Genéa Gaudet | Elder / 2015

a battle between what god made him and what god demands

by Douglas Messerli

 

Genéa Gaudet (screenwriter and director) Elder / 2015 [13 minutes]

 

If you haven’t seen the Broadway musical The Book of Mormon or just need to be reminded, young members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are generally asked to dedicate several months to a period of two years to teaching others the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. The young adults beginning at age 18 or retired couples, are sent out into the world as missionaries throughout the world where they follow strict schedules of study and proselytizing, with limited communication with their families back at home.

    In the case of Tom Clark, the central figure in this short documentary by Genéa Gaudet had the luck to be sent in 1974 to a small coastal town in Italy where he immediately fell in love with a truly beautiful young chain-smoking Italian communist named Gianni. Although he had known for some time that he had gay tendencies, being deeply embedded in the Mormon faith wherein he was shamed and closeted, Clark felt he could overcome his temptations, particularly after consulting a psychiatrist and being sent off into the world by his mother with cannisters of prescribed Thorazine pills.

     Almost immediately upon meeting Gianni, the couple fell in love and began secret meetings at great difficultly given the restrictions of Clark’s religious duties. Given the heat of his new romance, he stops his Thorazine treatment, and steps quite bravely into a romantic adventure that might have been recounted in a 19th century novel.

     However, Clark’s and Gianni’s love-affair is fairly short-lived when he is told that he is being transferred to Sardinia, and a great deal of this film recounts Gianni’s accompaniment of Clark by train to the ferry that will take him to that island, the two missing it so that they have yet one more day in paradise before their sad, almost tragic farewells. It is only as the romance comes to an end that the central figure can finally face his somewhat vengeful god, he making a vow:

“I’ve asked you to take away these thoughts, feelings and desires and you haven’t—so I’m going to do what I need to do, and you do what you need to do.”

     Demitra Kampakis, writing in Posture magazine, captures the couple’s near histrionic love-making: “With heavy eyelids faintly fluttering in tandem to his heartbreak, Clark visibly translates the anguish, despair, and self-preservation-fueled cognitive dissonance that accompanied his dread in knowing that he and Gianni would soon be separated (as Clark notes in the film, despite Gianni’s pleas that they stay in Italy together, he wasn’t at the point in his life where he could feasibly cut off all ties to his family).”

     Given the fact that Mormon-boy love has now almost surpassed cowboy couplings in the gay pantheon of sexual genres, one feels, however, a bit let down by the reality of simply waving a sad farewell to such a hot Commie. And despite the beauty of the landscape and frisson of the boy’s romance, it might have been interesting to know other information about Clark which Kampakis uncovers in her interview with him:

 

“Elaborating on that resonant moment in the film during our phone interview, Tom conveyed how that exchange was life-changing for him, a moment of spiritual clarity and liberation.  Yet, a twinge of self-effacement can also be detected in that message, and when I probed Tom on this interpretation, he further opened up about the nature of his self-identity.  ‘Although I was born in the States, I grew up in Italy—so culturally speaking, I consider myself more of an immigrant.  Unlike Americans, Italians don’t regard homosexuality as the principal form of one’s identity.  It’s a topic that isn’t openly discussed often, not because of shame, but because there isn’t a need to fixate or sensationalize.  Fundamentally viewing someone within the framework of their sexual orientation is very much an American construct—so although I proudly embrace the fact that I am a gay man, and acknowledge the various ways in which my gay sensibilities are manifested, I nonetheless have a tenuous relationship with my homosexuality. In that sense, I hold a more casual, European approach to being gay wherein I view it as an auxiliary aspect of who I am—a ‘man who happens to be gay,’ rather than a ‘gay man.’”

   

    This is not really the Clark we observe in the film, terrified of a possible outing and torn between his religious beliefs and his human desires. I might have liked to get to know this “other” Clark who might certainly have turned around and remained in Italy with his beloved friend.

    Moreover, while the film focuses almost entirely on the breach that Clark makes between his faith and heart, it might have been interesting to also peek into the world of his lover Gianni, who might certainly have felt some pulls between his political identity and his sexual desires. I don’t know a great deal about the Italian Communist party, although of course another queer, Pier Paolo Pasolini identified, if nothing else, with the Communist ideology; but surely there were tensions bedding with a boy under a red cover.

    It’s too bad that this film does not explore anything but the poignant love story at its heart. But the director justifies her focus: “I think because the love story embodies that moment in time, I never felt that the film should be any longer. Its self-contained nature as a vignette allowed me to condense the narrative while still painting a complete picture. It’s like the difference between a novel and a short story.”

     So perhaps we should just describe this lovely piece as she does, a vignette that stands apart from the larger picture behind it. If nothing else, the love between these two young men represents a kind of framed fragment to which both men as elders can look back upon and with a wistful smile whisper to their friends, “Did I ever tell you about….”

 

Los Angeles, October 4, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (October 2025).