwing up blood, and later, insisting that, as Majid cuts the head of a hen with an axe at Georges’ behest, that he has been threatened. We see the scene as Majid is forced from the house, trying to escape before he taken away to an orphanage instead.

      Georges may rightfully explain his acts as that of an unknowing child; all children, he argues, are selfish beings. But we know that his behavior is part and parcel of something which the French culture has hidden as a whole: the shocking murders of Paris police, who brutally killed over 200 Algerian protestors (Majid’s parents included), throwing their bodies into the Seine.

     Surely Georges’ and Anne’s son, Pierrot, despite his angry reaction to Anne, has not been behind such complex actions, and surely he could not know of his father’s “hidden” past.

     Gradually it begins to dawn on us what we might have perceived all along: that the scenes the director has been showing us and the tapes the actors have been viewing are one and the same. In a truly postmodern twist, the director has sent his own actors the tapes, has used his own voyeuristic skills to trigger their guilt and its consequences into motion. Roger Ebert hints at this same conclusion in his astute review of Caché.

     The idea came to me much more directly, when it became apparent that Haneke was far less focused on revealing who had sent the tapes than he was on revealing the seemingly “forgotten” event in French culture and the effects that guilt might have created for all future generations. Ultimately, the film’s audience asking “who’s watching” has to be answered with the obvious truth: we are—through the insistence of the director.

     As if to point up that question and test the audience once more, the film’s credits are played out across the entry of Pierrot’s school. Amidst the faces of dozens of student extras standing about and leaving the space, in the far left corner of a frontal shot—very much like that of the Laurents’ home early in the movie—we  glimpse Pierrot and Majid’s son standing together in an unheard conversation. What is he telling Pierrot, we can only ask? And will the implications of any revelation he makes to Pierrot (Georges’ son, but also, we recall, the stock sad-sack, often gay figure of French pantomime) effect his future? The truth revealed can save or destroy us, salve the mind or hit us over the head with its painfully blunt realities.

     Obviously, Haenke is concerned here with the collective guilt the entire French society for their treatment of and the war against Algerians, and in particular for the notorious massacre of Algerians by the national police in 1961. But, as Haenke has argued, that is merely the framework for the film, not the direct cause of its events. Even the receipt of the tapes is not as important as the skein of guilt felt by all those in the society, and most importantly Georges, whose parents were among those killed in the 1961 event, and his son, Majid was taken in by his family after their deaths.

     Yet guilt in this film occurs on every level, the political, the social, and the personal. The first two are quite obvious, but only a few critics such as Christopher Orr have attempted to peer into the personal beyond the lies Georges has told his parents. The usual explanation of those lies is that Georges was simply jealous of his parents attention to their new adopted son, but Orr also questions whether or not Georges was not sexually attracted to Majid, and fearful of his sexuality and perhaps the parent’s transference of their love, found a way to get rid of his new “brother,” an outsider, whom Georges was fearful of himself also becoming through his homosexual desires.

     Orr goes even further is questioning whether or not Georges’ son Pierrot might be also having a sexual liaison with Majid’s son, this relationship being perhaps free of the layers of guilt felt by the previous generation. In a sense, it is not important who might possibly be sending the tapes; in a symbolic sense, time itself is delivering up the truths through the very collaboration of Pierrot and Majid’s son, a new generation which is able to free itself, possibly, of some of the terrible lies of the past. And, on a more mundane level, even Anne wonders whether or not her son has developed a relationship with another boy when he goes missing.

     I am not at all certain of Orr’s viewpoint, nor for that matter is that critic necessarily demanding a gay reading; but it surely possible, and a queer reading is even encouraged by the director given the layers of self-deception and the insider/outsider demarcations suffered by the society at large. And unless we are true cynics, imagining that Majid’s and Georges’ son are involved in some terrible new series of events, we must hope that their communication or relationship is finally somewhat freed of their country’s horrible history, even possibly representing a new kind of love.

       

Los Angeles, September 27, 2013

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (September 2013).     

