Tom Bakker | Ayor / 2021

living behind a mirror

by Douglas Messerli

 

Tom Bakker (screenwriter and director) Ayor / 2021 [11 minutes]

 

Much like Thomas Hescott’s 2020 film The Act celebrated and deconstructed an important event in British gay history, so does Dutch director Tom Bakker’s Ayor fictionalize the important 1970 statement against gay discrimination when two young men protested the lack of commemoration of the Netherlands’ celebration of Remembrance Day (May 4th) of gay soldiers and war victims.

      Like Hescott’s film, Bakker’s work is a highly professionally filmed piece of European gay history that helps us to know about how people put themselves on the line in a time when it was difficult and dangerous to do so.

      If one might have thought, given the open attitudes of the Dutch today, that gays in the Netherlands had no difficulties in openly expressing their sexuality, one need only watch this film which presents events from as recent as 1970, toggling back and forth between the before and after of that special day which challenged Dutch traditional values.

      Ad (Angélo Schuurmans) and Enno (Lars Brinkman) are holed up with a back room of a hotel near the main square where the Remembrance Day celebrations take place. Both have determined to give themselves up for the cause, wearing their pink triangles, dressed properly in suits, but knowing that their actions will probably end with them serving 3 months in prison.    

      They are nervous, particularly Enno who begins to question the whole series of events. Finally, Enno’s boyfriend Jan (Thor Braun) shows up with the wreath, kissing Enno and reassuring him of his commitment. But still Enno is frightened about having to give up three months of freedom for his acts.

      In alternating scenes, we watch each of the boys separately being questioned by a police officer (Hein van der Heijden). Ad is basically smug in his refusal to explain who was behind the decision to engage in their protest, at one point when the officer asks if Enno is his boyfriend, answering, “Are you interested?” before finally answering “No,” his only real answer to the policeman’s questions.

      Enno, on the other hand, clearly the deeper thinker of the two and probably the original instigator of the event, responds with elliptical statements which help explain their viewpoints. When the officer asks him why “you people you are so special,” he replies that he often wonders the same thing, why the police flash lights upon them at night when they are making love, why they continue to receive so much of the police’s special attention.

      Back in the waiting room, however, he almost attempts to back out of their plans, Ad engaging him with his imitation of Clint Eastwood preparing for a shootout by licking back his hair, taking out a cigarillo, and suddenly shooting his enemies dead. The two joyfully play at cops and robbers for a moment, falling upon the floor in almost hysterical laughter, brought on by their nervousness. They are interrupted by a hotel worker who has obviously arranged for their cover and access to the celebration at the right moment.

     We see the two doing nothing but carrying out a wreath, this one dedicated to the gay men and women who lost their lives in the war, before we observe what appears to be the actual black-and-white footage of them being wrestled down to the ground by the police and a sailor in front of the crowds, as if they were engaging in an act of the greatest desecration possible. At the end of the film, we are told there were later massive protests on their behalf and “After political deliberations, the public ceremony was changed a year later to include all homosexual, Sinti*, and Roma who had perished during the war.

     The most poignant moment of this film, however, occurs when Enno is being questioned. When he perceives the glass wall next to him, he wonders if people are listening into their conversation on the other side. The officer insists it’s none of his business. But Enno continues on, suggesting that this room, in fact, is much like the world in which he lives. When the officer inquires how this might be, Enno responds:

 “With everything I do, I feel there is someone behind a mirror….watching me. And that feeling makes me question whether or not I can hold hands with my boyfriend when I walk down the street. Whether I can kiss him at the tram stop. Or introduce him to my boss without any trouble. There is always someone behind that mirror. Who watches and judges. You don’t even have to worry about things like that. No one is watching you behind a mirror. You don’t even have that mirror. You asked me why we did this, at the expense of the dead. That is why. I want to live without that mirror, too.”

