Ofir Raul Grazier | האופה מברלין (The Cakemaker) / 2017, USA 2018

undiscovered territory

by Douglas Messerli

 

Ofir Raul Grazier (writer and director) האופה מברלין (The Cakemaker) / 2017, USA 2018

Israeli director Ofir Raul Grazier’s first feature film is a gentle realist work, with little experimentation involved, but which is nonetheless complex and watchable. The Cakemaker might almost be characterized as one of the numerous food-based films (think Babette's Feast, Tampopo, Julie & Julia, and Chocolat)—except that this work explores, along with baking in this case, the issues of religion, sex, and cultural separation that are also the subtexts of two of the above films, Babette’s Feast and Chocolat, in an even more challenging manner.

        Not only are the major protagonists, at least in the early part of the film, an Israeli and a German, a married man and a single baker, but together they have a gay relationship in Berlin.

     They quickly fall in love with one another in Thomas' (Tim Kalkof) small café, which the Israeli-based Oren (Roy Miller) has apparently visited previously, since he not only orders up the baker’s German Black Forest (Schwarzwaelder Kirschtorte) Cake, which the thin man chows down with relish, but orders a container of Thomas’ cinnamon cookies, which his Israeli wife, Anat (Sarah Adler), he reports, loves. After finishing his sweets, the stranger asks if the baker might suggest what Oren buy as a birthday gift for his young son. After inquiring what the father does for a living—Oren works for an Israeli-German train corporation—he suggests a nearby toy shop where model trains are made and painted by hand. And we suddenly realize, when he asks if Thomas might accompany him to the shop, that something is a bit odd here. By the next scene we see are the couple about to kiss. 

      The later scenario already establishes that the men have become regular lovers, Oren living with Thomas every time he visits Berlin. Yet, Grazier creates an even more subtle relationship between the two as Thomas queries the obviously bisexual Oren about his sex-life with Anat, suggesting that he, too, might share an interest in women. In short, before we have gone far into this film the director has already established a vision, so we might imagine, of sexualities that accords with his equal presentation of massive cultural differences, a young German male living with an Israeli Jewish man.

      When Oren leaves to return to Jerusalem this time, he forgets both his keys and the cinnamon cookies, leading Thomas to call him on his cellphone. There is no answer, again and again, until finally he attempts to contact his lover at his office, where he told that Oren has died in a car accident. And it is at this point where Grazier’s would-be tale of an odd gay couple becomes something even stranger, as Thomas determines to travel to Jerusalem to discover, so we might imagine, what happened to his former companion.

      My clause, “so we might imagine,” is important since the director never tells us what his characters are truly thinking, but represents it only in their silent actions, made even more silent in Thomas’ case when he arrives in the Hebrew-speaking world of Israel, where people can communicate with him only in English. Things are not made easier by the fact that, as Grazier clearly shows us, this world does not easily embrace outsiders—particularly German outsiders.

      Moreover, the audience is itself put on edge as we recognize that this particular outsider is almost literally stalking Oren’s wife and child Itai, going so far, with the use of Oren’s left-behind keys, as to open up a locker at a local swimming club and slipping in to the dead man’s swimming trunks.

     Ultimately, he even finds employment as a dishwasher in the café that Anat owns, gradually inserting himself into her and Itai’s life. Given the stresses on Oren’s widow and son, not only the sudden loss of their major provider and clearly a loving husband and father, but along with the constant religious reminders impressed upon her by her brother Moti (Zohar Strauss), it is not terribly difficult for Thomas to enter their lives. When her son suddenly goes missing as a runaway from school, the baker is asked to take over the kitchen, pitting peppers so that that they might be stuffed. We know what she does not, that he is an expert chef, and that he now will be unable to resist the empty oven. Yet the very fact that he opens the oven to bake his delicious cookies is perceived by some as a grave indiscretion.

     When Itai arrives at the café, Thomas skillfully handles the situation by serving him up a hot chocolate and, when Itai finally comes into the kitchen by his own will, allowing him to help decorate the cookies. It is a lovely scene wherein we realize that Thomas might also be a loving father to a child, one which the returning Anat witnesses from a nearby window.

       Yet her brother is furious when he discovers that Thomas has dared to open the stove, which might mean that his sister would lose her Kosher status. And just like the endless microphonic calls to Sabbat, his are shouts of exclusion rather than embracement. However, the not so religious Anat continues to sell Thomas’ cookies to great success. Although Moti may be wary, he helps to find Thomas a nice apartment and invites him to Sabbath dinner. When he later shows up, invited, to Itai’s birthday party with a delicious cake in hand and somewhat drenched from a rainstorm that has impeded his visit, Anat tells him to change into her husband’s clothes, and the tale spins round to an artful conclusion.

