a failure to communicate
by Douglas Messerli
Omer Ben-Shachar and Jennifer Kim (screenplay), Omer Ben-Shachar (director)
Houston,
We Have a Crush / 2025 [11 minutes]
If we can ignore the improbability that the first feet-on-the ground exploration
of another planet is performed by a lone astronaut (Benjamin Rigby) who
communicates through a cellphone which he accidentally leaves behind and
returns, rocket intact, to retrieve it, it is still difficult to explain why
the LGBTQ+ Newfest included this work in its 2025 showings—unless somehow,
unbeknown to the rest of us, they are arguing for yet another A to be included
in the alphabetic rainbow, this one standing for Alien.
The astronaut apparently is
able to reach Houston with his cellphone to tell them that the planet he has
just explored has no sign of living beings. But the moment he lifts off, what
looks like a rock begins to move around, returning to its cave to find the
left-behind cellphone. At first, it doesn’t know what to make of the device,
but when, by accident, the phone begins to flicker back pictures of the
astronaut and his family, the alien Ditto (Sam Humphrey), becomes fascinated.
And over a short period of time he not only falls in love with the image he
encounters but eventually builds a kind of shrine to the departed astronaut.
All too soon, however, the
astronaut returns to pick up his forgotten cellphone only to find it now in the
possession of Ditto. A standoff for the device occurs, with the mean-spirited
earthling slugging the poor alien to the ground so that he might regain
possession of his major means of communication.
Poor Ditto, now a
disillusioned being, waddles back to its shrine, still in love with the idea of
what the image on the phone conveyed.
I suppose we’re supposed to
make the leap of imaging Ditto as the truest form of an outsider in love with
someone who is totally insensitive to its feelings and, like bullies
everywhere, even beats it up; the love that remains, so the metaphor must read,
is like of a gay boy or a transgender figure who has a crush on a straight man.
Cute film, but a truly silly conceit that I might have done without.
Or perhaps this film is simply
about how the good ole MAGA USA treats everyone who seems different from its
own image of itself.
Los Angeles, October 13, 2025
Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (October 2025).
No comments:
Post a Comment