 

*The Sinti are a Romani group of around 200,000 people living in Germany and Central Europe, and obviously made up a small portion of Dutch population.

 

Los Angeles, February 13, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (February 13, 2023).

 

Thomas Hescott | The Act / 2020

wanting more

by Douglas Messerli

 

Matthew Baldwin, Thomas Hescott, and Peter Lawson (screenplay), Thomas Hescott (director)

The Act / 2020 [18 minutes]

 

The standard description of this British short film is more than a little misleading:

 

“In 1965 the eve of decriminalization for acts of male homosexuality in the U.K. Matthews, a young gay man at odds with the world, discovers love, sex, and a new family in the backstreets and underground bars of Soho.”

 

     In fact, although the bill for decriminalization along the lines of the Wolfenden Report nine years earlier proposed in the House of Commons by Conservative MP Humphry Berkeley, it was not voted upon until 1966 and was defeated, with Berkeley, a well-known homosexual, also losing his seat in the 1966 reelection. The bill, known as the Sexual Offences Bill, did not pass until 1967. In 1965, when Lord Arran first proposed the bill in the House of Lords, 93% of the British population still believed that homosexuality was a form of illness that required medical treatment, a sentiment expressed as well in the bits and pieces of the speech read out throughout director Thomas Hescott’s movie, even though the year before that speech the North West Homosexual Law Reform Committee was founded, abandoning the medical model of homosexuality as a sickness.

     The real focus of the film, in any event, is not on the Sexual Offences Bill, but on a single individual named Matthews (Samuel Barnett), who it appears for the first time decides to explore a gay bar in Soho, probably named the Flamingo, its entry being defined by a small pink flamingo neon sign, into which, after being propositioned by a prostitute, the frightened businessman, scurries.

     Immediately he encounters the flamboyant black, “Edna May…Duchess” (Cyril Nri), Matthews responding with his last name, pause, “Mr.” After a joke about Matthews’ serious demeanor, wondering if he’d been caught down at the docks sucking fishermen by the cops—almost scarring our new friend off—the Duchess sweeps him back into the communal spirit of the place by permitting him to buy her a drink and explaining, “We are all family here.”    

     Matthews learns quickly, and soon after, in a public bathroom picks up Jimmy (Simon Lennon) and, after noisily being fucked by his pick-up in his own room—much to his landlady’s dismay— immediately falls in love with the tough, who like a many such uncloseted working men refuses to kiss and claims he is not “like Matthews,” meaning presumably a gay man—a strange thing to express indeed, since Matthews himself has evidently, after some deep soul searching, just come out, admitting to himself his true desires.

      Much of this beautifully filmed work involves, in between the fulsome and misconceived statements we hear from Arthur Gore, Lord Arran from the House of Lords* (“I understand that “it” is an involuntary deviation, not hereditary but due to some emotional factor during childhood”), Matthews’ attempts to form a relationship with Jimmy fail. He suggests he could financially help him, that Jimmy might even move in with him, all to no avail.

      In one scene, after they have had sex, he quite hilariously attempts to convince his new “friend” to attend a production of Orfeo with him at Covent Garden. When Matthews attempts to explain that Orfeo is hoping to rescue his wife with the possibility of losing his very soul just to be with her again, Jimmy innocently asks, “Has he got ‘goons’?” Matthews responding, “No guns, just a lute.” As Jimmy begins dressing to leave, Matthews asks once more, “Can I kiss you?”

       Meanwhile, Matthews is back at the bar sitting with Edna May as the jukebox plays “O Danny Boy.” He has become a regular.

        But finally, Jimmy begins demanding money. He hasn’t worked for the week and he needs money for his rent. Matthews suggests that if he gets a place, perhaps Jimmy could live with him, with the angry response, “I ain’t your little project!” Finally, Matthews confesses that he likes Jimmy “a lot.” “We allow ourselves to have friends and sex with strangers that doesn’t mean anything. And I am tired of feeling that it what life is.”

