Vincent Pieper | Voll Schwul (So Gay) / 2015

seeing red

by Douglas Messerli

 

Vincent Pieper (director) Voll Schwul (So Gay) / 2015 [13 minutes]

 

You have to think of German director Vincent Pieper’s short film 2015 So Gay as an attempt to imitate something like a Joe Orton play, where everyone is on the edge of insanity and yet perfectly comfortable at being there.

     Kim (Niklas Marc Heinecke) is a young man whose father Werner (Erick Schäffler) knows that he is gay, but doesn’t want his son to reveal it to his apparently dying mother Annette (Ulrike Johannson). The whisky drinking mother is certain that in a couple of months she’ll be dead; why can’t Kim wait just a little longer before coming out, Werner muses as the two share the chore of washing up the dinner dishes.

     Meanwhile, Kim is insistent about letting his mother know before her death, having already lent her his film Billy Elliott to watch, and trying to explain to her that Billy is gay; she insists that he is not, and when he reminds her that he wears a tutu, she responds that it is simply more comfortable. Indeed, there is some question in the movie wherein his best friend is gay, but not necessarily the boy dancer himself.

     But here the issue doesn’t truly matter, because Annette sees the world the way she wants to, planning with excitement her own death, with a coffin and buffet already in place in the back yard.

       Kim, determined to come out, finally agrees to his mother’s request to meet his “girlfriend,” inviting his boyfriend (Brian Sommer) to dinner the very next night.

      The boyfriend, Milan, however, in cahoots with Werner, shows up at his door in drag, calling himself Hermione, all of which makes it all the challenging for Kim to come out to his mother.

        In a moment of frustration, Kim steals one of Hermoine’s false breasts.

     Annette, however, openly receives the quite obvious drag impersonator, showing her around the place and giving her a special view her coffin, which looks suspiciously like the one in which her mother was buried when her parents died in an automobile accident some years ago.

      Yes, Werner recalls that terrible accident, remarking that it took a great deal of work to “patch” the couple back together, forcing us to realize that he works as an undertaker.

       And soon after, “Hermione” also recognizes the rings that Kim’s parents are wearing as being his own parents rings. When Kim quietly confronts his father about the subject, he admits that he doesn’t like to let things to waste, not in the least apologetic. Does Kim really want to go through with the rigamarole of coming out this evening, he enquires. Kim does, and furthermore if his father attempts to prevent it, he will tell his mother about the rings, which doesn’t seem to phase Werner in the least.

        “What I really want to tell you is,” begins Kim, his mother interrupting, with the speculation “that I wouldn’t have a problem if Hermione gets cancer again.” Obviously, Hermoine has explained her missing breast as the result of cancer.

      After Hermoine finally insists that the rings belonged to her father and mother, Kim goes madly forward with determination: “She isn’t a woman. I am gay.”

       With hardly a beat, his mother responds: “You’re only saying this because you want that Billy Elliot to be gay.” And regarding the stolen ring, Annette tells Kim’s “girlfriend” that she can have hers. One might imagine that might settle things.

     But this little absurdist comedy continues as Hermione pulls off her wig and declares that she will report the robbery of her parents’ jewelry (and their coffin) to the police, Werner arguing, “It might be too late for that!”

     As Milan kicks off his shoes, Annette wonders if those aren’t her shoes, what’s left of Hermoine arguing “No, they were my mother’s,” Werner adding, “Yes, like the rest of your clothes,” as he viciously laughs.

      Milan throws down the ring, speaking out the words, “You sick fuck!” as he angrily exits the house.

      Werner passes the ring back to his wife, explaining that most of the clothes were going off to Africa, as if that were a justification for his having stolen them and keeping them all these years.

       “I’ve been thinking,” the mother finally intrudes upon their momentary silence, “Gay, I don’t care. But not because of this guy. He’s insulting! With Billy, Billy Elliot I can understand. He had a nice boyfriend.”

     Many of comments about this film appended to this film on YouTube were nearly as absurd as the film itself. Several commentators, even after seeing the film more than once, could still make no sense of it. Some were out outraged that the father showed no remorse for the theft of Milan’s parents’ jewelry, and that Kim did not stand up for his boyfriend and attempt to “save their relationship.”

      It is difficult for many people today, apparently to think outside of a simple realist plot centered on self-described moral principles. In Pieper’s black-comic reality, there is no standard morality or when if exists it comes in terms of a bourgeoise satire, as Annette’s final comments reveal. This is, quite fortunately, not real life; but at moments one wonders whether it might be better if it were. Perhaps this crazy family sees “reality” much more clearly than the nice tidy coming out and gay “happy-ever-after” marriage tales I’ve been watching in so many queer shorts. After all, coming out seldom resolves anything, and gay men getting married is only the beginning of a journey that will surely, still in most societies, be fairly difficult.

     I think a better translation of the German title, incidentally, would be “so queer,” allowing all the significance of that word in English.

     

Los Angeles, August 7, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (August 2025).