by Douglas Messerli
Ryker Allen (screenwriter and director) Citrus & Moan / 2016 [4 minutes]
Billed as an experimental short film, Citrus & Moan is
actually more of a traditional confessional work that begins, in the first section
titled “Citrus,” with a simple analogy. The narrator tells us that for much of
his life he ate oranges by cutting them up into their segments and, one by one,
sucking the juice from them before putting the rest of the pulp on a plate to
discard. “Sweet on my lips, but tart to my tongue, this is the way I would
consume my citrus. I was never taught how to eat a slice of orange; I thought
this was the way.”
So too, when he kissed, he leaned forward,
kissed, and stepped back; but then one time he accidentally let out the words “I
love you.”
Similarly, the narrator notes
he was never taught how to show his feelings (were any of us, I can only ask?),
“And I guess he [the boyfriend] wasn’t either. You’re so sweet, he patted me on
the head.” Accordingly, writer/director Allen suggests his boyfriend treated
him very much in the way he ate oranges, sucking out the sweetly, tart juice of
his being, yet leaving the true remainder of him behind.
In an interview in Out,
Allen restates his simple argument: ““Citrus is a comparison I have between the
way I consumed oranges to the way my first boyfriend consumed my love for him.
Every time I see an orange I am reminded of the pat on the head he gave me
after I let out those three words. Citrus itself triggers a mental reminder for
relationships in general with me. I even have my bedroom scented with essential
oils from an orange.”
In rhyming couplets (alas) the
“Moan” section of this short film, speaks of sweaty sex with another young man.
When drops of sweat fall the narrator during sex, he moans, speaking out the
name of his previous boyfriend: “I moaned the wrong name.” In further
encounters, he held in his moans, speaking the right name to maintain his
relationship.
In the same Out
interview, the director summarizes: “The second piece in the video, ‘Moan,’ is
about a previous boyfriend of whom, I was of course, completely infatuated
with. He had the same
syllable sounds as the boyfriend that came right before him. Our first
time having a sexual moment together, I accidentally moaned the wrong boy’s
name. From that point on every time we were intimate, I tried my best to avoid
making any noise.”
Although the form of the short film
setting problems with love-making side by side, may be different from most
other narrative films, the sentiments are rather conventional and certainly not
in any manner experimental compared with the numerous gay experimental
filmmakers of the previous decades, and has absolutely nothing to do with the
so-called avant-garde. Personal confessions go back centuries, St.
Augustine’s Confessions being far more radical and exploratory than this
young sentimentalist. Unfortunately, I’d argue, confession has become one of
the favorite forms of what many still insist in calling the novel.
Personally, I found Allen’s poeticized
story-telling, with very few cinematic values, to be coy. I hate to reiterate the
narrator’s boyfriend’s expression that might demonstrate my inability to see
this creator’s depths, but frankly it is quite simply, “sweet.”
Los Angeles, August 21, 2025
Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (August 2025).
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