Benjamin Thomas | Sortir avec moi (Go Out with Me) / 2023

take me out to the beach dance

by Douglas Messerli

 

Benjamin Thomas, Marie Albert, Julie Chaye, Anaïs Boucher, Véra Jantzem, Luna Delorge, and Julie Barbe (screenplay), Benjamin Thomas (director) Sortir avec moi (Go Out with Me) / 2023 [24 minutes]

 

When it takes 7 individuals to write the scenario of what basically is a standard romantic comedy, you realize almost immediately that a work of only 24 minutes is going to have problems. The two major male leads of this cast, Liam (Baptiste Baudais) and Théo (Armand Le Roux) are two lovely looking boys and seem to be charming—although it is difficult at moments to know whether Baudais’ pouting woodenness is a problem of his acting skills or the script. Besides, everything else works against this movie.

    Both of these boys, freshmen in college, seem to have daddy problems, having come out to their parents and been readily accepted by their mothers, while having to recognize that their previously loving relationships with their fathers will never be restored because of their being gay.

     All right, it hurts. My own father, who I dearly loved, and with whom I never again could restore a relationship after I came out, still long after his death, occasionally hits me with a pang of sorrow. But surely that didn’t stop me at age 18 to seek out gay love and friendship with others; if anything, it lured me on to seek the love I was now missing at home.

      Even if these characters, moreover, can be simply described as not quite being able to get over that major disappointment in life (Liam’s father even shared a loving friendship with him as a cook hovering over their home stove, something almost inconceivable in US kitchens), how could French director Benjamin Thomas and his cadre of female writers imagine that such an issue might be of interest to any gay male who had seen more than 10 short gay films?

   Of course, we root for the boys to find love and get together, but after a while their pouts and placement of their lips on the wrong gender—in the big scene of this little film, Liam discovers Théo in an upstairs bedroom smooching one of their mutual girlfriends—begins to distract a sophisticated viewing audience. From what backwater French province did these clueless kids come? Even Théo, at one point when Liam asks him he he’d like to “go out with him,” suggests that usually a relationship begins with kisses instead of a formal invitation.

     Really, both the boys and girls of this small college should get out a little more. They all seem so perfectly sweet and guileless that it’s difficult to imagine that they’ve even checked out the full resources of their own computers.

   At one point it appears that Théo does not even know how to properly address a research question; and he, in turn, cannot believe that Liam has never seen a Woody Allen movie, a director he appears to absolutely love—despite I should imagine Allen being someone most aware kids these days utterly reject, if not for his now tiresome humor and old-school Jewish plaints, then certainly for his apparent child abuse. Even though these boys together watch the 2017 gay love film, Call Me By Your Name, it appears that the sexy scenes between the actors in that movie which premiered six years earlier and which they never have still not seen, have utterly no effect on their penises or libidos. Both simply long for a father as understanding as Mr. Perlman, who in that film practically dangles his cute young 17-year-old son Elio before the eyes of 24-year-old graduate assistant. These two boys seem to have not even masturbated, let alone touched a peer’s cock. The movie seems to have almost put them to sleep instead of possibly presenting a heart-pang thrill.

     And when Théo finally gets up the nerve to put away his Pierrot mask (yes, this film actually speeds back in time to the days of Les Enfants du Paradis of 1945) and ask Liam if he’ll go out with him, they don’t seek out some private spot to kiss and touch, but join in a beach group dance with the war-paint of the LGBTQ+ community on their cheeks. Even an old-fashioned Sunday School Iowa hayride, in retrospect, seems more fun.

Los Angeles, February 1, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (February 2025).

Pierre Scot | Mindfuck / 2017

not real

by Douglas Messerli

 

Pierre Scot (screenwriter and director) Mindfuck / 2017 [6 minutes]

 

In this little terror tale by French director Pierre Scot, the director performs as a journalist who, apparently on a film set, is told to drop his pants before he is tied up, handcuffed, and blindfolded by a dominant leather man (Sebastian Freeman).

    The dominant fetishist also, just before blindfolding our subject, seemingly has opened up a strange container in which there appears to be flour and something possibly atop it.