      Finally made curious about her husband’s remaining documents, she opens the box to discover his numerous receipts from Thomas’ Berlin bakery and begins to perceive the truth—which in this lovely film is never openly spoken. Eventually the two, Thomas and Amat, have sex, soon after which her brother hands him a ticket back to Berlin.

       Amat, the seemingly accepting one, however, follows him to Berlin. We don’t know whether she plans to confront him or to begin a new life with her husband’s former lover in another world. As throughout so much of this lovely film, the intentions of the characters, even their intimate feelings, remain secret and are kept in silence. Individuals behave in ways that cannot always be known, only witnessed in their actions or what we believe are their actions. Love and sexuality are always an undiscovered territory that cannot be easily explained.  

 

Los Angeles, December 12, 2018

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (December 2018).

 

Tony Kaye | Stand By Your Man / 1996

another can of beer on the shelf

by Douglas Messerli

 

Tony Kaye (director) Stand By Your Man / 1996 [unreleased Guinness ad]

As gay critic Marty Davies makes clear, in 1996 the company of Ogilvy & Mather created an ad for the traditional Irish company of Guinness in the very midst of the HIV/AIDS crisis. As Davies describes it in the 2024 commentary:

 

      “Creatives Jerry Gallaher and Clive Yaxley at Ogilvy & Mather quietly developed their concept for Guinness. Directed by Tony Kaye, stylised in black and white, a messy male stereotype, suited and booted in a rush to leave the house and head to work [presumably after a hard night of drinking]. Their partner is a stay-at-home homemaker who we're led to assume is his wife, rubber gloves up to the elbows, cleaning up after him as Tammy Wynette's Stand By Your Man accompanies the montage. The last seconds of the ad reveal his male partner as there's a kiss to the cheek. The ad closes out with the tagline: 'Not everything in black and white makes sense.'"

     The executive of Guinness beer, Sir Anthony Greener, realized that it was far too ahead of its time, wondering, "What have you done to my brand?" The company was fired, and the ad was put back in the can and never apparently presented to the public. But still it exists today, in a wonderful DVD version, a memory of what might have been, and a truly important reminder that there were others which attempted of offer something that didn’t fit into our visions of that awfully ugly period of LGBTQ history.

      Davies observes that “The brand hadn't been brave enough to face down the backlash and run the ad. So it sat on the shelf.”

     If the alcoholic beverage couldn’t stand by their men who drank it—and I did many an afternoon and night at the local Los Angeles pub Bergin’s—time has demonstrated that there were some advertising executives and directors such as Kaye to “stand by their men,” even if they themselves were not gay.

 

Los Angeles, February 16, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (February 2025).

Harry Lighton | Wren Boys / 2017, general release 2018

now and then

by Douglas Messerli

 

John Fitzpatrick and Harry Lighton (screenplay), Harry Lighton (director) Wren Boys / 2017, general release 2018 [11 minutes]

 

Having just watched Irish director Harry Lighton’s 11-minute film, I feel, as a gay man, that I have just been punched in the gut—or even worse hit with a steal bar over the head, as happens to the sympathetic Catholic priest, Seamus (Diarmuid Noyes) at the end of this startlingly revealing film about gay hate crimes.

  Although rather early on in this film you quickly perceive—despite the sometimes almost impenetrable Cork dialect for Americans—that this heavily smoking, perhaps a bit of a heaving-drinking priest—accompanying his young nephew, Conor (Lalor Roddy) who is gay, his mother described as sending everyone in the neighborhood a gift without so much as a card to her own son. It is the day after Christmas, boxing day, and Conor clearly feels boxed in.

     We don’t yet know to where they are traveling, but his priest uncle has just told his flock that, while in his own childhood boys and girls were dressed up each year to kill a small wren as a symbolic transformation into new possibilities, that it was a truly brutal act. In current days, the wren has become a kind of puppet as opposed to the real bird, yet the tradition continues with all of its dark undertones of killing the innocent in order to sustain the society at large.

      Despite the fact the Conor himself smokes, he somewhat agitatedly asks his passenger whether he intends to smoke the entire way.

