by Douglas Messerli
Gijs Blom and Robin Boissevain (screenplay), Gijs Blom
(director) Escapade / 2014 [21.49 minutes]
In Dutch director Gijs Blom’s 2014
short Escapade two boys who live a couple of doors away from one another
have become, over the years, close friends. And in the first long sequence of
the film it is Quint’s (Robin Boissevain) birthday, and Thijmen (Gijs Blom) is
determined to help him celebrate it as they hang out together all night, taking
in the bars, participating in small street fights, and mostly, on Quint’s part,
puking. By morning both are, as they might express it, “wasted.”
They both pause before their respective front doors knowing that inside
there will be hell to pay. Quint’s father (Daniël Boissevain) appears to be an
unemployed lay-about, who spends most of his days drinking and passing out on
the couch. And there is no greeting from his father, after whom he is forced to
clean up. When Quint confronts him by responding, “nice decorations,” his
father stomps out of the room, declaring that they never celebrated his birthday
either.
In Thijmen’s case, however, both his mother and father are in the
kitchen angry over the fact that he has not called them, that they have spent
an anxiety-ridden night worrying about his whereabouts, unable to even contact
him by cellphone. They ground him for two weeks, demanding during that time
that he comes from school and does his schoolwork with no nights out.
The class differences between these two families are immediately
apparent and the boys’ respective goals in life are accordingly quite
different. It is clear that Thijmen’s parents expect him to attending the
university, while he buys Quint a book on street art in Berlin, revealing the
boy’s major interest.
Quint discovers an empty bottle of gin
in the kitchen, evidence presumably that his father has gone back to his heavy
drinking, while Thijmen’s mother furiously enters his bedroom to note that his
jacket smells of beer, reminding him that they had an agreement about his
drinking. Since they have evidently changed the legal drinking age from 16 to
18, at 17 he is no longer of age. And she is furious for his infraction of the
law.
In short, Thijmen’s parents intensely
care about their son, overseeing his activities, assuring that he gets an
education and doesn’t go astray. Quint’s father seems nearly oblivious to his
son’s activities or even his feelings. The boy is forced to clean up after the
father, to prepare his own meals and even, at times, make sure his father gets
something to eat.
We see Thijmen imagining his life on a park bench as a father as his
young son play nearby while Quint is under a bridge painting his graffiti
images before he walks the bridge, climbs over the retaining wall to bridge
light post and jumps off into the waters below.
These friends are as different as
possible, even though their deep friendship keeps them together. I suspect that
some may describe the relationship between them as love, but the film does not
at all represent that. The boys have come to enjoy one another, it appears,
because of their differences, each offering something the other doesn’t have;
for Thijmen his friend obviously proffers some excitement, the forbidden world
from which his parents seek to protect him, while for Quint, Thijmen clearly represents
a sense of stability, order, and a commitment that is absolutely lacking in his
own life.
Although Thijmen promises to join Quint at a BBQ party a few nights
later, he is kept home by his parent’s edict as he sits between the two, both
working on their laptops, his mother relying on him from time to time for
suggestions of how to better manipulate her way through her manuscript.
While Thijmen’s parents keep a close eye
on him, Quint feels he no longer even exists for his father and imagines the
possibility of his just running off, which alas becomes the theme of this film
coming-of-age film. The issue has nothing to do with sexuality, but rather how
these young men deal with the restrictions and limitations of their home lives,
which even further demonstrates the rift that exists between these two boys.
Quint wonders whether his friends has
ever thought about running away, and although it has crossed his friend’s
mind—certainly the thought crosses the minds of any child growing up at the age
when they begin to realize their identity is different from their parents—but
he has never considered it seriously. Quint, however, even has a destination in
mind, Berlin, and wonders whether Thijmen might join him, to which his friend
says simply, “I wouldn’t mind getting away,” obviously not a statement of
permanent disjunction which soon after happens in Quint’s case.
When Quint’s father returns home from a
day job or simply looking for a job and finds his son sitting on couch with
headphones on unable to even hear his complaints, he screams violently at him
for not cleaning up. In reaction, Quint shouts that he only cares about his
son’s existence when he needs something, describing him as a man who spends all
day drinking and smoking weed around the house with his friends, a “lousy ass
junky,” whom he describes as a loser, which ends with the father slugging out
his son.
The blowup, in turn, results in a real
determination to leave, and Quint wants his friend Thijmen to keep his own part
of the bargain. His own determination to leave becomes Quint’s inclusion of his
friend, “We’re leaving,” something Thijem has not completely accounted for. He
explains that he gets frustrated sometimes, but actually his parents “mean
well.” The friendship, it is apparent, has its limits. And when Quint insists
he is leaving that night, he angrily leaves Thijmen who simply cannot commit.
But this is not a coming out film, and in fact, the two it appears are
not gay but simply buddies. The question here is, how deep is their
heterosexual friendship? Or how deep is any such relationship between two close
friends? Will Thijmen, as Quint, demands take the dangerous “leap” like he has
from the bridge?
As we observe Quint packing up, we
watch Thijmen dining on pasta with his father and mother, and we cannot quite
imagine that at the last moment she he comes knocking at Quint’s door, that the
boy will be ready to join him.
Caught pocketing money from his
father’s secret hide-away, Quint and his buddy are confronted by the father at
the last moment, but this time Quint knocks him out or perhaps worse as the
screen grows momentarily goes dark.
The boys are on the run, but soon
Thijmen holds back, staring at his cellphone in distress. Quint encourages him
on, but his friend remains in place, a look of deep consternation upon his
face. He cannot move forward, having realized that what is the “right decision”
for his friend, “leaping off the bridge” is not necessarily the best choice for
him; and in that recognition Thijmen also represents his coming of age, his
recognition of who is truly is.
Friends, unlike lovers, do not necessarily run off together as the gay
boys do, for example, in Roger Tonge’s 1987 film The Two of Us, who
escape to a British beach town and live together until they are forced to
return home. The word “escapade” in English has two meanings: 1) “an escaping
or breaking loose from restraint or confining rules”; 2) “a reckless adventure
or prank.”
Clearly it is the first meaning for Quint and the second for Thijmen. We
observe someone holding a handwritten sign that reads “BERLIN,” and watch a car
pull away after someone has climbed in. But we can be certain that Thijmen did
not join his buddy, did not make the leap which Quint declares early in the
film and repeats at film’s end is always “the right decision.” Sex, in
apposition to Tina Turner’s song, has nothing to do with it. Thijmen has made a
rational choice to break with his beloved best friend.
In other words, this also is not a gay
film. The boys make no sexual moves toward each other, and no kisses except
early on where one boy is slugged for kissing another as a joke. There is no
hint here of queer issues. Yet Blom’s well-made buddy film appears on “Gay
Shorts and Movies” and is listed in a number of gay and LGBTQ collocations and
recommended lists such “LGBT shit,” “Gay Short Film,” and “Favourite Gay Short
Films.” Why, one must finally ask, did such viewers choose to include this film?
Is it because its structure is similar to a “coming out” film, or that it
represents two attractive males, its director/lead actor appearing also in the
gay Dutch film Jongens (directed by Mischa Kamp) of the same year? It
represents yet another leap of faith that perhaps simply cannot be rationally
explained.
Los Angeles, May 2, 2022
Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog
(May 2022).
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