Gabriel Dorado | De Vuelta (Back Again) / 2015

where the heart is no longer at home

by Douglas Messerli

 

Miguel Casanova and Gabriel Dorado (screenplay), Gabriel Dorado (director) De Vuelta (Back Again) / 2015 [13 minutes]

 

Back Again begins quite interestingly, with the return of a young man, Alex (Carlos Cuevas), to his small hometown in Spain after some time away. He’s greeted by his old friend, and apparently former gay lover, Jordi (Aleix Melé) on his motorbike.

     Alex suggests it looks like it’s going to rain, but Jordi insists since it’s the night of festival of San Juan—the Spanish June 24th celebration of the summer solstice, usually accompanied by fireworks and bonfires—that it wouldn’t dare rain.

   Nonetheless, there is a downpour, and the two boys are forced to make a run for it through the nearby woods to an old abandoned house, as we learn soon after, that they often visited in their younger days. Somewhat inexplicably Jordi argues he doesn’t want to go there, and we wonder is the house haunted. We discover, in another way that indeed it is.

      They are forced to take shelter there nonetheless. But we sense a deep tension between them. It appears that Alex might have even returned with the intention of reviving his childhood relationship with Jordi, but now there is something missing.

      A telephone call to Jordi, in which he explains where he is and who he’s with, ends with him assuring the caller he’s okay and everything is fine. Already Alex is set on edge.

      But when the caller rings again, and Jordi is forced to reassure the person again, ending the call with saying “I love you,” we know the cause of the tension.

      Alex immediately wants to know about the new lover: “Do I know him?”

      But Jordi responds, that yes, he knows her, Marta, evidently a mutual friend from the past. Suddenly Alex begins to sulk, and Jordi is angry with his reaction, attempting to explain that although they fooled around as kids, things have changed. It’s natural that they would, he reassures Alex. It’s normal.

     The two wrestle in mock battle, ending up in laughter and a return to their former rapport.   

     Soon after the rain lets up and they run through the woods with large sparklers in hand, the two witnessing the fireworks from a few miles in the distance. They have clearly settled into being just friends. When Alex asks has Jordi if he ever imagined leaving his town, he replies “To another place? Any place is a good place, if you’re happy,” and the two smile, suggesting that they indeed have found happiness again.

     Yet, Néstor Romero Clemente’s beautiful musical score accompanying this short work tells us something quite different, that there is still a deep emptiness between them that can’t be resolved in the simple “there’s no place like home”-platitudes that the script suggests in its argument for heteronormative resolution as opposed to their childhood sexual explorations, with which clearly Alex would have liked to continue.

      If Jordi has found true happiness in his isolated Spanish village, it appears that Alex will soon be on the road again. We don’t know, in fact, whether he has come “back again” simply for a visit or intended on a more permanent stay. But if Spanish director Gabriel Dorado is suggesting the latter, I’d bet against it. Alex has no longer any major role in his friend’s life and we all know how difficult it is to go home again, particularly if you’ve haven’t outgrown your childhood fascination with same-sex experiments. If nothing else, one can be sure that if Alex were to remain and try to retain a friendship with Jordi, Marta would be constantly checking up and keeping the two apart as much as possible. The tension remains in this film between what the writers and director are appearing so suggest is resolved when narratively it is not.

 

Los Angeles, February 11, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (February 2023).

Douglas Messerli | The Ones Who Are Left Behind / 2025 [Introduction]

the ones who are left behind

by Douglas Messerli

 

There are many such tales in these volumes as the two I include here, Bonzo Villegas and Carlos Vilaró Nadal’s En el mismo Equipo (On the Same Team) (2014) and Fabíen Cavacas and Camille Melvill’s Passer les Champs (Beyond the Fields) (2015), wherein brothers must leave behind their beloved other brother, sisters, their best friends, and local gay lovers in order to truly find and define themselves.

    In most cases it is simply a necessity; the only way for these young men to realize their potential and to come into their own identity is by leaving their siblings and even loving friends behind. That doesn’t mean that some such as the character in Miguel Lafuente’s My Brother (2015) who has left his 15-year-old brother in the hands of his abusive parents, who when they discover he is gay basically torture him into suicide don’t suffer for their decision. In many other cases, it results in terrorizing returns home for visits and exploring their pasts and former lovers such as the character in Lie with Me (2022). If you can’t go home again, many gay men and women try, often with disastrous, or at least painful results as in Back Again (2015), or even the Syd Stone series which I discuss in this same volume. One of the best examples of this is when a young gay man returns to apologize for his behavior to a young gay boy he bullied in high school, The Only Gay on the Estate? (2011).

