Andrea Bosshard | The Intruder / 1999

when the milkman visits at night

by Douglas Messerli

 

Andrea Bosshard (screenwriter and director) The Intruder / 1999

 

New Zealand filmmaker Andrea Bosshard’s 1999 16-minute film is a kind of fairy tale involving an entire family. Like many a fairy tale, it is told in the third-person, primarily by a narrator (Rangimoana Taylor) who takes his own story-telling methods into psychological realms, telling the audience what exactly is inside each of these figures’ heads.

    The major characters are a standard, almost stereotypical kind of family, an unhappy mother (Catherine Downes), an equally unhappy and potentially pedophilic father (Alan Brunton), their coming of age daughter (Kezia Hinchey), and their slightly older son (Peter Rutherford) who for ages has been rehearsing a coming out speech.

    So dissatisfied with one another are these parents that, as I suggested, the father keeps eyeing his post-pubescent daughter and the mother has fallen in love with the handsome milkman (Jeremy Scrivener) going as far as even writing love notes to him.

     Over the breakfast table, seeming the only time that these family members meet up with one another, the mother and father angrily squabble, each abusing the other. At night, even the husband’s attempts to hold and touch his wife are met with complete indifference. They communicate only through the son.

     The young girl dreams of a handsome young man who might come to take her away, and the young son keeps practicing his coming-out speech, “Mom, Dad, I have something to tell you…, the 8 words that begin almost all gay boys’ most important confession of their lives.

     One night, after the wife has clearly invited the milkman into the house and her private life, he enters. But instead of going to the bedroom, he checks out the desk cadenza, pulling out a picture of the son and winding a musical clock that the husband has given to his wife upon the birth of their daughter.

    For the sleeping young girl, the sound of the music weaves through her dreams of being swept away in the arms of the milkman. The husband awakens to check out the music, only to see what he believes is his daughter in the arms of the milkman. He turns back and climbs into bed.

     In the morning, the mother opens the door to the boy’s bedroom only to observe the milkman in bed with her son, feeling some sorrow that he had to be the sacrifice instead of herself, never imagining the boy might have invited the milkman into his bed.

     At breakfast, for the first time, the quarreling couple actually ask to share the newspaper, the father refusing any milk for his coffee. When the daughter appears and begins to drink from the bottle of milk, her mother removes it from her hands. The son and his now lover (the intruder of the title) enter and also sit together at the table, the daughter in recognition of the milkman tells him that she dreamt of him in the night.

    The son finally recites his speech in front the entire family, finishing the sentence: “Mom, Dad, I have something to tell you: I’m queer.”

    When the milkman arrives at the door the very next morning, the wife opens it only to find her husband there, handing her an egg, symbol of course, of fertility, of a future of love. They kiss, and everyone is finally happy again.

      Seldom has a coming out story been perceived as a solution for familial discontent. But by bringing in new love into their lives which displaces their perverted fantasies, this family is healed by the news, not at all troubled, confused, or broken. Just has the boy has chosen his new self over his old, so are they freed to become new versions of themselves, to live their lives as they were meant to be. If this is normalcy, I’ll take it.

 

Los Angeles, December 14, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (December 2025).