guess who’s coming to dinner
by Douglas Messerli
Trilby Beresford (screenplay),
Leslie Bumgarner (director) Surprise / 2015 [10 minutes]
The ten-minute film Surprise
(2015) is unsurprisingly a “coming out” movie. The surprise we sense almost
from the first frame forward is about who is “coming out.” Obviously,
the handsome young son, Jack (Austin Fryberger) is the immediate suspect, home
early from school with the fishy excuse that the coach has cancelled practice.
He keeps diving into the refrigerator while his curious mother, Linda (Tess
Harper), appearing rather chipper—and, as Jack even observes, “looks really
nice tonight”—attempts to get his attention.
It is clear almost immediately that she is the one with “news,” and that he is even more difficult and dense about her attempts to broach the subject than would be any typical parent facing a young boy or girl attempting to explain his or her sexual inclinations. When Jack sits down on the living room couch for his usual computer TV games, she joins him, he immediately sensing something is amiss. “Are you getting back with dad or something?” He accuses her of “acting psycho,” which suggests just how different she is behaving this afternoon from any other.
“No Jack, your dad and I are not getting back together again…ever.,” she
continues from their former slip of conversation. Indeed, she attempts to take
that answer further into the realm of hints: “In fact I don’t think I’ll be
dating any men.”
The comment makes sense to Jack
because, as he sees it, “Dating is way hard,” diving back into his own world.
He brings up Cassie, the “nice girl” he used to date, expressing his
frustrations that she still won’t go out with him. Clearly Linda has lost the
connection once more with her son due to his self-centeredness.
Laughing, she turns back into the role
of knowledgeable mother, suggesting to Jack that she “needs to explain some
things” to him. For his part, he plays the petulant son, saying he knows all
about the birds and the bees. She takes an abstract route: “Love is
complicated, you know?” He continues punching his controls for the game he is
playing, seemingly oblivious to her commentary that “as you get older and more
experienced, things change….” Gradually she moves the conversation into a more
pop-psych context, suggesting that before you know it “you’ve evolved into a
more multi-faceted person.” Even she wonders whether he’s following her, as he
stabs at his game control panel.
“Let’s say hypothetically that you know
someone really well. A woman. And she’s decided that she’s attracted to women.”
That grabs his attention, as he turns to
her, realizing that she’s talking about gays, about lesbians. Hilariously, he
shifts even that odd piece of motherly conversation back to himself, suddenly
realizing, so he imagines, that Cassie is a lesbian and that is the reason she
refuses to go out with him. He rises to immediately call his friend Sam.
She seems to have lost him entirely this
time, but always the patient mother, tries entering the moated castle of his
self-centrism through another door, “So, how are you doing in Miss Cromwell’s
class? Are you liking her more?”
He waffles a bit before describing her
as a “turd,” his mother suddenly turning into the corrective oversea, demanding
he not call “Alice” by that name, hinting indeed that she now knows Miss
Cromwell in a personal way than he might have previously thought.
Finally, she admits that she has indeed
gotten to know Alice, and suddenly mid-sentence she interrupts so suggest that
she knows it’s not fair to spring this one him “before Alice comes over,” he
still not quite comprehending, presuming that she’s coming over on “school
business” and wondering why she didn’t “just call.” He walks off, imagining
that his mother now knows something about him that we and she do not.
But Linda responds even more strangely to his way of thinking by tossing
out, “Well fine, will just talk about over dinner.” He has disappeared for a
second off the screen, but now in a clever cinematographical move comes leaping
back into the frame, “Dinner? Why is Cromwell coming over for dinner?”
Now simply justifying the visit, his mother suggests that Alice has come
to be a big part of her personal life….Jack interrupting with wonderment about
that phrase. She tries again, adding “You know. The romantic side?”
Finally, she has broken through to Jack, as the truth dawns upon him, the
bits and pieces of their previous conversation linking up to make sense. And so
might it end, the son having to come to terms with his mother’s new recognition
of her sexuality and the focus of her love.
But in a clever turn, Jack too must now confess, creating a further
surprise. “I was at school…and they I wasn’t. I got dismissed. The same thing
as….expelled.”
Linda is shocked, confused why the school hasn’t called. And suddenly
she grows curious as to why he was expelled. She checks her cellphone; Alice is
almost there.
“What did you do, Jack?”
He begins to explain that he was talking in the cafeteria just like
everyone else, but then the teacher singled him out….
The doorbell rings, it’s Alice.
As she goes to the door, he calls out, “Mom. I called your girlfriend a
‘cunt.’”
So ends this mother-son series of comic, but quite serious nonetheless,
confessions, all rather drolly presented in a cleverly written script and a
nicely, if rather conventionally, filmed work.
Although this work was viewed at some gay festivals, it’s a pity it
hasn’t been more universally seen, since it so adroitly demonstrates the
complexities of contemporary LGBTQ sexuality. The intelligent script by Trilby
Beresford probably explains also why noted filmmaker Bruce Beresford was the
executive producer of this movie.
Los Angeles, August 16, 2022
Reprinted from World Cinema
Review (August 2022).
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