      Lighton casts their voyage in this short cinematic work as a kind of mystery in several ways. Is the somewhat grizzly uncle also gay? And to where are they traveling, perhaps a secret meeting place? These are careful clues that suggest that something is already amiss, particularly since the priest is nearly constantly straightening up the collar of his holy order, suggesting that he is not only uncomfortable with it, but perhaps being chocked by his pastoral demands.

     We are even more startled, soon after, to discover that the goal of this travels is a regional prison, where they are forced to sit in a waiting room wherein the others, people waiting to see their own incarcerated family and friends, keep snapping pictures on their cellphones of Conor, who evidently has now received some infamous fame among the locals.

     His final nearly violent outburst gives us some clue of what he and his lover, the prisoner, Malky (Fionn Walton) have had to face from Cork society. It is post 2015, when the Irish (not a court or high command as in most other countries) freely voted to allow gays to get married. Although it took a few more battles, the prison systems allowed the same rights to their internees.

     Accordingly, it comes as kind of shock when we realize that the priest has accompanied his nephew to the prison to marry the two, Malky having been imprisoned only because, like Conor, he has become argumentative being about those many individuals who have not shared the views of the general Irish public. Change, this movie carefully says, without any heavy statements, is slow to come.

     The most beautiful scene of the film is when the two lovers are finally able to meet together for the marriage, and by the guards are begrudgingly allowed to share a number of deeply felt kisses.

     The marriage vows are performed, and the viewer can simply hope that Malky will soon be released, the couple living out their lives in the bliss of their love.

     Yet the moment Conor and Seamus leave the prison walls, Malky is attacked by other prisoners who write—we don’t quite know by what method—“Just Married” across his butt.

     It reminds me of the terrible memory expressed by a young man in the movie Kinsey, where a he describes his family members literally branding him and his friend for his gay sexuality.

     Hearing the ruckus on his cellphone, Conor turns back to the prison in an attempt to save his husband from further imprisonment, while Seamus begins to move forward to a local bar they have agreed to visit for a pint of Guinness. It is a tragic move forward, as he is struck with that metal bar by an angry bigot and, apparently, is killed, the movie ending with the priest bleeding with blood flowing from his head on the street. Only a flutter of his eyes makes us hope that he might survive.

     I have often described that Howard’s and my life has been without any obvious sexual prejudice, that we were greeted into the artistic communities in the urban areas in which we lived with open minds. And I still believe that to be true.

     Yet, only a couple of years ago when I visited a friend, a major choral musical conductor, he slightly bemoaned the fact that he took me, a young but precocious 18-year-old, to a faculty party. I didn’t even remember the fact; I had been already used to working with elderly faculty members through my jobs in the university Registration and Admissions offices. But suddenly I wondered, had he lost tenure or simply been fired for his actions? He’d gone on to become the conductor of now that he had just retired from his position as the conductor of a major US vocal organizations. What had he meant by recalling up this fact from more than 52 years earlier? Guilt for me (I felt none) or for his own career?

     Even more recently, without intention, I temporarily “outed” a rather well-known actor on Facebook, who declared that he was glad he hadn’t known me earlier or I might have ruined his career. To me, the idea was unconceivable. So many actors were gay or lesbian, and, strangely enough, we had never even discussed the issue; I just presumed the truth. And surely most of his colleagues must have known that as well. In the old days it was what the LGBT community described as “an open secret.”

     I knew as a child back in Iowa, that when the evil Louella Parsons scolded a certain A-list actor for frequenting the Sunset Boulevard pick-up spots, I knew she must have meant Rock Hudson. And George Chakiris had been picked up for gay solicitation. Tab Hunter and other gay boys had been seen cruising down the avenues by many local observers (my friend Paul Vangelisti among them). And our Washington, D.C. friend Bob Orr had had a sexual relationship with Tony Perkins. Cary Grant was now an elderly member in this fraternity. So, what was the issue?

     Charles Bernstein once described me as having “outed” the poet John Ashbery. But I had no intention of “outing” him; I thought everyone must have known, and when a poet calls you for the telephone number of a gay friend, how can you imagine anything else?

     I presume because of Howard’s and my so open acceptance of ourselves, that I just couldn’t imagine the fears of those that came before us, fears not only for what happens in Lighton’s film, but for how they would be perceived in terms of their careers. They’d had to face down hate, like the characters of this contemporary film, day after day. Howard and I had become so open that perhaps we might have conceived of as “straight.”