       “I ain’t like you,” Jimmy repeats.

      But Matthews has finally become outspoken in his love: “I want more. I look at you and I want more.”

       They argue, Jimmy almost beating him. “You want to be careful how you talk to me.”

       Matthews: “I appear to be in love with you. And I can’t just turn it off.”

       Another visit to a public bathroom ends in Matthews’ arrest, and soon after Jimmy turning against him, since he too has now been visited by the police after they have found correspondence between the two in Matthews room. Matthews loses his job and is forced to leave his boarding house. But he is still willing to “take the blame for ‘leading’ him,” which in British law stems from a presumption that gay men force their sexuality upon innocent others. The only question Matthews has of Jimmy is “at the other end, will you wait for me?” But again, Jimmy proclaims “I ain’t like you.”

      In Matthews’ interview with the police, we suddenly see the rise of gay liberation through the smallest of units, the simplest of acts. He insists on knowing how the letters are any indication of a criminal act. “Am I being questioned about what I do or…who I am? Your job is to consider whether or not I have committed acts of indecency and should be removed from society! If you’re asking if I’m an ‘invert,” yes, I am. I am not the only invert in this country. Your child’s teacher, your doctor, your bachelor uncle. …In the simple act of speaking out we change the world.”

       To see what this formerly timid man has become helps us to realize what only a few years later made transgender women, boys, and others rebel against the police attempting to close down their favorite bar in the USA, their only home (in this case Stonewall) once again. They had had enough. They wanted more! They had realized it was finally time to speak out.

       In the very last scene Matthews is back at the Flamingo, sitting with his now close acquaintance, Edna Mae. She complains that she waiting for her ideal man but that probably such a man would be a policeman. They toast. Suddenly her eyes catch a newcomer, crossing the doorway. Matthews turns to look and observes Jimmy entering.

      He quickly gets up and goes to him, this time is question of “Can I kiss you,” being answered with a kiss.

      Although Hescott’s film might seem to resound with British gay history, the real history in this fiction is made by the frightened businessman who has finally reached the end of his patient wait for things to change.

 

*To be fair to Gore, he sponsored the bill primarily because his elder brother committed suicide in 1958, reportedly because he was gay.

 

Los Angeles, February 4, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (February 2023)

David Hastings | Willem / 2020

confession of an underground hero

by Douglas Messerli

 

David Hastings (screenwriter and director) Willem / 2020 [35 minutes]

 

Based on the imprisonment and killing of the real Dutch underground resistance fighter Willem Arondeus, David Hastings’ 2020 film Willem is a handsomely shot and fairly well-acted short that has received a great deal of attention from the LGBTQ community.

      Arondeus worked as an underground forger to official documents that allowed numerous Jews to take shelter from the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, helping to save the lives of many. After the war, his lawyer released his final message, evidently delivered by his prison guard, the other central figure in this film, that in the times of war “Let it be known that homosexuals are not cowards.”

      For years, many argued that Arondeus’ sexuality denied him the recognition of other war heroes. In 1945 he was awarded the posthumous medal of honor by the Dutch government, and in 1984 he was recognized with a Resistance Memorial Cross by the Queen of the Netherlands. In 1986 Yad Vashem recognized Willem Johannes Cornelis Arondeus as “Righteous Among the Nations.”

     The movie recounts his last days of suffering in his prison cell guarded by an in-cell guard and might be described as more of a confessional than a true dramatic expression of incidents. Willem (Chris Johnson) is, after all, thrown in the cell on June 29, 1943 with a young Nazi officer Alexander (Thomas Loone) already waiting in the cell, tasked with guarding his prisoner.

   Already beaten so badly that he can hardly sit, let alone eat, Willem is no William Hurt playing Luis Molina in Héctor Babenco’s Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985) ready to weave his fantastical stories into a romantic adventure that will envelope his cell-mate Raúl Juliá as Valentin Arregui. Willem can hardly speak and Alexander remains mute on orders from his superiors.

