Philippe Barassat | Mon copain Rachid (My Friend Rachid) / 1998

pay to touch

by Douglas Messerlli

 

Philippe Barassat (screenwriter and director) Mon copain Rachid (My Friend Rachid) / 1998

 

It is difficult, in some senses to imagine the charming French film My Friend Rachid as an LGBTQ film since its major focus appears to be on a young sexually curious nine-year-old boy at a time when most boys first become interested in their own bodies of those of their peers. Eric (Jonathan Reyes) is simply obsessed with the size of his older Arab friend Rachid’s (Nordine Mezaache) cock, and begs him to show it to him and let him touch it whenever possible.

     Most of the time, Rachid will show him his penis, but will not let him touch it because to fondle it or even allow it to be touched would mean he was homosexual. But gradually, Rachid learns how to manipulate the young boy into paying to touch it, Eric only too willing to beg for money, under various false pretenses, so that he might grasp and handle his large-dicked pal.

      But then there are also moments that seem almost dream-like to Eric when Rachid takes the activity a bit further, as for example, when working in an arab night club as a waiter he encourages Eric to join him on a large constructed cock which flies through the sky over the small stage as part of the act, female Arab singers performing below.

      At another point, Rachid suggests that Eric “become” his penis on the lookout for girls and others who might interested in him.  

     And on another night, after fighting with some boys over a girl who he’s hired for sex, Rachid slips into Eric’s bed and, given the description of Eric’s dream wherein Rachid was joyfully being hung on the cross while he himself suffered the pain, the narrative hints that the older boy engaged in sex with the younger in his sleep. In the morning Rachid insists Eric owes him 100 fins (francs).

     Gradually, it becomes apparent that, in some respects, this is a story not about Eric’s sexuality, but Rachid’s as he moves gradually, with his outsized cock, into prostitution. Eric grows up, marries and has children, producing an almost stereotypical bourgeois family.

      But when he encounters Rachid one day on the street, who readily greets him, Rachid’s friends ask if Eric might have been a client, Rachid insisting, no he was a fellow classmate, a pal.

      What we realize is that his “pal” helped to show Rachid how to be a male prostitute without being self-labeled as a homosexual. As long as money was exchanged, touching his cock was perfectly permissible—perhaps even enjoyable for Rachid. But when Eric’s mother, suspicious of his constant requests for money, cut off the supply, Rachid disappeared from his life.

     The naïve Eric seems not even able to perceive how he helped train a young man in the life of prostitution, the way perhaps, the French society as a whole can never truly comprehend how their racism, lack of job equality, and failure to socially accept outsiders such as Rachid help to inculcate the idea for those who remain outside their cultural boundaries that the only choices they have in order to survive are robbery, drug dealing, prostitution, or welfare.

      Barassat’s comedy, accordingly, gets turned on its head. And yes, the little film becomes very much an LGBTQ story, being as it is about a male prostitute, who like so many who perform the same role, cannot accept themselves as being queer. They use sex, so they argue, only to make money, not to enjoy the pleasures of the body, while, of course, quite enjoying being sucked off or fucking some of their clients.

      At turns light-hearted and fantastical, Barassat’s small 19-minute gem is also a lovely satire of the bourgeois French culture, which the previously sexually fascinated adolescent eventually joins and ultimately comes to represent.

 

Los Angeles, January 12, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (January 2025).

Sean Lìonadh | Too Rough / 2022

shift of power

by Douglas Messerli

Sean Lìonadh (screenwriter and director) Too Rough / 2022 [15 minutes]

 

To call the family at the center of Scottish director Sean Lìonadh’s short film Too Rough as dysfunctional, as does the IMDb site, is almost an understatement. These people, an alcoholic couple with a mentally challenged child (James McCarry, Kevin O’Loughlin, and Tomas Palmer) are a disaster zone of hate and total destruction. How their son Nick (Ruaridh Mollica) has even survived all these years to celebrate at a party when evidently his parents are out of town, is almost inexplicable.

     How have they fed him? Can either of these parents even hold down a job? The only salvation for Nick’s younger challenged brother is that he cannot comprehend the meaning of the words that come pouring from their lungs during their violent shouting matches. That child, Flamingo, is only frightened and hides out in a closet.

      Nick is equally terrified, but it is because he knows all too well what his father and mother are saying, their hatred for one another, their homophobic slurs, and, at one point, so we perceive what his father’s drunken toppings of his body indicate. Whether the latter has actually resulted in sexual abuse is uncertain, but after we observe this one afternoon, we can imagine anything having happened in the past.