     We had basically shrugged an unseen prejudice off—even when, after telling my parents about our relationship, they got back into the car and immediately drove off back from Washington, D.C. to Iowa. They fled us in utter fear, I felt, clearly from their own bigotry.

     From one quick generation to another, the major changes in our society do not so quickly shift as we’d like to believe. A simple decade can mean acceptance, or in Lighton’s film, in rejection and even death. Gays, lesbians, and certainly transgender folk still today suffer hate and often even death from their sexual orientations. If Howard and I have been basically blessed, or sometimes perhaps just oblivious to the hate surrounding us, so many other young men and women have been faced with familial rejection and forced to encounter a cold world that isn’t, despite these more open times, so very accepting.

      Wren Boys painfully reminded me of this and made me realize that for those of just a few years older than Howard and I were, how difficult it was to simply negotiate one’s life. And today it still remains a difficult negotiation around the world.

 

Los Angeles, January 3, 2020

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (January 2020).

 

Faraz Arif Ansari | Sisak (Silent Love) / 2017

love unsaid

by Douglas Messerli

 

Faraz Arif Ansari (writer and director) Sisak (Silent Love) / 2017 [20 minutes]

 

Billed as India’s first silent gay film, Sisak (Silent Love) is a work in which two gay men, one an apparent business man or teacher who apparently is married (Jitin Gulati) and a younger man just beyond boyhood (Dhruv Singhal), encounter one another on the Mumbai subway and over several days fall in deeply in love—without touching or even speaking to one another. Contrary to nearly every gay film I review in these pages, director Faraz Arif Ansari’s characters represent gay love while fully dressed and without their sexual arousal resulting in the need to pull off their clothes and jump into bed. Yet, as viewers, we feel their intense encounters so deeply that we long for them to simply brush up against one another, put a hand upon a shoulder, or simply lift up their fingers intensely pressed into the metal stanchions and straps of the nearly always moving space they cohabit to simply press flesh upon flesh. 

      In the very last scene, where Jintin’s character rises and moves behind where Dhruv is seated, moving his hand to the bar just behind the younger boy’s back, we are almost certain his arm will slip into the space behind where Dhruv sits in intense anticipation. And when Dhruv also stands, the two of them coming face to face, we watch with almost bated breath for Dhruv to move his feet a few inches closer, for Jintin’s hand to slide down the metal pole upon which they share their balance to satisfy the desire so welled up between them. Their books and briefcases are left behind on the seats as if, in fact, they have shed their clothing.

     We also perceive that their strange standoff represents something so close to a sexual orgasm we can almost imagine their bodies quavering with the explosion of relief. And the final long scene in which, walking down both sides of the subway, they encounter full-length views of one another through the open, about-to-be shuttered car doors, the film comes so close to the cliché of lovers running alongside departing trains to express the intensity of their soon-to-be lost love, that we almost perversely imagine these gay lovers might suddenly both pull themselves back into the tram cars to speed off together into a life of the “happy ever-after.” Yet neither of them boards the car, and although they may, in fact, encounter one another on the train again, we are certain that their “brief encounter” is now over, that for proprieties’ sake, if nothing else, they will pull back into their ordinariness ogling each other with only fond regrets.

       Previously, we have seen them share not only their intense daily glances, but tears, frowns, smiles, and even the present book Jitin’s character leaves behind (a fiction by the Japanese writer Haruki Murakami, if my agèd eyes read it right) for Dhruv to read. Why use words when they have so successfully expressed their emotions without anything else needed to be said?

        And then, if you were an Indian LGBTQ man or woman in 2017, the year of the film, you might come to this work with a much fuller sense of the film’s political ramifications that viewers from other cultures might. As Ansari has remarked in a conversation with Varsha Roysam:

 

“’My film is a political statement.’ Sisak, with its furtive glances and timid gestures, hair-raising music, and the chugging of the Mumbai local, silently retaliates against section 377 of IPC. It was December 11, 2013. Faraz Arif Ansari sat in a quaint café nestled in Nainital, on what seemed like an uneventful day. The news was turned up, competing with conversing voices, and what Ansari heard left him hollow. The Supreme Court had recriminalized homosexuality, upholding the infamous section 377 of the Indian Penal Code. ‘What do I do?’ was the thought that ran through the mind of this devastated 30-year-old filmmaker whose sexual orientation was now punishable. With an overwhelming urge to do something, anything, he did what a filmmaker does best—weave a story.”

     Ransacking his meager savings, using the famed overcrowded Mumbai subway illegally, and with some financial backing from the actress Sonam Kapoor, Ansari, his cast, and co-workers “ran the rails,” so to speak, playing urban hoboes for art’s sake.