     And those left behind as in the both the films I mention above also suffer for their loss. In so very many gay films there is the youthful lover who knows he cannot leave the provincial world in which he grew up, but nonetheless encourages his more gregarious friend to plunge into the society at large. One might almost suggest there is an entire sub-genre devoted to this subject in films such as Davy and Stu (2006), Lie with Me, mentioned above, You Can Play (2015), or Beyond the Fields which I discuss in my following essay.

     I have my own personal experience with just such a situation. When I was a freshman, the captain of the football team, one of the beautiful persons I have ever seen, invited me to let him drive me home. I knew what that meant, and I was almost drooling with the possibilities. But I was also an obedient son and probably far too innocent to truly undergo what I desired, and I fled the car before anything could happen. On my several trips home to see my parents I ran into him again a couple of times, this time as a young gay man, who might have easily invited him for a drink. He was so communicative, engaging, clearly willing to interact. But each time I fearfully spoke only a few words without truly engaging him. I regretted it the rest of my life, particularly after attending my 10th class reunion when I asked his cousin what had ever become of the truly beautiful football captain left in the small town in which I grew up. Oh, you haven’t heard, he quietly leaned in to tell me. “You know, how carefully he liked to take care of his body. Well, as he grew older, and little flabby from liquor, he put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger.”

     I left the party almost immediately after and have never been able to return to another class reunion to face so many of those colleagues of mine who stayed behind. How I regret I’d never shared a bed or just a drink with that beautiful man who I left behind.

 

Los Angeles, March 11, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (March 2025).

Fabíen Cavacas and Camille Melvill | Passer les Champs (Beyond the Fields) / 2015

howling with closed mouths

by Douglas Messerli

 

Fabíen Cavacas and Camille Melvill (screenwriters and directors) Passer les Champs (Beyond the Fields) / 2015 [30 minutes]

 

After writing the essay about the film On the Same Team (2014) I came upon another film just a few days later by French directors Fabíen Cavacas and Camille Melvill that was so similar in its thematic—particularly since that film, Passer les Champs (Beyond the Fields), also related to the consideration of gay brothers and gay sports that I had also just been exploring—that I was almost startled by its relationship to the piece I had just titled “Beyond the Hills.”

     This work also contained a young man involved in amateur sports, in this case soccer, who had stayed at home apparently out of a sense of stasis. He seems unmotivated even to pursue the job his parents have hinted that a friend is willing to offer him, refusing to even make the call. Indeed, except for his younger brother Théo (Pierre Prieur), Lucas (Maxime Taffanel) seems to shun women and have surly relationships with his parents and his soccer friends, the latter for whom he may soon serve as their coach.

      Like Emanuel of the other film, Lucas seems trapped in the community in which he lives, and bitter about that fact. But at least the Argentinian rugby player in On the Same Team has a local friend with whom he engages in sex. Lucas, who appears to be heterosexual has no apparent girlfriend and even his seeming soccer buddy Nathan (Théo Pittaluga) irritates him, particularly when he shows interest in befriending Théo.

      We perceive this not as a form of jealousy, but a fear of sorts that his brother may be hurt through their friendship, since Théo is openly gay—only to his brother. And Lucas evidently has assumed the role of his protector, despite the fact that in the small farming village in which they reside there seems to be no one to protect him from. As Théo confirms, there are no “faggots” in his class, which explains why he has been chatting online with an older man, who he wants to meet when the man comes to town on business, a meet-up which Lucas warns him may be dangerous.

      Thus, it appears that Cavacas and Melvill have set us up for a situation very similar to the one I wrote about in the Norwegian film of 2003, Precious Moments, about a young gay man whose having sex with an older man ends in his partner’s arrest—although the sexual age of consent in France is 15, and even if Théo, since he’s still attending school, is clearly not the age he claims to be when he meets the stranger, 20, he is certainly of legal age.

      But before that, this far too subtle tale—almost as if afraid, like its characters, to tell its own story—seemingly first takes us down a kind of dead end, which perhaps clarifies both Théo’s and Lucas’ long silences and apparent frustrations.

      The morning after the brothers’ discussion Théo drops his Lucas off at soccer practice, meeting briefly with Nathan, to whom the boy has loaned a book to read, Allen Ginsberg’s Howl. Nathan, in turn, invites Théo to a team party they are planning for that evening, telling the younger boy that he would particularly like to have him attend.

      It is after that meeting, moreover, when Lucas becomes even more incensed about Nathan and, by the end of the day, decides against even attending the party which his teammates are throwing.

