Chad Hylton | Love You Thank You / 2017

face in the pillow

by Douglas Messerli

 

Chad Hylton (screenwriter and director) Love You Thank You / 2017 [27 minutes]

 

In this short comedy-drama gay boy Lance (Tim Torre) spends most of the time arguing with his inner self (body double Michael Nicolo) about his previous relationship with Adam (Donovan Mendelovitz) who, long after their breakup, has asked Lance to attend his first major art opening.

      Lance is about to obsequiously return the man he once loved, while his inner self attempts to force him to remember all the unpleasant occurrences which resulted in their breakup. In fact, despite the rather bitchy and often outright nasty Lance 2, what we witness in the film’s ongoing series of flashbacks of Lance’s and Adam’s relationship, the couple’s first encounter at a coffee shop, is rather charming, as the frustrated would-be actor Lance first introduces himself to Adam, who has secretly been drawing picture of him from afar. Their affair seems almost destined as, having swallowed some peanuts to which he quickly discovers Lance is allergic, Adam tosses them out stating that he regrets having eaten them. Lance responds, “You really want to kiss me.” “I do,” continues Adam, Lance countering it would literally kill him. “I’m that good,” jokes Adam.

     Back to Lance’s learnèd conscience: “He was molasses smooth and sugary sweet like a snicker-fuckin’ doddle and you chowed down on that shit like a thirsty little bitch, but you know what, too much sugar and you know what you’ve got, a rotten tooth….” So much for love at first sight.

     When we witness more flashbacks, Lance’s and Adam’s early sexual encounters also suggest some problems. Adam apparently sees himself as the top, but has difficulties in finishing the job, whereas Lance would actually enjoy that position. They have been evidently talking about the shift, with Adam resisting. Does he somehow see the position as something essential to his control, a macho role? The film doesn’t precisely suggest that, but we discern something is a bit amiss. He claims he’s simply stressed out about the how his art show is going, but his comments, “I don’t know what I’m doing,” suggest a far bigger issue that lies underneath his doubts.

     Adam soon admits to a very dark high school experience, “lots and lots of black Crayolas, boys and boys of black Crayola.” He had no one to even invite to the Prom. In the midst of Adam’s conversation, Lance admits that he loves him, which stops everything for a few moments as if a time warp had swallowed them both. He apologizes, suggesting that his love was not something which he even had permission to mention. “I know we haven’t been dating that long and I know it’s kind of crazy, but I had to say it.”

     Adam’s response, gives meaning to the film’s title, “Thank you, really.”

     Even the densest of audience members must surely realize there are some serious problems ahead.

     Lance is forced immediately to back off, describing his feelings as not suggesting that he is “in love with Adam,” but simply that he loves spending time with him. It is apparent, however, that he’s now saying something he doesn’t really mean: covering up the lie that he truly loves someone by pretending he does not. Dangerous territory lies indeed.

     The two make passionate love, but all Adam has to offer is “Hey, I appreciate you too.”

     Even Lance’s conscience has to admit that he didn’t actually run away like a sociopath. Perhaps he should go see him at the opening, explaining his decision to agree with his softer self as has having to do with his back molar tooth pain—caused probably by the oversweet lies Adam has fed him.

     Back into history, we discover that their relationship is truly disintegrating. Their game of “Perfectly perfect” has seemingly been forgotten by Adam, who also refuses to let Lance see the drawings he’s doing of him. Alcohol is more prevalent. Adam seems to suddenly wonder about his lover’s capability of even getting home safely, and refuses to accompany him upstairs into the room where presumably they might have sex. When a lover suggests, “You know yourself better than I do,” it’s clear the personal involvement between the two men in a deep relationship has evaporated. He no longer even pretends or apparently even wants to know the “other,” as writers such as Eudora Welty have long made clear is the mania of early romances, involving the absurd attempt to even become the other.

     Lance nonetheless lures him upstairs and the two engage in great sex. But when your lover suggests that he’s not ready—pausing seemingly forever—for a show, anyone with even a bit of common sense knows it’s not just his art show about which he’s speaking, particularly since, as we suspect, his art is focused on his lover.

     When Lance suggests that he believes his boyfriend is certainly ready for the show, Adam counters with a legitimate question, “How would you know me better than I do.” Lance has taken the leap that Adam has not dared to, attempting to insert himself into his lover’s life. And when they fight soon after, Adam screaming out “I never know with you,” Lance rightfully responds, “Know what?” We realize that what he doesn’t know has to do with Adam’s own inability to fully come to terms with himself emotionally and sexually. As Lance perceives, what he really doesn’t know is whether or not he truly loves Lance.

      The metaphor, strangely, becomes the “cum on his chest,” still dripping from their sex, a moment when Adam has been forced to actually realize that his semen involves another human being, instead of a body turned away from him facing into the pillow. The fact that Lance has demanded the act as a face-to-face encounter seems to have changed everything.

       Lance, pairing up with his double yet again, determines it’s time to take a walk.

       He recalls another meeting with Adam, perhaps their final one, in which Adam describes, again in metaphoric language, the dilemma he faces.

 

 “I feel like someone has built a replica of my house across the street from my actual house, the one I grew up in. An exact replica with all picture frames and bookshelves and furniture and my grandmother’s urn, and just moved it across the street. And in this new house there’s a comfort, a familiarity, but still everything’s different. You know?”

      Lance perceives the issue: “Yes, because you’re across the street and the mailbox is on the wrong side.

      But Adam puts it somewhat differently, “I’m not in the house I’ve always lived in, but I’m home. I’m home.” The second emphatic insistence that he has returned to the world Dorothy believes she has in Kansas, makes it clear he’s still mentally in Oz.

      The recognition that he might be able to live a life outside of his internalized sense of self seems to promise everything, and the two kiss. But it also suggests a sense of possessiveness, as if the other in that house did not have his own world, his own furniture, his own vision of home.

      Lance attends Adam’s opening. There he is greeted joyfully by Adam, whom he hugs. But he is also greeted with a wall of pictures of himself, from that first day of their meeting to their first dance and their intimate moments in bed, including his face in the pillow. The smile on his observing face gradually turns to a scowl, as he realizes that if the artist feels that Lance has created a world just like his own in his house, that Adam has actually stolen his image and the intimacy of their own love, putting it on public view, an act which many visual and other artists reveal their lack of true respect for their private lives.

      When Lance encounters the final piece revealing their breakup, he rushes out of the gallery. Back at home he confronts his “toxic” self who has made him question everything, telling him “I hate you.” But his other, rational being powerfully reacts, “Wow, maybe that’s your problem.” Lance puts on Greg Atkinsons’ song “Only Me” and gently dances with his own other.

       I have to admit, when I first saw this short film, I simply perceived it as yet another example of the numerous works of the “failed gay relationship” genre. But after watching it yet again, I was struck by director Chad Hylton’s quite sophisticated dialogue, and realized that, not only was it highly original but it fit very nicely in a kind of subset of that genre, the narcissistic relationships between visual artists and their lovers, films which include Armen Kazazian’s Gold (2005), Tami Ravid’s Boy (2012), James Fanizza’s Sebastien I discussed above, and Stillman’s Portrait directed by Joshua Davy just a year before this film, in 2016.

 

Los Angeles, November 3, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (November 2023).