     “My actors would change behind dupattas in the corners of the train,’ he recalls. ‘And we didn’t have the money to get the permission to shoot on the train, which costs Rs 6.5 lakhs for three hours!’ So, Ansari and team filmed guerrilla style, sneaking their way through the platforms while pretending to be exorbitant tourists. ‘It was absolute madness’....”

     The real madness, however, was the reinstatement of the Indian Penal Code 377, which read: “Unnatural offences: Whoever voluntarily has carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal, shall be punished with imprisonment for life, or with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to ten years, and shall also be liable to fine.”

     Fortunately, it was finally ruled unconstitutional in 2018. But the year before, when Sisak was released, the code was still in place. This small gem of a film’s final moments were later devoted to a dedicatory cry in the wilderness:

 

“After 71 years of Independence, the Supreme Court of India decriminalized homosexuality on 6th September, 2018. Homosexuality in India continues to remain a taboo. Many love stories fail to find a voice. Sisak is a dedication of to all the silent, unsaid love stories.”

 

Los Angeles, November 28, 2020

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog and World Cinema Review (November 2020).

Riccardo Angelucci | The Last Party / 2017

choosing the straight boy

by Douglas Messerli

 

Riccardo Angelucci and Sophia Ohler (screenplay), Riccardo Angelucci (director) The Last Party / 2017 [20 minutes]

 

In the tradition of Pier Paolo Pasolini, Peter de Rome, and Derek Jarman, British director Riccardo Angelucci tells a wonderfully profane version of Christ’s (Victor Støle) last supper, in this case described as his birthday party for which, after a nightmarish dream of being sucked off under the table, Jesus may be late if he doesn’t quickly submit to Jaime’s (Tom Haise) complete “makeover.” Jesus is hardly in the mood given that his daddy has just texted him an odd message: “See you tomorrow at home.”

     Meanwhile, Judas (Adrian Quinton) accosts Jesus in his bathroom because he believes he hasn’t been invited to the party, and then steals Christ’s phone, finding all sorts of cute boys’ pictures on it. Juan (Junacho Gonzalez) shows up without the cake.

     But Jaime gets the party started, finally, as the disciples enter one by one, as if strutting down a fashion runway before the terribly conflicted and frightened Jesus, who now realizes that it’s his last day on earth. In a garden meeting with Judas, he pleads with him to just get it over with, but Judas insists he’ll have to wait.

     After dinner, Christ stands, admitting that he hasn’t told everyone the full truth and seems about to reveal it, when he backs out again and simply welcomes them all. But Jaime knows something is up. Hasn’t Christ always told him everything?

     As the disciples began to dance, Christ spots Matt (Stephen Walker) standing near the wall and, focusing on his handsome face, begins to move toward him; when they finally reach one another, Jesus admits what he’s been holding back: “I love you.”

     “I love you too man.”

     No, Christ continues, obviously meaning something else by those words: “I’m gay.”

   Suddenly, the music stops and all eyes turn upon Jesus as, what might appear to us as the most obvious gathering of gay men one could possibly imagine, seemingly register shock. Matt can’t accept it at all and runs off from the party, the others running over to Jesus to offer their support: “It doesn’t matter.” Jaime insists, “I will always have your back.”

     Even that rather hilarious moment is quickly replaced by another, as the desolate Christ rises and begins to move away. “Where are going?” they ask if fear. “To the toilet,” he responds.

     More perversely, Jaime wonders, “Do you want me to join you?”

     “No,” responds Christ, “I need some time alone.”

     Sitting outside the banquet hall, Christ looks quite dejected. Inside they bring in the birthday cake (which Jaime has specially ordered), while Maddy (Roxanne Douro) sings a song. Suddenly Jesus goes running off down the street only to meet up with two street denizens who recognize and demean him for being a “homosexual.” They beat him severely, Judas coming along at the very moment to stop them.

      Bending down to his dying friend, Judas claims he had nothing to do with this. He was mad at Christ since he loved him so strongly but was not equally loved back. But he would never have done such a thing. Christ puts his had to Judas’ cheek and dies, Judas taking out his gun and shooting himself in the head.

       In the next frame Jesus wakes up in heaven with his father, God (Tony Parkin) who looks like an elderly Miami-beach resident in a white suit. Jesus admits he was afraid he’d never be allowed to come home again, but God assures him that he loves his son. Being gay is nothing to be ashamed of. The only thing he should be ashamed is going around dressed as he is, looking like some kind of hermit. He calls in the near-naked Cupid (Damien Killeen) to help him find a better outfit.

