Phil Connell | Kissing Drew / 2013

twisting love

by Douglas Messerli

 

Phil Connell and Genevieve Scott (screenplay), Phil Connell (director) Kissing Drew / 2013 [9 minutes]

 

Phil Connell’s short film Kissing Drew begins with an early scene where we once again see demonstrated the ineptitude of most classroom teachers. Middle-high eighth-grader, James (Eden Ocean Sanders) is being bullied by one of the most popular boys in the class, Drew (Ben Hargreaves), who torments the boy by constantly insisting that he’s sexually interested in him. Although we know that the tormented kid should probably should just acknowledge the fact and point out that Drew seems awfully fascinated by that possibility, as a 13-year-old teen he can do nothing other than deny it. Yet the moment he speaks up, the teacher (Chris Handfield) pulls him out into the hallways suggesting his just ignore Drew’s taunts.

    But how can you ignore something you know, in your half-hidden thoughts, is true, and that the constant reminder of it simply reiterates how queer and unfit he is. Even the teachers would rather scold the bullied boy that call out the boy who does the bullying, since clearly we would cause them problems as well: those who bully others don’t stop with their fellow peers as we all know. They pick out the weakest aspects of everyone and go straight to the heart in pointing out their weaknesses.

   Being called a faggot, however, for anyone under the age of camp, is intolerable, and after Drew has taken over his cellphone, refuses to return it, and calls him one of the most painful of homophobic terms, James goes after him in the classroom. But even then, as Drew slaps his face, he can’t help feeling a sense of slight euphoria from his very touch. As so often happens, the relationship between the bully and his victim always contains elements of envy, admiration, and, yes, even love.

     When I was a few years younger than James, I was also confronted daily by a schoolyard bully named Jimmy. It got so bad that I wouldn’t even enter the playground, but stood back in the shadows of the one of the doorways fearful that Jimmy might even spot me there and point me out to the others as evidence of an idiotic timidity. Yet when Jimmy was hit by an automobile in our small town on his way back from the grocery store, I cried, not because I loved him, but he now seemed far more vulnerable and in danger than I was.

     As expected in this film, it is James who is sent to the bathroom with a bloody nose. And it is he who is first sent to the principal’s office, while even as Drew is called in, he still finds a moment to give James a small punch on his way in. Meanwhile, Drew’s girlfriend Amy (Kitty McVicar) sits down in the principal’s office to wait for her boyfriend to be released.

     James asks he what she really likes about Drew. Her response is evasive: “Hey this is weird.” But seeing that she’s determined to wait for Drew’s release, James suddenly gets the brilliant idea of joining her—after all, isn’t it he whom Drew keeps insisting is really hot for him?  What do you like about him? asks James. Amy is convinced that he’s pretty nice guy, and, moreover, argues that it James who started the fight.

      At that very moment, Drew walks out of the principal’s office along with the teacher. Without any hesitation, James turns to Amy and begins to kiss her, to the shock of everyone in the room, himself included. All right, so in his head he’s really kissing Drew, but now Drew has to rethink everything. Is she how being courted as James’ girlfriend? If so, then he’s not really waiting around in the bathroom to see Drew’s dick, which is evidently what Drew likes to imagine is happening. It is Drew who is now diminished; he has evidently lost both of his potential lovers, the front he’s been representing to others, Amy, and perhaps the one he most desires and tortures because of it.

     James goes running out of the school before he can even imagine that maybe, for once, he has aimed at just the right part of the body where the bully is truly vulnerable.

     This work is most definitely light entertainment, but presents a nice twist in genre at the end.

 

Los Angeles, December 7, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (December 2025).