David Lewis | Ranchlands / 2019

hate in black and white

by Douglas Messerli

 

David Lewis (screenwriter and director) Ranchlands / 2019

 

Perhaps I am now old enough at the age of 78 to be justifiably described as the curmudgeon I never wanted to become, but frankly I’ve had it up to by chin with Christian fundamentalists excusing their terrifyingly abusive behavior behind their desperate attempts to hold close to their religiosity in order to survive their own abusive childhoods. No, you are not permitted to continue to abuse into the next generation or the one after that, even if religion somehow gave you a sort of wet blanket to maintain your sanity!

 

    The young Tyler (Nick Molari) of this tale, returns home in his Honda Accord to comfort his brother Garrett (Ben Whalen), dying of cancer. There he must once more deal with his monstrous church-going, hymn-singing mother (Kim Marie Cooper), who has difficulty in even welcoming her prodigal city-living son home. From the get-go these two chew on the gristle of each other’s existences—although to be honest, Tyler is a vegetarian, while his mother doesn’t even seem able to recognize that serving up chicken to her unforgivably “lost” son is not truly a dietary option. For her, the fact that he can’t simply swallow up the hen is evidence of the problem with her beloved country.

     Even more unbelievably for this ranch romance is the fact that his mother has hired the supposedly religious-minded cute cowboy Noah (Zachary Beck) as the ranch ground’s caretaker and close housekeeper to her dying elder son. Noah and Tyler quickly fall in love as one might expect of such a clear cinematic testimony to the great Western gay films that trail down from Howard Hawks’ Red River and George Stevens’ 1960 Shane through Budd Boetticher’s late 1950s Westerns and the dribble into the rich delta of A. P. Gonzalez’s Clay Farmers and Ang Lee’s not quite as believable Brokeback Mountain of 2005 along with so many others.

    Now we simply need to look into the closet of the back barn to realize the Tyler’s anger lassos in to the fact that his father, having discovered his son with a local boy Billy (Burt Binder), not only beat his son but either strung up his young lover or let the boy put a rope around his own neck.

    The mother said nothing. And she now spits out the hate that you might expect from a guilty Christian.

     Late in this film, she explains in a hiss-out of justification that she too was abused by her father. I feel a slight twang of empathy, but cannot accept this slim cinema’s attempt to justify her silence as an explicable attempt at Christian love.

    These ranchland folk are total monsters, and I am almost sorry to see Tyler and Noah, hand-in- hand agree to go on living in this terrifyingly abusive territory of Trump-like followers.

      I grew up attending Sunday school and church services every week. And, I’m afraid, I can’t get over the hypocrisy of the lessons I learned. You might be able to go home again, but I will never again step into a Christian church except for a funeral or two which I sorrowfully can’t escape.

 

Los Angeles, February 14, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema (February 2025).

David Olympe Cabon and Romain Le Bleis | La Terre Est Ronde (The Earth Is Round) / 2020 [TV series, 6 short episodes]

circles

by Douglas Messerli

 

David Olympe Cabon and Romain Le Bleis (screenwriters and directors) La Terre Est Ronde (The Earth Is Round) / 2020 [TV series, 6 short episodes]

 

The series does not begin well as Vincent (David Bremaud) makes an appointment to meet up with an on-line correspondent, Julien (Thomas Da Costa) in the park. He sits on a bench awaiting the mysterious man in a red hat, only to be joined by a rather jaunty and not so personable individual who challenges even his existence as someone waiting for another being to show up. The intruder is not wearing the red hat promised in the on-line meet-up, so Vincent is more than a little distressed by the unfriendly individual who has just joined him. But soon after, the intruder, pissed by Vincent’s lack of interest, goes skate-boarding off, donning a red hat.

    Already in episode 2, poor Vincent is out of sorts, angry for the possible “no show” of his “Instagram” date, but also for his refusal to communicate with the guy of the bench. His dance partner Manue—which I might describe as a truly difficult “bitch,” a word I hardly have ever applied to the female sex—complains about his lack of concentration, and Vincent goes off into the dark, but always beautiful Paris landscape, with a blurred notion of what might lay ahead regarding his sex life.

     I have to say that by the third episode, when Vincent turned out to be pizza delivery boy to a woman who was obviously distracted for a great number of reasons, including a possible liability suite, an evidently failing lesbian relationship, and a visit to the opera, I truly wanted to cut off my own connection to this “round earth” series of events. Just pay him and let him get out of your far too-complicated life, I wanted to scream.

    Well, in all such TV series, things get somewhat better as Vincent is asked to fix his neighbor Madelaine’s internet connection. She has evidently forgotten to plug in the necessary cord. But in their conversations over a nice glass of Chardonnay, during which she appears to know all about his Instagram meet-up, she argues that perhaps the man of his dreams—not the one he was presented to on the fake account but handsome nonetheless—may not truly be interested in another woman, the pizza-eating “bitch” I previously mentioned, but in fact may be truly interested in him. Perhaps the woman may be only a sister, a cousin, he her best gay friend. The only way our hero can discover the truth is to himself attend the opera where they have planned to meet up. This obviously is a French series; there is hardly any possibility that such a meet-up could be even imagined in US television. We are moving into French Boulevard farces of the late 19th century without any of their fun.

      Vincent follows the “couple,” to discover the woman helping to buy him a new outfit, evidently for the opera. They seem to be a couple until…another boy shows up, maybe an unknown lover? Well, we limp into the final season episode 6, only to discover that the lover, is the original Instagram poster with whom Vincent was actually hoping to meet up.

      He arrives, the next morning with a pizza, and order returns to this Schnitzlerian drama of circular love.

      There was no possible other continuance for this 2020 series. The circle had been made, the serpent eating its own tale, our hero utterly enjoying the boy with whom he had originally planned to meet.

 

Los Angeles, February 13, 2023

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (February 2023).