      Quite attracted to the angelic kid, Christ already imagines a life of love with the boy, but his father interrupts his dreams by telling him that he’s going back down. Down? How far, Jesus inquires.

      Just back to earth to teach everyone else about how to love, intones his Heavenly Father. “Will Cupid go with me?

      “Definitely——not,” declares God.

      To be surrounded by all those cute gay boys and yet to pick out the only straight one is what happens all too often to gay boys like Christ their first time out. Maybe he’ll get it right the second time around.

 

Los Angeles, July 28, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (July 2023).

Karl Eccleston and Brian Fairbairn | Putting on the Dish / 2015

speaking freely

by Douglas Messerli

 

Karl Eccleston and Brian Fairbairn (screenwriters and directors) Putting on the Dish / 2015 [7 minutes]

Polari, or alternate versions of that word, “Parlare, Parlary, Palare, Palarie, and Palari,” was a cant slang used by those who worked in the “underground” of British and Irish culture that can traced by to the 16th century and was used extensively throughout the 19th century by circus performers, professional wrestlers, merchant navy sailors, criminals, and sex workers. It was even appropriated by street puppet performers connecting it with the Punch and Judy puppet tradition.

     Polari’s linguistic roots come from the Romani, the gypsy culture, mixed with London slang that embedded backslang, rhyming words, sailor phrases, and thieves’ argot, later expanding to include words from Yiddish, quickly transforming itself from a rather small lexicon of about twenty or so words, to develop a much larger vocabulary by embracing mainstream British English words spoken backwards, rhymed or twisted inside out such as cod for “bad” and riah for “hair,” or by using associative words such as lattie for “room, house, flat or a ‘room to let’” or nanti for “not” or “no,” etc.

     When in the 20th century it was picked up by homosexuals to protect themselves from police surveillance, it extended its vocabulary to include numerous gay terms—some of which have been assimilated back into normative language and even embraced by US speakers—such as “camp,” “mince,” “butch,” “fruit,” “chicken,” and “cottaging.”

     Since homosexuality was illegal in Britain until 1967 it became a necessary tool to communicate in public without most individuals being able to comprehend what was being said or “dished.”  In nearly all cases it was a way to avoid the ears and eyes of the sharpy, charpering omis or Lilly law”—the police. But just as often it clearly allowed gay men to quickly recognize one another in an otherwise hostile environment.

     When homosexuality was legalized in 1967, most gay men dropped Polari and by 1980 the argot had basically disappeared except as a remnant of the past. Like US men abandoning their gay camp chatter (in which men often referred to one another with female monikers and spent long evenings attempting to be witty in an Oscar Wilde-like manner), British gay men saw Polari as a now unnecessary affectation that delimited their acceptance into the society and equality to their heterosexual counterparts.

     To many gays the kind of language journalist Peter Burton evoked in his memoirs Parallel Lives—

 

As feely ommes...we would zhoosh our riah, powder our eeks, climb into our bona new drag, don our batts and troll off to some bona bijou bar. In the bar we would stand around with our sisters, vada the bona cartes on the butch omme ajax who, if we fluttered our ogle riahs at him sweetly, might just troll over to offer a light for the unlit vogue clenched between our teeth.

 

translation: "As young men...we would style our hair, powder our faces, climb into our great new clothes, don our shoes and wander/walk off to some great little bar. In the bar we would stand around with our gay companions, look at the great genitals on the butch man nearby who, if we fluttered our eyelashes at him sweetly, might just wander/walk over to offer a light for the unlit cigarette clenched between our teeth."—

 

represented something they were only too glad to be rid of.

     Yet for a few today there is a kind of charm, an aura of the past, and a great deal of fantabulosa (“wonderment”) of a language now nearly lost.

     Between 1965 and 1969 Kenneth Horne hosted the popular BBC Radio program that featured Kenneth Williams, Hugh Paddick, and Betty Marsden, with scripts by Marty Feldman and Barry Took that used numerous elements of wordplay, including Polari and other campy verbal gymnastics. 

     In 1990, moreover, musician Morrissey released his album Bona Drag with songs in Polari and his hit single “Picadilly Palare,” whose lyrics included the Polari phrase So bona to vada, with your lovely eek and your lovely riah.