      Yet gradually over what appears to be just a few days’ period, he is able to represent his gay life and his underground activities in a manner that slowly loosens up his Nazi priest and eventually turns him into a momentary lover who awards the young hero a last kiss.

      One has to admit that this film is hardly believable, and the script by Hastings is rather leaden, spitting out important events of Willem’s life without being able to provide any of the details which might illuminate the character’s true humanity. At its best it reminds me of the slow conversion of the young would-be AIDS helper David Bennett in another 1985 film, Arthur J. Bressan’s Buddies wherein the wonderful Geoff Edholm as Robert Willow gradually convinces the reluctant “buddy” to become involved in the war against AIDS just by pure expression of his love of a life he about to lose.

       But Johnson is no Edholm, a truly remarkable actor, and the 35-minute format of Willem does not allow either actor to provide a convincing portrait of how they so quickly bonded, let alone why these two different kinds of prisoners might have reached out to one another so successfully in just a few days’ time.

     Let us just admit that Hastings and cast members’ intentions are of the best kind, and that the final kiss, the quickly penciled message that Willem sends to his lawyer, and Alexander’s final tears as he hears the bullet shot into his prisoner’s body beautifully reveals his own recognition of his imprisonment as well. His final act is to peer out the small open slot of the cell door, only to have it closed from the outside by a fellow Nazi soldier, which speaks louder than all of Willem’s words.

     Willem is no great statement among the hundreds of World War II testimonies to the bravery of those who spoke out against the Nazis; but it is a memorable portrayal of another gay figure destroyed by the German intolerance of something they themselves had first put a name to: homosexuality.

 

Los Angeles, February 28, 2022

(Reprinted from World Cinema Review February 2022).

 

Douglas Messerli | Events in European Gay History [Introduction]

events in european gay history

by Douglas Messerli 

Overall, gay history has not been very effectively portrayed in film. Although since the AIDS crisis of the 1970s-1990s and the events centering around the 1970 riots at New York City’s Stonewall bar, LGBT cinema in the United States has made great strides in documenting American gay history, including important forays by Arthur Dong into various LGBT men and women serving in the military. And other US documentarians and filmmakers have given us insights into—to list only a random sampling—figures and events such as Michelle Parkerson’s Stormé: Lady of the Jewel Box (1987); Isaac Julien’s Looking for Langston (1989); Tim Burton’s Ed Wood (1994); Bill Condon’s Kinsey (2004); Irvin Winkler’s bio-pic on Cole Porter, De-Lovely (2004); Bennett Miller’s Capote (2005); Douglas McGrath’s Infamous (2006), also on Truman Capote; Tina Mascara and Guido Santi’s Chris & Don. A Love Story (on Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy) (2007); Gus Van Sant’s Milk (2008) (on Harvey Milk); James Franco’s Sal (2011) (on Sal Mineo); Clint Eastwood’s J. Edgar (2011) (on J. Edgar Hoover); Cary Kehayan’s In Search of Avery Willard (2012); Steven Soderbergh Behind the Candelabra (2013) (on Liberace); Michele Josue’s Matt Shepard Is a Friend of Mine (2015); Jeffrey Schwarz’ Tab Hunter Confidential (2015); David France’s The Death and Life of Marsha P.  Johnson (2017); Matt Tyrnauer Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood (2017) (revealing a whole host of LBBTQ Hollywood figures); Elsa Flores Almaraz and Richard Montoya’s Carlos Almaraz: Playing with Fire (2019); Don Wingate’s Kaye Ballard: The Show Goes On (2019); Rachel Mason’s Circus of Books (2020) (on the Los Angeles gay bookstore); George C. Wolfe’s Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (2020); and Lisa Immordino Vreeland’s Truman & Tennessee: An Intimate Conversation (2020).