Théo does attend, clearly out of place since most of the players are entertaining their girlfriends, including Nathan. But near the end of the evening, sitting alone, Théo is joined by Nathan, telling his girlfriend that he’ll catch up with her. There is no real conversation between the two, but when Théo asks Nathan if he wants to go somewhere, Nathan stating that he can’t—beholden as he is to her girlfriend of 3 months—we can only presume that something sexual has been going on between the two, something in the nature of Emanuel and Tano in Vilaró Nadal’s film.

      The only alternative for Théo is to meet up with the stranger in the hotel.

     From the moment the boy encounters and we witness the older man on the phone with his wife, we recognize that this is not a good situation, particularly when the elder orders Théo to strip and not “play around” like a kid. We never discover precisely what does happen. The directors only show us a sense of rising tension: Lucas at home in bed—reading, incidentally, Ginsberg’s Howl—obviously worrying about the time and the whereabouts of his brother. And, finally, a call from Théo, who having motorbiked to the hotel, is now asking for Lucas to pick him up.

     What has happened in that room is never explained; but we do observe a cut on Théo’s lip and can only suspect that the boy got cold feet and attempted to leave, infuriating the older man. The boy refuses to say anything about the event. Théo simply asks can they stop somewhere before they return home. There is no other place, we realize, in this village. They stop at the soccer field, where one drunken survivor of the party lies like a dead man in the middle of the open space.

     The brothers, sitting together, stare out over the fields around them, Théo suddenly blurting out a question that might have been in our minds as well: “Why don’t we leave?”

 

      Lucas’ answer is as enigmatic as his personality has been throughout the entire film: “You’ll leave. But I’m staying here.”

      In coming out to his brother and in his obvious search for sexual gratification the younger brother has already made clear that he is no longer able to survive in the emptiness of the small village in which the brothers live. But Lucas, apparently, still unable to define his own sexuality or to even comprehend his entry into adulthood, seems permanently infantilized like so many young males who settle down with the first woman they meet and hang on by a thread through the rest of their lives without waking up to who they are or might have been. Like Emanuel’s sister, Lucas will be defined by staying behind.

 

Los Angeles, June 27, 2021

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

     

  

Alain Guiraudie | Du soleil pour les gueux (Sunshine for the Scoundrels) / aka Sunshine for the Poor) / 2001

off the track

by Douglas Messerli

 

Alain Guiraudie (screenwriter and director) Du soleil pour les gueux (Sunshine for the Scoundrels / aka Sunshine for the Poor) / 2001 [55 minutes]

 

As opposed to the multiple characters of Guiraudie’s That Old Dream that Moves of the same year, Sunshine for the Scoundrels has only four characters, although numerous others are mentioned. And the work, with it Beckettian-like tropes, might almost be perfect for stage were it not that the central action occurs on the vast open spaces of France’s Causses plateau.

     Yet there this is most definitely the territory of what used to be described as the theater of the absurd. None of these characters remain in stasis for more than a few moments, and all are seeking something almost unachievable or, if nothing else, something that cannot truly satisfy their true desires. In fact, there is something incredibly sad about each of Guiraudie’s figures in this work despite the fact that the work is basically a comedy or perhaps even a farce. Each of them is provided with a first and last name which is generally how they speak of and address one another as if no one in this world can truly come to know anyone else by their first name only.

    Nathalie Sanchez (Isabelle Giradet) has been a hair stylist back home, but has grown fed up with the daily routine and low wages, and since she has long been told by her mother that as punishment she will send her to the Central Massif, Nathalie determines finally, after she is able to get up enough nerve, to travel there and visit the famous Ounaye shepherds. Walking down a long stony path, she suddenly comes across a running figure moving at an odd angle from her straight direction. It is the bandit Carol Izba (Michel Turquin), perhaps the unsung hero of this looney saga, running in an attempt to escape the bounty hunter Pool Oxanosas Daï, sent to bring him back to the local grandee because he has just killed a wealthy female landowner while stealing her money.

      You might describe Carol Izba was the local Robin Hood who steals from the wealthy landowners partially in an attempt to protect the poor, downtrodden shepherds who are forced to work the land for their entire lives, with the own children taken away from them, just as they have been sold into bondage by their own parents. And his maddening bifurcations of the flat plains with Pool Oxanosas Daï hot on his tracks might be said to constitute the most comical elements of this beautiful fable, as well as a sublimated sexual text since it is also clear that the chased and chaser are wed to one another by their beauty, youth, fitness, and their inevitable longing and regret to meet up.