     In 1998 Todd Haynes used Polari in his 1998 film Velvet Goldmine in a flashback to 1970 in which a group of characters converse in Polari, their words being subtitled.

     If nothing else, Polari is important to archivists as a treasure of British and even World War II military gay life (in the 1994 documentary Coming Out Under Fire one soldier speaks of using rhyming words and phrases by Dorothy Parker in a gay underground military newspaper originally titled The Myrtle Beach Bitch).    

     In 2015 writers and directors Karl Eccleston and Brian Fairbain released their 7-minute short, which seems more like an hour long given its linguistic demands, in which two men are seated on a bench, bearing the camp names of Roberta (Neil Chinneck) and Maureen (Steve Wickenden), Roberta reading from Anthony Burgess’ The Clockwork Orange, published in the same year, 1962, in which their encounter is set. Maureen who has already read the book shows his disdain for it, at the end of their encounter giving away the entire plot with his quite nasty final words: “They cure him in the end.”

     But in between these two rather everyday occurrences lies a whole world of mysterious events for the outsider since the two, recognizing one another as gay (Roberta responding early on, “I've got your number ducky.”) set out on a gossipy adventure in Polari as they describe the life of a mutual friend Pauline Marsh (perhaps in everyday life named Paul Marsh since camp names were often feminine versions of their original male ones).

     Because this film depends almost entirely upon the language instead of any action other than their occasional ogling of passersby and Roberta’s final expression of his anger, I think it is necessary to provide the viewer with the entire script. I should tell you that I first attempted to capture what I orally heard by toggling back and forth between the movie and the empty computer page, but it was nearly impossible, given the actor’s Barnet North London accents and my own lack of acquaintance, except for a handful of quickly-acquired words, of Polari. Fortunately, I eventually found the entire script printed out on the internet. I feel it necessary, if for no other reason, to catalogue a language and film which my soon disappear from memory, to quote the entire script.

 

putting on the dish

 

MAUREEN

I've read that.

It's all gobbledygook. Ending's naff too.

Got three drags and a spit, doll?

 

You from round here then?

 

ROBERTA

More or less.

 

MAUREEN

Eine's the place to be. (A beat) Ooh bona batts. What size are your plates then?

 

ROBERTA

Ten I think.

 

MAUREEN

(cheeky)

What about your luppers? They size ten too?

 

ROBERTA snorts.

 

MAUREEN

Bet you'd play the strillers real bona.

 

ROBERTA

This your usual spot then?

 

MAUREEN

How do you mean?

 

ROBERTA

I've got your number ducky.

 

MAUREEN

Where's your flowery then?

 

ROBERTA

Clitterhouse Road.

 

MAUREEN

Oh I've a bencove up that way. Pauline.

 

ROBERTA

Pauline Marsh?

 

MAUREEN

That's the one. Can't swing a cat but hit a cove.

 

ROBERTA

How is Pauline?

 

MAUREEN

She's had nanti bully fake. Dyed her riah, her ends are a real mess.

 

ROBERTA

Nanti bona. I hope she vaggeried straight to the crimper.

 

MAUREEN

Well that's where she'd just been. The palone tried to give her an Irish. Moultee palaver. Pauline told her to shove her shyckle up her khyber.

 

ROBERTA

Oh she didn't say that.

 

MAUREEN

Mais oui ducky, oui. In your actual English.

 

ROBERTA

She's all wind and piss Pauline. Is she still with Phyllis then?

 

MAUREEN

Oh no. Haven't you heard?

(slides over)

She's been a real bonaroba. Blowing the groundsels, ling grappling dilly boys, trolling the backslums. She had to be Battersea'd twice last month.

 

ROBERTA (shocked)

She didn't.

 

MAUREEN

Pauline's a stretcher case. Trolled in one nochy to varda Phyllis plating some schinwars she'd blagged in the brandy latch.

 

ROBERTA

(deadpan)

Dish the dirt!

 

MAUREEN

Oh it's all over grumble for Pauline. Nanti dinarlee, up to her elbow in the national handbag and she'd only just gone in for a remould. They had to refake her entire basket.

 

ROBERTA

(distracted)

Speaking of baskets.

 

MAUREEN

Oh Gloria. That'd stretch your corybungus.

 

ROBERTA

Fortuni.

 

MAUREEN

Mind you it's the dolly ones that disappoint.

 

ROBERTA

Mmm.

 

MAUREEN

I was seeing this HP from Sheffield once. Plates the size of bowling pins, I thought I was in for a real bona charvering.

