Dominic Poliquin | Forces / 2016

staying on

by Douglas Messerli

 

Dominic Poliquin (screenwriter and director) Forces / 2016 [TV film] [8 minutes]

 

Military (Benoit Gauvin), the name given to the young man who volunteers to join the army, and Patrick (Nicola Tomassini) have been “across the river” neighbors since childhood. Military describes Pat as a sexual frustrated pyromaniac, a boy who preferred even as a child to playing with gasoline instead of Military’s toys.

     As the film begins Military has evidently returned from a stint in Afghanistan which has strongly affected him, the film demonstrating that he suffers some of the post-traumatic stress disorders of battle; but he’s simply on leave and will soon be sent away once again.

      Pat is also described as a brute, being suspended from his high school football team for beating up one of the players from the other team.

      These two violent men, who were once good friends, are now dropped into the world they knew as children and young men, attempting to rebuild whatever it was that they had. For Pat, Military’s choice is summarized in one harsh and simple sentence: “You fucked up.”

      Afraid that he will die in Afghanistan, Military asks Pat to drive over his leg, rendering him unfit to return to service. But at the last moment, Pat refuses, simply stating “I’m leaving.”

      A fight follows, ending in Pat attempting to move in on a kiss at least twice, with Military rejecting him and consequently falling into the river below their properties, accidently accomplishing his military severance.

      Pat saves him from drowning, providing him with artificial respiration, but a rock has provided the leg fracture. Military declares that he is “absolutely straight” and that he sees himself marrying and moving into his parent’s house with his wife someday. But as we observe right after the accident, the love Pat still feels for him as he holds and rocks his friend into consciousness, and given the open smile the later recovering Military gives Pat across the stream, we wonder whether Pat might not come see his life has changed in more ways that simply being freed from military duty, that he has come home to a deeper relationship that his bland heteronormative imagination might have imagined.

      If nothing else, Pat has saved his life in more ways than one.

      Along with the effective jumpy cuts of Christian Rivera’s cinematography, Canadian director Dominic Poliquin’s short film is quite powerful. But it might have been even more so if instead of relying on the perceptions and observations voiced by Military for his narrative, he had also further explored the mysterious clashing emotions of Pat. We sense Pat’s conflicts without quite being able comprehend why he has developed these extreme pushes of violence and deep passion. And since he seems to be the narrative focus of the work, we need to better understand why he might deserve Military’s understandably reluctant love.

 

Los Angeles, June 8, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (June 2023).