     It seems to me, however, that European countries have been far more ready to explore their LGBT histories, even though, while arguably we can describe Berlin, as Robert Beachy does in his book Gay Berlin of 2014 as the birthplace of modern identity, we must recognize also that with the Nazi outlawing of all things homosexual, a large swath of German sexual history would seemingly disappear from memory. In 2014 Beachy reminded us, Berliners and other Germans colloquially described their annual gay pride parades as CSD (Christopher Street Day).

     Yet, it might be argued that Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Berlin Alexanderplatz of 1980 presented a remarkable fictional history of that period. And others have fictionally engaged into the various figures and incidents of European gay history such as Luchino Visconti’s Ludwig (1973); Lionel Soukaz and Guy Hocquenghem’s Race d’Ep (Breed of Faggots) (1979); Herbert Ross’ Nijinsky (1980); Derek Jarman’s Caravaggio (1986); Stephen Frears’ Prick Up Your Ears (1987) (on Joe Orton); Ken Russell’s Salome’s Last Dance (1988) (on Oscar Wilde); Jarman’s Edward II (1991); Jarman’s Wittgenstein (1993); Sean Mathias’ Bent (1997) (on the Nazi internment of gay men); Stephen Haupt’s Der Kreis (The Circle) (2014) (on the Swiss gay magazine and its creators); Moren Tyldum’s The Imitation Game (2014) (on Alan Turing); both Jilil Lespert’s Yves Saint Laurent and Bertrand Bonello’s Saint Laurent (both 2014); Abel Ferrar’s Pasolini (2014); Karl Eccleston and Brian Fairbairn’s Putting on the Dish (2015) (on the private gay language Polari); Peter Greenaway’s Eisenstein in Guanajuato (2015); Randall Wright’s Hockney (2016); Dome Karukoski Tom of Finland (2017); John Carey and Adam Darke’s Forbidden Games: The Justin Fashanu Story (2017); Bryan Singer and Dexter Fletcher’s Bohemian Rhapsody (2018)(on Freddie Mercury and Queen); Ryan Murphy, Nelson Cragg, Gwyneth Horder-Payton, Daniel Minahan, and Matt Bomer’s The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story (2018) and Dexter Fletcher’s Rocketman (2019) (on John Elton) to name only a few.

     While we must also recognize that a large number of the films on European LGBT figures as well as those from the US are commercially produced and contain perhaps as much fiction as reality, and that several of the films on European figures were written and directed by Americans, just as a few of the US titles were directed by Europeans,

      Accordingly, we need perceive that we have a long way to go on featuring viable and accurate films on significant lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and other queer figures.

      Only recently have we become to notice more interest, particularly in Europe, about their lesser-known LGBT heroes and events, so crucial in comprehending the positions and emotions of the contemporary queer community.

       Below, I have written essays on three of these new works that have engaged with events in European gay history Willem by David Hastings, The Act by Thomas Hescott, and Ayor by Tom Bakker.

 

Los Angeles, February 5, 2023

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (July 2023).

 

 

Luke Willis | Pool Boy / 2021

into the pool

by Douglas Messerli

 

Luke Willis (screenwriter and director) Pool Boy / 2021 [10 minutes]

 

Of the six short films I viewed from this year’s Newfest showings this past work by another Los Angeles-based director, Luke Willis, is perhaps the most interesting simply because it considers an issue that is very rare to date in the LGBTQ cinema catalogue.

          It would appear that college boy Austin (Tim Torre), a former high school jock home for college for the summer and living in his parent’s apartment, was straight. The film begins with a cellphone call from his old friend, Jake (Justin Chien), anxious to get together for some old times, drugs, and drinking; and the very next day, he soon finds out, a beach party is planned where a knock-out high school female beauty will be waiting for him.

