Wednesday, July 2, 2025

Hannah Hilliard | Franswa Sharl / 2009

beauty queen

by Douglas Messerli

 

Hannah Hilliard and Greg Logan (screenplay), Hannah Hilliard (director) Franswa Sharl / 2009

[14 minutes]

 

Australian director Hannah Hilliard’s 14-minute film about a true story involving the 12-year-old boy, Greg Logan (played by Callan McAuliffe), is a simple comic tale about a difficult to please father Mal (John Batchelor). Mal, like many a would-be-macho heterosexual perceives his eldest son’s duty to compete against his friend’s son, Richard (Ben Ingram) and flirt with his friend’s daughter, the beautiful young Cassie (Ivy Latimer).


   Greg, who is more comfortable singing and dancing, is a big disappointment. Even as a pre-pubescent, he is apparently well on his way to facing difficulties in high school sports, has no evident sexual inclination for girls, and might even possibly have some gender confusion. His mother, Fran (Diana Glenn) dotes on him, but Mal is endlessly disappointed and loses bet after bet with Mike Bishop (Steve Le Marquand) on swimming races and similar sports challenges in which he insists the boys engage.

      Fortunately, the next event on their Fiji vacation is a beauty pageant which he is sure that his daughter Kylie (Tiarnie Coupland) will win, even though she is equally certain that Wendy will come in first, she perhaps in second place.

      Desperate to find something which might please his father, the cute young blond boy decides he will enter the beauty pageant himself, and somewhat as a joke makes a prank call to register his name in the contest, pretending to be a French beauty, Franswa Sharl (François Charles).

      Cassie, in love with Greg wants a kiss, but he will give it only if she lends him her best bikini outfit to which she finally agrees. Catching the play of their shadows against a canvas wall, the Logans suddenly have hope that their son might after all be somewhat normal.

       The pageant begins with girls from New Zealand, Australia, and nearby islands, all of them charmingly cute. Cassie, however, is certainly the most beautiful, as Mal’s home-film camera reveals, although he’s still sure that Kylie has a chance and he might yet win the bet.


        Suddenly a young girl come all the way from France is announced, and out of nowhere appears a beautiful blonde, with a flower in her hair, dressed in a stunning red bikini. Mal discovers Franswa is Greg only through his camera lens and is ready immediately to put a stop to the nonsense, but Fran demands he stay put.

        In fact, the judge quickly announces Franswa as the winner and Bishop pays off the bet, Mal proudly winning his very first of numerous bets on his family members. How can he not be strangely proud of his lovely son? Cassie is sure he won only because she loaned him her best bikini, and he admits it, handing the floral crown over to her and thus pleasing everyone.


      Through broad comic tropes, this colorful film hints at a great many issues faced by young gay and possibly transsexual boys and their families without bothering to really explore the deeper issues. Indeed, at 12-years-old who’s to say Greg will actually grow up to be gay?

        Of course, most any gay man remembers that at 12 years of age he already began to know that somehow he might not fit in to family expectations.

 

Los Angeles, December 12, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (December 2022).

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