      What’s different this time, is that after the party Nick has fallen into the arms of his boyfriend Charlie (Joshua Griffin) at the party, and wakes up in bed with him as his parents return. We cannot quite discern whether Nick’s absolute terror of the situation is the fear of the consequences of being discovered with a black boy in bed which might surely result in beatings or even murder; or whether he is more terrified that Charlie will discover the full truth about his family and reject him out of hand. In any event, hysteria sets in, with Charlie mostly refusing to play along, arguing that he will not hide under the bed like Anne Frank.

      Yet he does piss in a glass instead of daring to use the bathroom, and leap to the side of the bed when Nick’s father, in the midst of his violent argument, enters and lays down on top of his son, whispering of his love into his son’s ear. The presence of Flamingo, however, distracts him, and he leaves, the fight between the parents continuing for a while before it finally settles down.

      When Nick again demands Charlie leave, he refuses. He is now there to protect his lover and rejects the very idea that he might abandon him to the horrors of his own home. Just as Nick holds his little brother’s ears so that cannot hear the full-pitch battle, so too does Charlie hold Nick’s ears.

     The couple finally kiss, Nick suddenly realizing a new sense of peace in having Charlie’s support instead of fear and absolute disgust.

                          

     Things do finally quiet, and the boys, together, move forward into the living room where the discover the battling couple drunkenly asleep in one another’s arms. Nick picks up his mother and moves her in another, more comfortable, direction, while Charlie, observing the oven smoking, pulls out the burned meal she had begun to prepare. Together they sit, holding hands, perhaps waiting for the horrors to awaken or just watching over them, realizing that it is they who are now in control, not the out-of-control drunkards. With Charlie there to help support him, Nick can finally put an end to his own version of hiding out in the closet.

 

Los Angeles, December 12, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (December 2025).

Elene Naveriani | Red Ants Bite / 2019

love as survival

by Douglas Messerli

 

Donald Acho Nwokorie, George Imo Obasi, and Elene Naveriani (screenplay), Elene Naveriani (director) Red Ants Bite / 2019 [23 minutes]

 

Two Nigerian men, who have immigrated to the country of Georgia, spend the day together, apparently as they usually do. As the film begins Afame (Donald Acho Nwokorie) has been waiting in the park for three hours for the arrival of his friend Obinna (George Imo Obasi), who has evidently been at a party which the less flamboyant Afame has refused to attend.

     Afame is married to a Georgian woman and has a young girl who he basically looks after while the mother works as a porn masseur. Yet, it is also clear that the two men share a relationship that is far deeper than mere friendship.

     They do little throughout the day, clearly both without work in a society in which they are unwelcome and often greeted with racist comments. Afame (who wears a large gold cross) is sometimes able to rise above the abuse, but it is obvious that it daily cuts in like a sword into

Obinna’s life, although he insists that he doesn’t cry. We also discover that Afame is suffering from some unnamed disease where in gums are bleeding.

      They do little throughout the day but talk, swim in the Kura River, which runs through the capital city of Tbilisi in which they live, sit by the riverside, get a couple beers, and return to the spot where Afame’s wife, Magda (Magda Lebanidze) works, in order to pick up Afame’s daughter.

      Together, they take the young girl to the Tbilisi zoo, which we are told early in the film, suffered a huge flood which killed off many of the zoos most precious animals, and made others ill. Some of those who survived wandered the streets of the city. Evidently, the city is still in the process of building a new zoo, but what is left is sad and abysmal, with animals trapped in small spaces, symbolizing the similar entrapment of these unhappy Nigerians, strange prey wandering Tbilisi on this day.

      Back at home, Afame gently puts his daughter to bed, after which the two men play video games. Yet, as we have suspected by their intimate touches and often languorous looks at one another, in a world without love they find their fulfillment in one another.

      As Magda returns home in the early morning she discovers her daughter in bed, being held by Afame, who himself is being hugged close by Obinna, the three of them fast asleep. The worn-out woman has no patience for these men and their obvious homoerotic affections and orders them both out of the house.

      They leave, taking a bus off to somewhere/nowhere once again where they might survive another day together, the sleepy Obinna taking another nap, his head nestled into Afame’s shoulder. The other riders are clearly not amused by this open display of affection, perhaps also accusing the sleepy head Nigerian as being simply lazy.

      Very little is said in this short film, yet it reveals the isolation and loneliness of these intelligent men stranded in a world as cold, empty, and derelict as the streets and buildings this masterful film depicts.

      There are no red ants (or fire ants) depicted in this Swiss-Georgian film, only a large black ant that Afame notices on Obinna’s chest. But still these men are bitten, again and again, by the small-minded individuals they come against every day of their lives. It’s enough to make you cry, even while Obinna refuses to give into the tears he deserves to shed.

 

Los Angeles, January 12, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (January 2025).