     In fact, later, when Pool Oxanosas Daï almost catches up with his prey, lassoing him without being able to bring him to a full halt, he finally looses the rope and falls, panting and out-of-breath to the ground, his well-built body spread full out, with Carol Izba daring to return and come closer just to check up to see if he is still breathing but also to fill his eyes with the naked-chested handsome male hot on his tail. It is the most homoerotic moment in this film which otherwise is basically heterosexual. And we realize in that moment that the two young men are on the run for more than just their lives, but for their sexual desire and freedom from one another.

  Carol Izba, meanwhile, tells the confused Nathalie Sanchez that if she wants to find an Ounaye shepherd she will have to move off the straight and narrow path and cross the plains at an angle, perhaps the lesson we learn again and again throughout this tale.

      She does so, and almost immediately runs into an old man, evidently a gay shepherd (so Criterion, Mubi, and other sources tell me, something I missed in my viewing of the film, which will amuse all of those who think I simply read queer into these movies). The elderly Djema Gaouda Lon (performed by the director himself) has lost his flock, and now with Nathalie at his side goes in search of them, the two offering along the way varying views of life—the young Nathalie Sanchez predictably arguing against the traditional ways and the acceptance of subjugated oppression, while Djema Gaouda Lon positing there is no way out except death—in a manner of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s The Hawks and Sparrows (1966). In their long discussions we learn of both their pasts and the fact that the lovely sheep they seek are not all very nice, since they often bite and spread a disease which kills the shepherds.

     The conversations between young and old, however, are as always fascinating, the one arguing for change, the other that such altercations of order are impossible and meaningless; it is difficult to know which of them is wiser. But Nathalie Sanchez does ultimately seduce the lonely old shepherd who enjoys the sex, even if the young girl is a bit disappointed—not with the sexual act

but the fact that it will result in nothing further. She, who has already become determined to stay on the Central Massif has no future there. The questions is, where might she go from here?

      The same question haunts Carol Izba, who keeps attempting to escape the Causses to the city of Montpellier. But he cannot escape his homeland any more than can Djema Gaouda Lon, and he keeps rushing back, running in unpredictable directions and angles through the landscape, determined to remain and help the shepherds, just as Pool Oxanosas Daï is determined to capture him and take him to the grandee who surely hang him for his crime.

      In fact, he eventually spots Djema Gaouda Lon’s flock and tells him where they are. But when Nathalie Sanchez and the old shepherd finally reach the sheep (which we never see), she rushes forward to pet them, everyone warning her to stay away since they bite. She is finally found a room for the night, and everyone seems settled down for another day, with perhaps Nathalie Sanchez ending up with the hero Carol Izba in her bed, but whose life will surely be a dizzying pattern of zigzags, both physically and sexually, if she dare trail along after him. The hound will always be after the hare since they are inevitably and one might say naturally attached to one another. But perhaps even that life, after all, is better than being a boring hairdresser without any money left at the end of the month to even take in a movie.

     Sunshine for the Scoundrels is perhaps one of the most joyfully intriguing films I have seen in a long while, and with Guiraudie’s That Old Dream that Moves of the same year demonstrates that director’s genius.

     You might describe these two films as bookends, the one about a gay male entering and utterly disturbing a totally heterosexual space, while in the second a heterosexual female intruding upon a primarily male world, both of whom shake-up and alter the mindsets of those involved.

 

Los Angeles, March 11, 1025

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (March 2025).

Lee Matthews | Chasin' / 2021

taking a leap

by Douglas Messerli

 

Ben Chuah (screenplay), Lee Matthews (director) Chasin' / 2021 [8 minutes]

 

Not much seems to happen in Australian director Lee Matthews short film Chasin’ from 2021. Two men meet up after midnight for sex in a park, one a slightly older individual, a black man named Joseph (Dushan Philips) who fears he might have been stood up by a later arriving younger white boy, Spencer (Jay De Leon). And even when he does arrive, Spencer seems disinterested in even introducing himself, more focused of finishing his cellphone game of Pokemon.

     Yet he does introduce himself and seems amiable enough, and certainly cuter perhaps than the still good-looking Joseph might have expected. Joseph suggests they go into the woods for sex, but Spencer immediately points to what appears to be the park recreation center, entirely closed off with a quite high fence. But Spencer suggests it’s no problem and quickly begins scaling the fence.

       Joseph has a far more difficult time, but eventually makes it over, coming down hard on his leg, however, as he falls into the inside tennis court. Spencer comes to rescue him, joking about his friend’s older age while supporting him as they limp over to a bench.

      Spencer insists he has a special potion to help the pain, and pulls out a bottle of what looks like an orange drink. Joseph is skeptical and defers, but Spencer insists he drinks. He does so only to discover that it’s mostly vodka.

