Sasha Korbut | Incomplete / 2023

they call it choreography

by Douglas Messerli

 

Sasha Korbut and Peter Wortmann (screenplay), Sasha Korbut (director) Incomplete / 2023 [16 minutes]

 

Whatever happened to the joy of sex? In so many current short and even feature films, the narrative is centered on searching for the love of your life, evidently a desperate endeavor which means scanning the face of everyone you’re ever attracted to in order to discover whether this is the true love of your life you might be missing.

    It’s a truly frustrating and endless task, involving mad thoughts of the desire for such a love coming through even from a previous life, or a broken image of the many things the other could have or might have been.

    In short, as Sasha Korbut’s film notes early on, it is a kind of “nostalgia for a romance that never was.” Why, one has to ask, does desire have to be so serious?

    Perhaps it’s a reaction to the popular notion that gay relationships are generally transitory and seldom serious, and the recognition since gay marriage became legal, that, in fact, there are many gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, and transexuals who have now sustained long-term relationships. But it seems in this counter-reaction, if that’s what it is, we have lost the pleasure in simply meeting up with someone—at least in film renditions of our lives—and sharing the pleasure of two bodies rubbing up against one another.

     This essentialist approach to gay love, as expressed in this very serious dance-drama by Sasha Korbut, starring award-winning choreography and dancer Pontus Lindberg, is set on one focus only, searching for, documenting the search, and hopefully finding the unnamed central figure’s one true love. A hopeless task, I would argue, since, this case, it’s delimited to one small area (Manhattan) and set on with such a dogged earnestness that it is certain to fail. Indeed no one is saved from his imaginary arms, including a handsome black man waiting in line to receive his morning coffee (Antuan Byers), a man (Hussein Smko) waiting for a fellow chess player in Washington Square Park, and a businessman (Evan Copeland) taking the downtown subway from Chambers Street.

     All become temporary lovers, as if the character designated as “Him” was checking them out, through what I see as not truly innovative modern dance movements, in order to discover whether they might not be the true lover he has been looking for. As one commentator (Christopher Velasco) sniped: “Gays can be extra insufferable when they go to art or drama school.”

     Finally, he even tosses away the pages that have recounted his search, leaving his notebook behind to be discovered by another possible “Mr. Right,” who spends a long time attempting to call up the super-serious “Him” from a phone booth (where did he find this, one has to ask, in 2023?), while receiving no answer.

   We discover, in fact, that nearly everyone is keeping just such a record of their search, seeking out someone to salve their loneliness.

    It reminds me of the time in history where most young girls spent all of their lives seeking out a husband since that was the only possible future that was offered to them. The exceptions to this were described as “old maids” or possibly even lesbians. Some of our most popular films such as Meet Me in St. Louis and White Christmas are centered upon this very proposition.

     With the rise of feminism, I had hoped this single-minded search for a mate might have abated; but now it seems, what with the late 20th-century devastation of AIDS and the legalization of same-sex marriage, to have infected gay men of the 21st century, who pout their way through their lives in search of their perfect companion, imagining every man they see as the one with whom they might live happily ever after.

    “Him” (Pontus Lindberg) might have had far better success if he danced a little jig, tried out a new tango, or even went for a waltz with someone just for the joy of the it. Leaping into serious twists and turns of the body every moment he encounters someone to whom he’s even faintly attracted doesn’t result in much—and I say this as one who loves modern dance. The man picks up is coffee, chess player is greeted with a kiss by his female companion, the businessman hurries off to Wall Street. The searcher returns to his empty bed, too sleepy to answer the portentous phone message.

    There is a great deal to be said for further completion of the self before desperately seeking out another.

 

Los Angeles, August 8, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (August 2025).