Mark Pariselli | Frozen Roads / 2010

what child is this?

by Douglas Messerli

 

Mark Pariselli (screenwriter and director) Frozen Roads / 2010 [18 minutes]

 

Balthazar (Kevin De Carli) has been friends with the brother and sister neighbors Lyla (Carlyn Burchell) and Christian (Kyle Mac) since childhood, their mothers obviously have been friends. But in the small Canadian town in which they live things have changed. Christian and Lyla’s father, after the apparent death of their mother, has become an alcoholic, and Balthazar’s father has turned into a conservative religious bigot who emphatically warns his son to stay away from his friend Christian, who he believes has “lost the lord.” What evidence he has for his statement but apparent hearsay is not demonstrated. What he do know is that in the very first scene Balthazar has sustained injuries from a fight. Was he fighting over what was being said about his own self, his friend Christian, or both? We are presented with no clear answer.

     But Balthazar does stay over at Christian’s house at nights, and, as we observe by his almost reaching out to touch his sleeping friend, it is apparent that a homosexual relationship is budding between the two. Lyla also is clearly sexually attracted to their friend.

     Balthazar’s father has also forbidden him to attend a party the next evening, but when they fall to sleep, their son steals the car as he and Christian inhale some sort of drug and make their way to a near-by barn filled with sheep. It is a lovely, almost innocent moment, as Balthazar picks up one of the lambs, Christian petting it.

 

Here, for just this moment, they have arrived at the Christ child’s stable, despite the fact that this Balthazar has already consumed his gift of myrrh (incense).

    Both, with beers in hand, make their way to a hayloft where Christian reaches out to make love to his friend, Balthazar helping by removing his sweater and shirt. But as Christian begins to touch his face and lean forward for a kiss, he bolts.

     Returning to the party, he meets up with Lyla and leads her back to his truck where she willingly allows him to fuck her. Yet, she is clearly disappointed with the experience, perceiving it finally as almost a rape, and perhaps what we perceive is merely an act to prove his masculinity to himself and deny both the fact and shame of actually having homosexual desires.

     After the sex, Lyla is almost thrown out of the truck, as Christian arrives just in time to comfort his sister, Balthazar driving off into the dark lane of frozen ice between the banks of snow. In some respects, he has now cut off both his love of the siblings and chosen a destiny of a lonely, angry life, afraid to break the sexual rules instilled by the culture and his father. The road to the future for Balthazar will not be one that leads to the Christ child, symbol of love, but to the cold outpost of a life that denies the love he inwardly feels for his friend.

     Pariselli has experimented in several of his films with new ways of telling a story, but here he uses the basic tools of realistic symbolism to quite beautifully convey the emptiness of a society that cannot fully accept human diversity. One commentator expressed the fact that there is nothing new in this film, and that may be partially true, but the subtle ways in which director Pariselli conveys both the boys’ and the girl’s true feelings (the longing smile and near-naked flirtation of Lyla, Balthazar’s hand that desires but cannot dare to touch his friend, and the lovely shared moment of bashful innocence exchanged between the two boys as they hold and pet the lamb) all stand in counterpoint to the drunken sleep of the siblings’ father, the crude bigotry of Balthazar’s dad, and the cold, unfeeling fuck by Balthazar of his formerly open and innocent female friend.

     Unfortunately, we know on which side the young small town boy will end, seeking out his own drugs to fulfill the possibilities of love his has left behind.

 

Los Angeles, July 31, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (July 2025).

 

 

Tom Bakker | Ayor / 2021

living behind a mirror

by Douglas Messerli

 

Tom Bakker (screenwriter and director) Ayor / 2021 [11 minutes]

 

Much like Thomas Hescott’s 2020 film The Act celebrated and deconstructed an important event in British gay history, so does Dutch director Tom Bakker’s Ayor fictionalize the important 1970 statement against gay discrimination when two young men protested the lack of commemoration of the Netherlands’ celebration of Remembrance Day (May 4th) of gay soldiers and war victims.

      Like Hescott’s film, Bakker’s work is a highly professionally filmed piece of European gay history that helps us to know about how people put themselves on the line in a time when it was difficult and dangerous to do so.

      If one might have thought, given the open attitudes of the Dutch today, that gays in the Netherlands had no difficulties in openly expressing their sexuality, one need only watch this film which presents events from as recent as 1970, toggling back and forth between the before and after of that special day which challenged Dutch traditional values.

