quiet desperation
by Douglas Messerli
Reid
Waterer (screenwriter and director) The Kiss on the Cliff / 1993
One aspect of gay life that is seldom spoken
of is how many young people having trouble “coming out,” never manage to leap
that hurdle and live the rest of their lives often unhappily in exclusively
heterosexual relationships. Filmmakers and their audiences simply find it much
more fulfilling to track young people who gradually come to terms with their
sexuality or even to portray LGBTQ individuals who are forced to live in and
yet survive homophobic societies. A person whose sexuality is never quite determined confuses
both queers and straights, and suggests to heterosexuals, in particular, that
there may be any number of their kind who would have happier in LGBT
relationships. The Q factor, or the eternal questioning individual is to most
of society a troubling being who hasn’t been able to make a final decision on
how to express their sexuality.
While we can point to many films in which characters have come to the
realization of their sexuality later in life—Geschlecht in Fesseln (Sex
in Chains) (1928), the comedy series La Cage aux Folles (1978), and Making Love are focused on just such figures—and a
similar number of works in which the central character lives a hidden LGBT life
while pretending to be exclusively heterosexual—there are many sad stories such
as the 1962 Ohio man in Caught (2011), and even of characters who
joyfully lead double lives such as the dead husband of The Ignorant Fairies
(2001)—there are very few queer cinematic expressions about those tortured
beings who never experience the sex they are inwardly seeking.
Anyone who has come out at a young age will immediately recognize Mark
as a figure who is clearly intrigued by homosexuality, but just not ready to
admit to or commit to being queer—as if a kiss or embrace might mean a
life-long pledge to having gay sex or developing a deeper relationship. But,
obviously, for one on the edge of such a symbolic cliff—and these boys are
literally standing on the high hills outside of their small hometown—any fall
into the arms of another means a total commitment to the jump into the yawning
sexual space between them.
Steve may not have pressured him, but actually does so now, arguing that
he has to get out of the narrow-minded world in which he lives, to go “anyplace
but this place,” and wants his friend to join him, for them to go to college
together instead, as evidently most young men do in their town, work for their
living. When again Mark argues that he’s just not ready, Steve drives him back
into town.
Mark clearly is conflicted, not even able to finish his meal. And his
parents, suspecting the obvious, enter his bedroom before he sleeps to ask him
not to keep the “bad” company of Steve, meaning, as Mark himself puts it, they
don’t want him hanging out with a “fag.”
Steve meanwhile has been forced to act out his leave-taking earlier than
he expected when his father tells him that his divorced mother, living
elsewhere, can no longer afford to make child support payments, and Steve’s
father, who is out of work, asks him to find his own apartment. It’s raining,
as it always does in times of total abandonment in gay films, and Steve, having
nowhere to go even for the night attempts to call for Mark from outside his
bedroom window. The musical accompaniment of Wolfe’s “I Will Remember You”
makes it clear that the two, in fact, do love one another, but are destined to
be parted. In the shower, Mark does not hear his friend’s calls, and Mark’s
mother soon comes to the window shooing away his would-be lover.
Ten
years pass. Mark is now married to the “perfect girlfriend” and has a son, who
we discover is named Steve. Steve’s father has just been buried, and Mark tells
his girlfriend that he must go back to the house to talk with Steve, although
she has gathered that they were never close friends and is troubled by her
husband’s recent quietude, recognizing that something is wrong with the
otherwise loving Mark.
Mark and Steve meet up, sitting on Steve’s old bed, both young men,
dressed in suits for the funeral, making small talk over what is apparent in
their stares at one another, is still a deep longing for one another. Soon
after, another young man, Chris (Sean Sendelsky), appears at the doorway to
remind Steve that his family are waiting for him at the after burial
celebration. Steve introduces him as his lover, and we perceive a wave of disappointment
wash over Mark’s body. He has to go, he explains, his wife is waiting. Perhaps
Steve might join him and his wife for dinner one night? “Does that include
Chris,” Steve enquires, the silence marking the fact that the new generation of
this small Wyoming town have not changed in their prejudices. We also
recognize, however, that for Mark the fact that his beloved friend does now
have a lover has created a chasm between them that no longer can be bridged as
clearly as Mark had hoped it might be, that he might still have had one chance,
not lost, to go back and relive that kiss on the cliff. An awkward embrace is
all Mark can offer his friend.
There is no way to rethink his sexuality at this point in his life. And
we recognize that the silences about which his wife complained will now be a
regular feature of their relationship.
If Waterer’s film is not particularly a brilliant or even original work,
it nonetheless captures the lives of quiet desperation, as David Henry Thoreau
described it, that so many men who have lost their opportunities to even
experiment with their sexual identities are forced to endure throughout most of
their lives.
Los Angeles, January 4, 2021
Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog and
World Cinema Review (January 2021).
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