Christine Parker | The Carer / 2016

flowers and a kiss

by Douglas Messerli

 

Christine Parker (screenwriter and director) The Carer / 2016 [15 minutes]

 

I’m surprised, given the logistics of how many older LGBTQ individuals there must be in relationship to younger gay, lesbian, and transgender individuals, that there aren’t an increasing number of films dealing with gay and lesbian geriatrics.

     Obviously, we all love cute young boys and girls coming to terms with something we long before suffered through. But the aged population might certainly be interested in films such as British director Christine Parker’s The Carer. Her central figure Ari (Peter Eyre) is an elderly man still very much able to care for himself, but who has obviously convinced himself, after the death of his life-time partner, John, along with his inability to cook, that he might be better off tucked away in a small room in a Care Home, where someone comes in to make sure he’s getting his proper dosage of pills and cooks and serves up three meals a day.

     But even his new caregiver Beau wonders what he’s doing in a place like this, seemingly able as Ari is to care from himself. He certainly doesn’t look frail, the boy observes.

     It becomes almost immediately evident—when Ari meets up with a former friend, presumably gay, Neville (Stephan Chase) who refuses to talk about the past and turns out to be a rather nasty authoritarian in his old age—that this isn’t a place of friendly manners. In particular Neville does not like the young male assistant, the “carer” of the title, Beau (Barney Glover), who assists his patients in vague ways.

     Ari, on the other hand, finds him the one beautiful thing in his new world, and engages the straight boy in a way that no one else previously has. A writer in his past life, fairly witty, and highly educated, Ari turns the earlier question on the young man. “What do you do in here?” “Room service, but nothing’s definite,” Beau responds as if a bit frustrated with the indefiniteness of his job.

    Beau, in fact, doesn’t quite seem to know much about àged folk, asking “What’s all them pills for? You sick or something?” Ari simply sloughs off his question, and falls asleep.

    The young man steals a box containing a razor that he previously spotted among Ari’s possessions, and Neville, keeping suspicious watch, notices and reports it, insisting Beau must be fired: “Thieves never change. Get rid of him, fire him, sack him!”

     But Ari lies, arguing that he gave it to Beau, “With great pleasure. My hands are too shaky for a razor.”

     Soon after, we see the two, Ari and Beau, sitting in the room alone. Beau asks: “Why?”

     “You’re cute. There’s fuck all to look at around here. Keep it.”

     Ari asks the boy to read the inscription upon it, but the boy hands it back, making us wonder whether, in fact, he can read. “With all my love, for all eternity, John.”

     Beau is taken aback and now refuses to take it. But Ari explains, “We had a great love. I don’t need to read about it on a razor.”

     Beau, almost in tears, stands. He bends down to Ari and gently kisses him on the lips, saying “Thank you,” to which the startled older man responds, “Thank you!”

     Earlier in this short work, Ari has shown a Beau a book he has written on the cover of which is a picture of himself and his lover, nude upon a divan, being showered in flowers—a kind of mix of a hippie statement and a celebratory moment from the fin-de-siècle. When Ari awakens his bed is strewn with just such flowers, cut from the blade of Beau’s gift.

      If this film is not truly profound, it is still a lovely reminder of what a little friendliness can do to engage even the most unlikely of individuals in a world of gay love which they have never before encountered. Unlike Neville, now known as Nev, Ari has brought his past and his identity with him instead of attempting to abandon it.

     This film, however, could have employed another fifteen minutes just to further acquaint us with this new world, and to explain Neville’s decision to become a different person from his previous self. Did he encounter, as many evidently do, prejudice as a gay man in the center? He is bitter about his personal experiences in a way that Ari is not? Or did he simply feel it prudent to not mention his own past in a world of mostly heterosexual elders? Did the fact that Beau was clearly straight (he carries a tattoo of a woman’s ass on his arm) scare him off from sharing his past life? We need to know what kind of worlds the new audience for these hundreds short films might be facing in a few decades, and perhaps in the near future some ambitious young filmmaker will pursue these issues.

 

Los Angeles, June 30, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (June 2023).