      Ad (Angélo Schuurmans) and Enno (Lars Brinkman) are holed up with a back room of a hotel near the main square where the Remembrance Day celebrations take place. Both have determined to give themselves up for the cause, wearing their pink triangles, dressed properly in suits, but knowing that their actions will probably end with them serving 3 months in prison.    

      They are nervous, particularly Enno who begins to question the whole series of events. Finally, Enno’s boyfriend Jan (Thor Braun) shows up with the wreath, kissing Enno and reassuring him of his commitment. But still Enno is frightened about having to give up three months of freedom for his acts.

      In alternating scenes, we watch each of the boys separately being questioned by a police officer (Hein van der Heijden). Ad is basically smug in his refusal to explain who was behind the decision to engage in their protest, at one point when the officer asks if Enno is his boyfriend, answering, “Are you interested?” before finally answering “No,” his only real answer to the policeman’s questions.

      Enno, on the other hand, clearly the deeper thinker of the two and probably the original instigator of the event, responds with elliptical statements which help explain their viewpoints. When the officer asks him why “you people you are so special,” he replies that he often wonders the same thing, why the police flash lights upon them at night when they are making love, why they continue to receive so much of the police’s special attention.

      Back in the waiting room, however, he almost attempts to back out of their plans, Ad engaging him with his imitation of Clint Eastwood preparing for a shootout by licking back his hair, taking out a cigarillo, and suddenly shooting his enemies dead. The two joyfully play at cops and robbers for a moment, falling upon the floor in almost hysterical laughter, brought on by their nervousness. They are interrupted by a hotel worker who has obviously arranged for their cover and access to the celebration at the right moment.

     We see the two doing nothing but carrying out a wreath, this one dedicated to the gay men and women who lost their lives in the war, before we observe what appears to be the actual black-and-white footage of them being wrestled down to the ground by the police and a sailor in front of the crowds, as if they were engaging in an act of the greatest desecration possible. At the end of the film, we are told there were later massive protests on their behalf and “After political deliberations, the public ceremony was changed a year later to include all homosexual, Sinti*, and Roma who had perished during the war.

     The most poignant moment of this film, however, occurs when Enno is being questioned. When he perceives the glass wall next to him, he wonders if people are listening into their conversation on the other side. The officer insists it’s none of his business. But Enno continues on, suggesting that this room, in fact, is much like the world in which he lives. When the officer inquires how this might be, Enno responds:

 “With everything I do, I feel there is someone behind a mirror….watching me. And that feeling makes me question whether or not I can hold hands with my boyfriend when I walk down the street. Whether I can kiss him at the tram stop. Or introduce him to my boss without any trouble. There is always someone behind that mirror. Who watches and judges. You don’t even have to worry about things like that. No one is watching you behind a mirror. You don’t even have that mirror. You asked me why we did this, at the expense of the dead. That is why. I want to live without that mirror, too.”

 

*The Sinti are a Romani group of around 200,000 people living in Germany and Central Europe, and obviously made up a small portion of Dutch population.

 

Los Angeles, February 13, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (February 13, 2023).

 

Thomas Hescott | The Act / 2020

wanting more

by Douglas Messerli

 

Matthew Baldwin, Thomas Hescott, and Peter Lawson (screenplay), Thomas Hescott (director)

The Act / 2020 [18 minutes]

 

The standard description of this British short film is more than a little misleading:

 

“In 1965 the eve of decriminalization for acts of male homosexuality in the U.K. Matthews, a young gay man at odds with the world, discovers love, sex, and a new family in the backstreets and underground bars of Soho.”

 

     In fact, although the bill for decriminalization along the lines of the Wolfenden Report nine years earlier proposed in the House of Commons by Conservative MP Humphry Berkeley, it was not voted upon until 1966 and was defeated, with Berkeley, a well-known homosexual, also losing his seat in the 1966 reelection. The bill, known as the Sexual Offences Bill, did not pass until 1967. In 1965, when Lord Arran first proposed the bill in the House of Lords, 93% of the British population still believed that homosexuality was a form of illness that required medical treatment, a sentiment expressed as well in the bits and pieces of the speech read out throughout director Thomas Hescott’s movie, even though the year before that speech the North West Homosexual Law Reform Committee was founded, abandoning the medical model of homosexuality as a sickness.