      We see the two soon after their sex, which has apparently been quite fulfilling for both of them. They continue to talk, Spencer suggesting that he’s in a relationship, but with an older person—perhaps even older than Joseph—which he doesn’t particularly want given that all of the experiences he shares are 4th or 5th-time for the person he’s with, while he wants them all to be first time encounters with the world.

      As Spencer takes another phone message, Joseph suggests it’s time for him to go, after 2:00, and besides he’s hungry—particularly after his first experience of jumping a fence for sex. His phone battery seems to be running out, and Spencer, pulling another surprise out of his backpack offers him his own battery charger which he tells him to keep “until the next time,” clearly a statement that comes as somewhat of a surprise to Joseph. 

      Obviously, despite the age differences and amusements they both shared at the expense of the others, something between them has amazingly “clicked.” Spencer even suggests he share a late night dinner. But then, as Joseph looks back toward the exit, there’s still that fence to climb once again.

      This short film, in the end, offers more than it might at first seem, a budding relationship that has occurred somewhat obliquely, some of it offstage, but even what we’ve seen cloaked in the humorous generational differences that both have found in one another. Spencer seems always to be a kind of wild card as Joseph patiently awaits to see what’s dealt, as if he were “chasin’” the constant shifts of mood and expression of this young man. 

 

Los Angeles, October 13, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (October 2022).

 

A. J. Mattioli | Night Disclosure / 2021

playing games

by Douglas Messerli

 

Hamish Downie (screenplay), A. J. Mattioli (director) Night Disclosure / 2021 [13 minutes]

 

Marc (José D. Álvarez) and his boss Tom (Sean Patrick Murtagh) arrive back to the bosses flat late one evening after making a big real estate deal, Tom expressing his great admiration for what Marc has helped to accomplish, yet another sale to a wealthy woman who has been buying up properties for her husband as if she were attempting to control the Monopoly board.

    But I’ll stop with the moment-to-moment account of the plot there. Mattioli’s short film is a frail attempt to discuss issues of gay relationships, monogamy, and the games gays play that seems so stagey and unbelievable that by the time this couple head off to bed you’ve become completely disinterested in their relationship.

     Basically, Marc and Tom, apparently a married couple spend much of their life role-playing, pretending to be real estate brokers, to flirt with the boss, and to reveal breaks in their relationship in order to protect themselves from the possibility of the real events. They’re also into some serious S & M strangulation fucks.

     Downie’s screenplay has Marc beginning to flirt with the blue-and-true boss, who rejects his come-ons. The one thing Tom has promised in his marriage vows, he insists, is to love and cherish the man he married. Despite Marc’s insistence that he and his husband have an open relationship, Tom is not impressed; it’s not for him. That doesn’t stop Marc from behaving like the worm in Eve’s apple, boring into the possibility that despite Tom’s loyalty perhaps his lover has not maintained the same sense of integrity.

     When Tom insists on his trust of his companion, Marc shows him pictures of himself and his lover together, finally revealing that they have been having an affair for years. Devastated, Tom dives in for a brutal fucking and choking of Marc before the two finally trot upstairs where we realize they are married to one another as they get into bed and have a good bout of “normal” sex.

      Frankly, given the questions they keep asking of themselves, I wouldn’t trust either of them. It appears that their game-playing may be the only way they can keep their relationship together and keep the fears of cheating from consuming them. By playing out their fears, they apparently are able to resist their actualization. I certainly wouldn’t trust them to sell me a house; but then, it becomes apparent, they’re not really real estate agents either.

     Finally, one has to ask, who are they? How did these two come together? Did they find each other through their role-playing, and if they are such clever gamesters how can they possibly imagine that they are not constantly lying to the other? Perhaps it comes down to the fact that we simply don’t believe this pair is truly a couple.

      As the reviewer for Film Carnage (listed simply as Rebecca) has noted: “Unfortunately, there isn’t much chemistry to be found between these two actors, the biggest problem is that the performances come across as wooden or as though they’re trying too hard. Álvarez surprisingly feels like he’s playing into stereotypes, it’s disappointing to see from a queer actor who you’d imagine would be keenly aware of avoiding such pitfalls but even his movements feel exaggerated in a cliched manner. Murtagh on the other hand plays things overly straight-laced, adding a touch of pretention. These difficulties are a key factor in hindering the film from building any tangible atmosphere or energy.”

      I’d argue that the film’s lethargy results from its idea-laden script. Any couple who spend so many hours talking about faithfulness and monogamy suggests just how very fearful they see those restrictions. The real point, is that they are restrictions that destroy, as in many a heterosexual marriage, many a relationship.  

 

Los Angeles, March 11, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (March 2025).