     The leather man exits the room, slamming the door behind him as the journalist is left to imagine what might be happening.

      We observe a giant tarantula crawl out of the canister, jump down from the ledge, and make its way across out journalist’s hair before moving down his face. By this time, of course, the journalist is so horrified that he is almost begun to scream out for help, the leather boy returning to tell him “It’s all in your head,” as he unmasks and unties him.

     But, of course, we didn’t imagine it even if our journalist did; we saw in upon the screen with our own eyes. Is it also in our imaginations? Obviously not. So what is the point of this little exercise? Is it a warning to stay away from such dangerous male sexual encounters? Is it actually attempting to question that what we truly believe we see in that play of flickering lights is not really a thing of reality?

     Perhaps it’s simply trying to remind us never to watch this little film ever again, or if one was actually titillated by it (I was not) to watch it over and over just for fun.

      Now if a poisonous snake had slithered across that room, I certainly would simply have clicked the film off. But we all know that although they are venomous, these hairy insects are generally

not dangerous to humans. And Sean Connery was never truly in jeopardy in Dr. No (1962), although he was terrified by spiders and a couple of nurses were waiting nearby just in case.

 

Los Angeles, February 1, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (February 2025).

Daniela Ambrosoli | Papa & Dada / 2021 [documentary]

gay pops

by Douglas Messerli

 

Daniela Ambrosoli (director) Papa & Dada / 2021 [documentary]

 

Swiss documentary director Daniela Ambrosoli followed the lives of four-same sex couples over several years, intimately questions her subjects on the experiences of raising children. Christian and Mimmo Iannuzzi, Tim Kelleher and Josh Reed, John Lam and John Ruggieri, and Brian and Ferd all shared their lives and stories, revealing that although their experiences with adoption and using surrogate mothers were very different, that in raising their children these parents were very similar to the more traditional male and female gendered families.

    As the official film website summarizes it: “At the end of the day, exactly the same as that of the conventional family unit with father, mother, and child, they eat together, go on family outings, and the fathers help their children brush their teeth and tell them bedtime stories.

     Homosexual men, however, are basically two methods of getting children. As in Mimmo and Christian’s case, they can use surrogate mothers, with the couple did, the surrogate mother Kelly Klassen sending them regular ultrasound pictures or audio messages of the heartbeat of the unborn child. These two fathers paced the floor during the actual birth that is similar to most heterosexual expectant fathers.

     Tim and Josh, however, decided to adopt, suddenly coming home with a new baby which they wondered aloud about their sudden “acquisition”: “It was strange to suddenly have a baby without having witnessed the pregnancy. We asked ourselves, are we allowed to have a child?”

     Brian and Ferd sought out internet tips and advice, but unlike the experience of heterosexual couples, they found so little information that they created their own platform in 2014 to provide gay men information, now one of the major places for gay, bisexual, and transgender fathers to seek out necessary information.

   The noted ballet dancer, John Lam, whom Ambrosoli also shows in short dance scenes and his companion John Ruggieri discuss the tough challenges and joys in becoming fathers. They were also a bit taken aback by the wide range of characteristics you are allowed to choose from: “You can choose the level of IQ, for example—but all we wanted was a happy, healthy child,” comments Ruggieri.

     The director also interviewed Argentinean choreographer Demis Volpi, who at the time was working on a ballet piece based the children’s book, King & King, in which two princes fall in love. He argues, however, that it’s not about homosexuality as much as it is about universal love, a view that is echoed in Christian and Mimmo’s comment: “Being a parent simply means giving love. Period.”

      Director of the noted 2014 Swiss film The Circle—about the lives of the early rights couple Ernst Ostertag and Röbi Rapp—Stefan Haupt observes, "The traditional family image, consisting of man, woman, and child, is still very much with us – but it is undergoing profound change."

     My only criticism of this fine documentary is that the chosen fathers, in this case, were mostly well-to-do and able to afford the often very high costs of surrogacy and even sometimes adoption. It might have been useful if we could visit the same questions about men desiring children who lived more middle-class and even working-class lives.

 

Los Angeles, February 1, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (February 2025).