     The real focus of the film, in any event, is not on the Sexual Offences Bill, but on a single individual named Matthews (Samuel Barnett), who it appears for the first time decides to explore a gay bar in Soho, probably named the Flamingo, its entry being defined by a small pink flamingo neon sign, into which, after being propositioned by a prostitute, the frightened businessman, scurries.

     Immediately he encounters the flamboyant black, “Edna May…Duchess” (Cyril Nri), Matthews responding with his last name, pause, “Mr.” After a joke about Matthews’ serious demeanor, wondering if he’d been caught down at the docks sucking fishermen by the cops—almost scarring our new friend off—the Duchess sweeps him back into the communal spirit of the place by permitting him to buy her a drink and explaining, “We are all family here.”    

     Matthews learns quickly, and soon after, in a public bathroom picks up Jimmy (Simon Lennon) and, after noisily being fucked by his pick-up in his own room—much to his landlady’s dismay— immediately falls in love with the tough, who like a many such uncloseted working men refuses to kiss and claims he is not “like Matthews,” meaning presumably a gay man—a strange thing to express indeed, since Matthews himself has evidently, after some deep soul searching, just come out, admitting to himself his true desires.

      Much of this beautifully filmed work involves, in between the fulsome and misconceived statements we hear from Arthur Gore, Lord Arran from the House of Lords* (“I understand that “it” is an involuntary deviation, not hereditary but due to some emotional factor during childhood”), Matthews’ attempts to form a relationship with Jimmy fail. He suggests he could financially help him, that Jimmy might even move in with him, all to no avail.

      In one scene, after they have had sex, he quite hilariously attempts to convince his new “friend” to attend a production of Orfeo with him at Covent Garden. When Matthews attempts to explain that Orfeo is hoping to rescue his wife with the possibility of losing his very soul just to be with her again, Jimmy innocently asks, “Has he got ‘goons’?” Matthews responding, “No guns, just a lute.” As Jimmy begins dressing to leave, Matthews asks once more, “Can I kiss you?”

       Meanwhile, Matthews is back at the bar sitting with Edna May as the jukebox plays “O Danny Boy.” He has become a regular.

        But finally, Jimmy begins demanding money. He hasn’t worked for the week and he needs money for his rent. Matthews suggests that if he gets a place, perhaps Jimmy could live with him, with the angry response, “I ain’t your little project!” Finally, Matthews confesses that he likes Jimmy “a lot.” “We allow ourselves to have friends and sex with strangers that doesn’t mean anything. And I am tired of feeling that it what life is.”

       “I ain’t like you,” Jimmy repeats.

      But Matthews has finally become outspoken in his love: “I want more. I look at you and I want more.”

       They argue, Jimmy almost beating him. “You want to be careful how you talk to me.”

       Matthews: “I appear to be in love with you. And I can’t just turn it off.”

       Another visit to a public bathroom ends in Matthews’ arrest, and soon after Jimmy turning against him, since he too has now been visited by the police after they have found correspondence between the two in Matthews room. Matthews loses his job and is forced to leave his boarding house. But he is still willing to “take the blame for ‘leading’ him,” which in British law stems from a presumption that gay men force their sexuality upon innocent others. The only question Matthews has of Jimmy is “at the other end, will you wait for me?” But again, Jimmy proclaims “I ain’t like you.”

      In Matthews’ interview with the police, we suddenly see the rise of gay liberation through the smallest of units, the simplest of acts. He insists on knowing how the letters are any indication of a criminal act. “Am I being questioned about what I do or…who I am? Your job is to consider whether or not I have committed acts of indecency and should be removed from society! If you’re asking if I’m an ‘invert,” yes, I am. I am not the only invert in this country. Your child’s teacher, your doctor, your bachelor uncle. …In the simple act of speaking out we change the world.”

       To see what this formerly timid man has become helps us to realize what only a few years later made transgender women, boys, and others rebel against the police attempting to close down their favorite bar in the USA, their only home (in this case Stonewall) once again. They had had enough. They wanted more! They had realized it was finally time to speak out.