 

ROBERTA

Nada to varda in the larder?

 

MAUREEN

Oh, bijou. 'You needn't put the brandy on for that,' I said when I saw it. Mind you, she was heavy on the letch water. I had to use the Daz to get her Maria out my libbage.

 

ROBERTA

Oh, vile.

(beat)

What about her? Do you think she's so?

 

MAUREEN

What, her? Oh she's in the life.

 

ROBERTA

You think so?

 

MAUREEN

Ooh yeah. Just vada her mish. Mauve. Moultee mauve. Not to mention her farting crackers.

 

ROBERTA

I'd clean his kitchen, I would. Has she always been that way then, Phyllis?

 

MAUREEN

She's a walking meat rack. Real fantabulosa bit of hard. We used to act dicky together at the croaker's chovey. Noshed me off once while I was giving a fungus his drabs.

 

ROBERTA

That's skill, that.

 

MAUREEN

Oh she used to do it all the time. When we were at the exchange together she'd one lill on my colin and the other on the switch. She didn't even get off the palare pipe.

(Beat)

Sad to think of her in the queer ken really.

 

ROBERTA

What do you mean?

 

MAUREEN

Well she'd a run in with the lily law, didn't she?

 

ROBERTA

Oh dear.

 

MAUREEN

Sharpie flashed his cartso in the carsey.

 

ROBERTA

(Finding it increasingly amusing)

I hope she kept her ogles front.

 

MAUREEN

Well she's got amblyopia, hasn't she? She can practically only vada sideways.

 

ROBERTA

What did the beak say?

 

MAUREEN

He was ever so harsh. Asked if she was sorry.

 

ROBERTA

Was she?

 

MAUREEN

Only that it wasn't worth the look she got.

I suppose we'll all end up in the charpering carsey soon.

Nearly got nabbed myself the other week. I'd just finished plating a chicken in that cottage ajax Clackett Lane, you know the one. Meesest eek I've ever seen but what a cartso. I'm mincing outside wiping my screech when who do I bump into but one of your orderly daughters. "There's a pouf" in there I said. Nabbed her with her kaffies down I spose. She'd have never vardered it coming. Must have been a right fericadooza. Sharda.

 

ROBERTA

You're disgusting.

 

MAUREEN

What?

Oh go on. Put your fakements in your little shush bag. Off you scarper.

 

ROBERTA leaves.

 

MAUREEN

(holding up his book)

You forgot your glossy.

 

ROBERTA stops, turns, looks. After a beat he storms back. He snatches his book but MAUREEN holds on to it. Their eyes are locked.

 

MAUREEN

They cure him in the end. [Roberta spits on Maureen’s face.]

 

    Even with just a few words of the private gay argot one can perceive, after Maureen breaks the ice by asking for a cigarette and light, that the two men’s conversation concerns their mutual acquaintance who has evidently dyed her hair badly and been told by a hairdresser to wear a wig. Pauline had evidently broken up with his lover Phyllis, has been trolling for boys in the slums and gotten arrested, causing the end of the relationship.

 

   After a brief conversation about the size of the penis of a passing boy and Maureen’s belief that it’s the pretty ones who disappoint, he recounts a past encounter with an effeminate man from Sheffield with feet the size of bowling pins—suggesting he might also have a large penis—with which he was highly disappointed (Oh, bijou. 'You needn't put the brandy on for that,' I said when I saw it.), it being so small (bijou).

   When they return to their discussion of Pauline having landed up in prison, he suggests they all might get caught one day and describes how after having fellated a young man (a chicken, often suggesting someone underage) with a most gentle face but with a large penis (Meesest eek I've ever seen but what a cartso.) in a public toilet, the police suddenly showed up as he was wiping off his mouth. He escaped them, so he recounts, by telling them there was a poof inside, running off as the cops entered the cottage to arrest the boy who had not yet rolled up his pants.

     It is this revelation that so angers Roberta, who calls Maureen disgusting, rises, and leaves, returning only for his book (in which the gangs speak their own version of argot), before expectorating on his former Polari conversationalist.

     The title of this film, Putting on the Dish, means in Polari the act of applying lubricant to one’s bum, but here the lubricant is also the substance that allows their words to easily flow from their lips, in this case a language that frees them from outsider friction. But in this case the dominant talker has perhaps spoken too freely, demonstrating that he has little concern for those who share his plight.

 

Los Angeles, February 1, 2021

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog and World Cinema Review (February 2021).