     Responding somewhat positively to all of these salutations, Austin is nonetheless strangely unresponsive even seeming disinterested. However, when he hears the arrival and scape of the pool boy and his net, he immediately grabs his sketch book and speeds off to the family pool where he engages the “pool boy” formerly named Paul in conversation. Evidently he (played by American-Salvadorian actor River Gallo who prefers the pronoun “they”) has been helping Austin with his sketches, presumably also being an artist outside his role as the pool cleaner. And apparently, the two have bonded, if not more, since Austin almost seems to quiver with pleasure around the individual who now has renamed theirselves “Star.” As Austin begins showing his art, some of the work being sketches of Star, his friend Jake suddenly appears, intruding on the duo’s evident intimacy, forcing them to pull back from the sensuous touch of each other’s fingers.

      Jake is the kind of self-assured, pushy jock with whom there is not real communication unless it concerns girls, drugs, drink, and old times—all obviously uninteresting any longer to Austin. Austin attempts to steer his friend away from the pool and pool boy as quickly as possible, but is unable to manage it before Jake, after referring to “him” as “Paul.” is corrected about the name change, and then begins to make jokes about Star now being even more than a queer.

       The boys retreat to the apartment, smoking what appears to be hashish, Jake again insisting that Austin simply has to attend the beach party the next day since everyone is expecting him. Austin half-heartedly agrees to be there. But even in these early scenes of the film we already wonder whether or not he can truly break with the heteronormative world in which he has spent most of his life and join Star as he also promised on their day off to “discuss art.”

        In order to show us just how transfixed Austin has become by his new non-binary friend, director Willis takes us through an erotic dream of Austin where the two sensuously kiss and join in sex in a manner that far outshines many of the gay sex scenes of the standard “coming out” films. Swathed in purple, bluish, and red tones Austin makes love to Star in an almost ecstatic manner that certainly convinces us of his complete adoration of the artist and pool cleaner.

       When morning arrives, the doorbell rings, as Austin eagerly runs to the door, far too early in the day we suspect for a trip to the beach. There Star waits, their hair loosened from its previously ponytail, they wearing a sheik non-gender identifying outfit.

      “So you’re not going to the beach,” they ask. “What are you going to tell them”

        “That I am spending the day with you.”

       The two stand in the doorway in near adoration of each other as the film ends.

      Born and raised by Salvadorian parents in New Jersey, River Gallo was classified as “intersex” at the age of 12 and was offered hormone therapy and surgery to insert prosthetic testicles. The result, so an article by Corina J Poore published at the online Latino Life reports: “was that they have become activists and outspoken critics of unnecessary cosmetic surgeries performed on children with atypical genitals, who are not old enough to given an informed consent.”

       Gallo, who graduated from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts Experimental Theatre Wing and received an MFA from the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts, starred in the short film Ponyboi (2019) before taking on the role of the Pool Boy of Luke Willis’ film.

 

Los Angeles, October 22, 2021

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (October 2021).

Jessica Benhamou | Love Is a Hand Grenade / 2021

the beginning of the end

by Douglas Messerli

 

Jessica Benhamou (screenplay and director) Love Is a Hand Grenade / 2021 [13 minutes]

 

In British director Jessica Benhamou’s film Love Is a Hand Grenade we are introduced to two women performed by Genesis Lynea and Saffron Hocking, who arrive “home” to Lynea’s character’s apartment drunk and severely drugged, particularly Hocking’s unnamed character.  

     It’s clear that the woman, who I shall describe as the younger one, is far less capable of controlling her behavior, which causes distress to the elder, who keeps asking her to be quieter and to literally control herself. These women are obviously longtime friends and apparently—despite the fact that they refer to one another as sisters—have had numerous lesbian encounters with one another and plan to sleep together yet again that night.

     Yet both talk of their desires of the male sex, the younger wanting a dream image that will combine all she imagines, while the elder, more careful thinker has a loyal boyfriend or, more importantly, as she keeps reminding her younger friend, she has a financé.

