Jan Baylon | I Lust You / 2019

 bragging about sex

by Douglas Messerli

 

Jan Baylon (screenplay and director) I Lust You / 2019 [6 minutes]

 

 A great many of the hundreds of short LGBTQ films that are made every year now are helmed by student directors or people just beginning in film, and, accordingly, the quality of the works is highly mixed. As I’ve noted previously, although I am committed to be honest about my feelings about the quality and significance all the films I see, I allow most of these short, student-created films I see a fair amount of leeway, attempting to discern what they are trying to offer and overlooking the knots and confusions of the plot that take them there.

     Furthermore, it has been amazing to me over the years, just how many excellent young filmmakers there are. I have continued to enjoy the short gay, lesbian, transgender and other films just for their range of concerns and sense of adventure.

     But a number of them appear dead from the start simply because they haven’t chosen even a narrative that might engage the viewer and taken his mind on a visual journey. Such is the situation in British director Jan Baylon’s 6-minute short film, which I’ve now watched three times over as many days simply in an attempt to determine what it’s truly trying to express.

     Two friends, one of them a yoga instructor (Diogo Domingos), begin the film bitching at one another, the student finally being probed by his friend/teacher about his weekly meetings with other men. Miffed by his friends’ presumption that he has only coffee dates and hasn’t really been “seeing” other men, the central figure of this work hesitantly establishes that he has finally dated a handsome 6-foot man whom he met at a coffee shop and with whom, after watching Titanic, he had wonderful sex.

      The other, being suspicious, asking if it wasn’t just a Grindr date, arguing that even if it was he shouldn’t be too been embarrassed, since everyone seems to meet up that way these days. But our friend exaggerates just a little more, eventually describing different individuals with whom he has sex every night, the last night, in particular, being a particularly sex-ridden evening since he went clubbing and drank too much, and in brief scenes appears to have had a number of encounters in the one evening alone.

       Asked if any of these dates have suggested an interest in a more serious relationship, he presents himself—as least through the brief clips we are provided as evidence—as the kind of guy who has sex, says goodbye, and only vaguely makes a promise to call them back, obviously disinterested in settling down.

        His friend, however, obviously knows him quite well and doesn’t believe a word he says, wondering instead how he could have had sex with their friend Matthew, who our hero insists was truly hot.

        I suppose this comedy is meant to be a satire about the way many gay men in the age of Grindr, Tinder, and such other meet-up services pretend to live their lives; our meeker and not particularly beautiful young man simply exaggerating, without bragging, to fit the pattern. But other than suggesting that the image we have of the post-AIDS gay man is terribly mistaken and overstated, what, one can only wonder, is this director’s point in making this film. He might have established that fact in a few simple comments, allowing his character to develop in other ways without spending the whole film in one vast, transparent fib that really isn’t really very interesting. Even the title seems like a logo with no hint of a narrative behind it. And frankly, watching two attractive but not particularly photogenic males move their bodies clumsily around on side-by-side yoga mats does not allow for much in the way of visual excitement.

 

Los Angeles, May 19, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (May 2023).