Reza Rameri | Mr_Right_22 / 2007

on sight

by Douglas Messerli

 

Reza Rameri (screenwriter and director) Mr_Right_22 / 2007 [12 minutes]

 

Adam (Philipp Denzel) is exploring his first internet date, waiting in a restaurant for “Mr_Right_22” to show up. And suddenly I remembered that I had never been on an “internet” date. Back in my day, you went to a bar, you saw someone across a crowded room, you cruised, and eventually, if you were lucky and the boy you chose was equally interested, you spoke which led to sex at his or your house, in a back room, or anywhere else you imagined it might be safe. The “merchandise” so to speak was very much on display; no one, in those days, ordered up anything sight unseen.

    But here is Adam waiting in a gay bar to which he’s never before been, hoping that his very first encounter with love-making will be someone close to the man advertised online. Or, even more dauntingly, he’s waiting for someone who may never show up; and in this case “Mr_Right_22” is late.

     A lovely waiter (Luc Feit, German actor, also the director of the 1999 film Piglets) who’s seen it all. attempts to relax the poor boy, without much success.

      Adam calls up visions of who his mysterious internet date might really be, first somewhat elderly, pudgy leather man named Wally (Johannes Richard Voelkel), who clearly is not the man of anyone’s dreams. Still Adam, a nice boy, tries to be polite, calling him back out of thin air, as the waiter attempts to calm him down with a gin & tonic on the house.

    His second “vision” is far more good-looking, and even apologizes for being late. But he is not at all the type Adam has pined for. This Dave (Louis Friedemann Thiele) wants immediately to

leave the bar, whisk Adam back to his apartment, ply him with drinks and jump into bed; or, if Adam likes dirty sex, he’s perfectly happy to head off immediately to the bar’s men’s room.

    Fortunately, these both seem to be merely apparitions.

   And by this time, despite the good intentions of the empathetic waiter, Adam is ready to escape, although the waiter suggests that if he leaves now he forever wonder who was at the other end of that first network message, his first date, that brought him out from hiding. Yet Adam is about to bolt and return to the closet.

    All this time there has been another young man quietly sitting with a woman at a table nearby, and now he stands, facing off with Adam to sympathize with the scene he has also been observing. He seems, finally, a decent human being, like Adam a bit shy, most certainly friendly, as he introduces himself as David (Michael Baral). They sit down at the table together, the waiter finally delighted to serve something to the new couple.

     Has Adam finally met up with his Dave? Does it matter, since they seem to like one another and feel natural together? Where it goes from here, no one can tell. But that was always how it was.

     This German production of 2007 was evidently filmed in English only.

 

Los Angeles, August 3, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (August 2025).