       In the very last scene Matthews is back at the Flamingo, sitting with his now close acquaintance, Edna Mae. She complains that she waiting for her ideal man but that probably such a man would be a policeman. They toast. Suddenly her eyes catch a newcomer, crossing the doorway. Matthews turns to look and observes Jimmy entering.

      He quickly gets up and goes to him, this time is question of “Can I kiss you,” being answered with a kiss.

      Although Hescott’s film might seem to resound with British gay history, the real history in this fiction is made by the frightened businessman who has finally reached the end of his patient wait for things to change.

 

*To be fair to Gore, he sponsored the bill primarily because his elder brother committed suicide in 1958, reportedly because he was gay.

 

Los Angeles, February 4, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (February 2023)

David Hastings | Willem / 2020

confession of an underground hero

by Douglas Messerli

 

David Hastings (screenwriter and director) Willem / 2020 [35 minutes]

 

Based on the imprisonment and killing of the real Dutch underground resistance fighter Willem Arondeus, David Hastings’ 2020 film Willem is a handsomely shot and fairly well-acted short that has received a great deal of attention from the LGBTQ community.

      Arondeus worked as an underground forger to official documents that allowed numerous Jews to take shelter from the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, helping to save the lives of many. After the war, his lawyer released his final message, evidently delivered by his prison guard, the other central figure in this film, that in the times of war “Let it be known that homosexuals are not cowards.”

      For years, many argued that Arondeus’ sexuality denied him the recognition of other war heroes. In 1945 he was awarded the posthumous medal of honor by the Dutch government, and in 1984 he was recognized with a Resistance Memorial Cross by the Queen of the Netherlands. In 1986 Yad Vashem recognized Willem Johannes Cornelis Arondeus as “Righteous Among the Nations.”

     The movie recounts his last days of suffering in his prison cell guarded by an in-cell guard and might be described as more of a confessional than a true dramatic expression of incidents. Willem (Chris Johnson) is, after all, thrown in the cell on June 29, 1943 with a young Nazi officer Alexander (Thomas Loone) already waiting in the cell, tasked with guarding his prisoner.

   Already beaten so badly that he can hardly sit, let alone eat, Willem is no William Hurt playing Luis Molina in Héctor Babenco’s Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985) ready to weave his fantastical stories into a romantic adventure that will envelope his cell-mate Raúl Juliá as Valentin Arregui. Willem can hardly speak and Alexander remains mute on orders from his superiors.

      Yet gradually over what appears to be just a few days’ period, he is able to represent his gay life and his underground activities in a manner that slowly loosens up his Nazi priest and eventually turns him into a momentary lover who awards the young hero a last kiss.

      One has to admit that this film is hardly believable, and the script by Hastings is rather leaden, spitting out important events of Willem’s life without being able to provide any of the details which might illuminate the character’s true humanity. At its best it reminds me of the slow conversion of the young would-be AIDS helper David Bennett in another 1985 film, Arthur J. Bressan’s Buddies wherein the wonderful Geoff Edholm as Robert Willow gradually convinces the reluctant “buddy” to become involved in the war against AIDS just by pure expression of his love of a life he about to lose.

       But Johnson is no Edholm, a truly remarkable actor, and the 35-minute format of Willem does not allow either actor to provide a convincing portrait of how they so quickly bonded, let alone why these two different kinds of prisoners might have reached out to one another so successfully in just a few days’ time.

     Let us just admit that Hastings and cast members’ intentions are of the best kind, and that the final kiss, the quickly penciled message that Willem sends to his lawyer, and Alexander’s final tears as he hears the bullet shot into his prisoner’s body beautifully reveals his own recognition of his imprisonment as well. His final act is to peer out the small open slot of the cell door, only to have it closed from the outside by a fellow Nazi soldier, which speaks louder than all of Willem’s words.

     Willem is no great statement among the hundreds of World War II testimonies to the bravery of those who spoke out against the Nazis; but it is a memorable portrayal of another gay figure destroyed by the German intolerance of something they themselves had first put a name to: homosexuality.

 

Los Angeles, February 28, 2022

(Reprinted from World Cinema Review February 2022).