deliverance
by Douglas Messerli
Throughout these queer cinema
volumes I have attempted to gather my discussions of individual films into
small segments that present variations of a particular film, subject, theme, or
genre, without even attempting to make these small gatherings all-inclusive or
to argue that all of my small groupings actually might be represented as a new
genre of LGBTQ+ cinema.
The fact that these gatherings include films spanning several years,
will certainly confuse those who prefer or are simply more accustomed to
chronological comparisons; yet to delimit every film to the year in which it
was released (and even then there is often a difference between when films were
made and when they appeared in theaters, sometimes with several years between the
two events) would result in a missed opportunity to show broader influences,
connections, or simply the zeitgeist of queer filmmaking.
Yet I must admit that even I balked, at first, at creating a small
section concerning “delivery boys.” The question, first of all, depends a great
deal on what the deliverer is delivering and to whom. One might argue that a
broad spectrum of gay filmmaking is involved with someone delivering up sex to
another waiting human being, particularly given the development of computer and
cellphone services such as Grindr, where men and women await the arrival of
someone else bringing them pleasure and sexual release whether it be a prostitute
or just someone he or she hooked up with on the internet.
I would argue, moreover, that sexual pornography, both queer and
straight has long depended upon the arrival of new boys and girls in town,
plumbers, phone installers, milkmen, animal caretakers, singing telegram
performers, masseurs, and just plain neighbors to deliver something far more
exciting than their specified occupations. In other words, the trope is behind
almost all our sexual encounters with people we excitably encounter for the
first time—family, dear friends, and even casual acquaintances generally being seen
as off the grid.
Accordingly, I have been very narrow in my definition of what the
delivery boy is supposed to be delivering other than the potentiality of love.
In the five films I’ve selected the boys are literally hired simply to deliver
food, water, or documents, with the age, social, and cultural gaps between the
two generally being seen as unbridgeable when it comes to what those who have
ordered up their services and those delivering them.
In each of these cases, at least one, if not both individuals, see their
possible ability to bridge that gap as something of a deliverance, a solution
that will resolve their sexual dilemmas along with numerous other problems they
face.
But, finally, the real problem (except for the Thailand-set movie) in
simply getting through the front or office doors.
The films I have chosen represent once again many different countries:
the French-Canadian director Jean-François Monette’s Take-out (2000), US
director Eric Mueller’s This Care Up (2003), the unknown Finnish
director’s commercial advertisement for Kingis Ice Cream (2010), Danish
director Lasse Nielsens Lek and the Waterboy (2010) located in
rural Thailand, and Brazilian-based director Hugo Kenzo’s Delivery Boy set
in Hong Kong (2019).
None of these delivery boys or their waiting customers end up completely
happy in these comic-dramas, and in Monette’s case the hero ends quite sadly, although
he has, at least, become wise to her personal desires. But in each film there
are moments of great possibility in the delights of the two entities meeting up
that go far beyond what it is they are actually paid to be delivering, even
when it comes to the ice cream the company is hoping to sell. One can also be
certain that in each of these films the waiting customers are terribly unhappy
with their lives and can’t wait for someone to deliver them up from their
situations, just as the delivery boys, dissatisfied with their line of work,
are hoping to meet the one who might deliver them from having to make their
arduous trips. In both instances, these figures are waiting for the delivery to
be a deliverance as well.
Los Angeles, October 29, 2025
Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog
(October 2025).
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