      She is also it appears at wit’s end, loving her young friend perhaps even more that her fiancé but also realizing that there is no controlling her, and we observe her troubled consideration of the issues as she retreats to the balcony standing in the cold until the other calls her back in.

     She attempts to fall to sleep, but the other keeps insisting upon contact which evidently she cannot resist; the two have wonderful sex, the “best ever” the younger insists.

     But the time has come, the clearer thinking woman realizes, despite her love, to fully break with such an incorrigible relationship that represents, as the title suggests, forever holding a hand grenade which any minute might go off in her face.

      And indeed it does, as bored by her friend’s insistence that she drink a glass a water to sober her up, the younger grabs a bottle of wine, chugging it down like it were a large gallon of soda. Once again, the elder attempts to explain and negotiate with her younger friend that she has found someone who loves her and she has been working a good job; her life has returned to an orderly world which she desires more than the constant wreck she encounters with Hocking’s character.

      When she reaches for the wine bottle to save her younger friend from a total stuporous inebriation, the girl pulls away dropping the bottle and sending glass fragments across the room, one lodging in the elder’s foot which is now heavily bleeding.

       Attempting to bring herself back into semi-sobriety the younger immediately grabs wads of toilet paper, creating a makeshift bandage for her friend and calling a cab to take her to the emergency room. But by this time the elder can hardly move, either out of pain or utter exasperation for having had another explosion of what is always a ticking bomb in the presence of her lover-sister-intimate friend whatever you might call her.

       As the younger attempts to take her down the stairs to the taxi, the elder pushes her out the door along with her purse, bag and a coat she has been wearing, locking the door behind her. It has come time to break the relationship off.

       One imagines that things will not end so simply; that the younger will return, demand reentry  into her life, whatever. But the event we have just witnessed is most definitely the beginning of the end, the very opposite of what the lesbians have just experienced in the previously film I just discussed. Our “hero” has apparently decided to embrace the heterosexual part of her bisexuality so that she might live a more ordered and sane life.

       To many a lesbian and gay viewer surely that decision was merely perceived as a refusal of the work’s central figure to embrace her own sexuality. But in this case I think that would be a misreading. Lesbians and gays still have not fully recognized the reality of bisexuality, despite the fact that statistics have shown over and over that bisexuals make up a much larger portion of the population that gays, lesbians, or transgender individuals. And it interesting just how few films are truly devoted to bisexual realities. The age-old argument that bisexuals simply have not yet realized that they are gay or lesbian has not yet been put to rest, and perhaps never will be.

      The director herself was startled, to say the least about the criticism she received for this film. As Benhamou commented:

 

“I think most women who consider themselves ‘mainly straight’ have had an intense, inter-dependent, female friendship that has almost become romantic. I didn’t want to label the sexualities of the two characters – I’m more interested in how sexuality is infinitely complex as a filmmaker, but it’s been interesting to observe how stigmatised bisexuality is. I didn’t anticipate finding myself on the receiving end of so much biphobia. The reality is that while I am keenly aware of what homophobia entails, the subtle nuances of biphobia were entirely new to me. And if a short film can spark that kind of response within my circles then I’m all the more convinced it’s an important story to tell. The world is changing though, particularly for the younger generations, so I remain an optimist. In terms of the mental health elements, I wanted to show the difficulties of loving someone with severe mental illness in a way that felt honest and true to me.”

 

     In this film we truly must come to recognize an ending which may allow a fully new beginning for the central character, even if it appears to represent to many a relinquishment of gay sexuality to the heteronormative majority. These are serious issues which if not dealt with in a serious way, will ultimately mean deep, perhaps irreparable cracks in the rainbow coalition. Finally, we must ask the question are bisexuals of interest to the LGBTQ community only when they shift away from heterosexuality or are they interesting and of value because they accept the fluidity of sexual divides?

 

Los Angeles, October 22, 2021

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (July 2025).