Liam English | Posture / 2018

christmas birth

by Douglas Messerli

 

Liam English (screenwriter and director) Posture / 2018 [23 minutes]

 

This most definitely amateur film, not even listed in IMDb, is nonetheless a rather believable story of a young man Noah, who spotting a misplaced female shift in the Men’s section of a local mall, suddenly realizes it is time to become the woman he has always felt himself to be.

     In a long scene in which the former Noah transforms himself, shaving his face, chest, and legs, applying makeup which he has hidden his bathroom drawer, and, finally, putting on a quite horrible wig he has also been hiding, until he becomes his chosen embodiment of his self-realization: Ophelia (Liam English). She calls her girlfriend Stephanie (Grace Poniatowski) to reveal the truth in return for her support as a female friend.

   But in the meantime, her father (Dave Van Dusen) catches on the staircase leaving the house, and the two face off, Ophelia desperately attempting to explain that she has always been a girl and begging her parent to call her by her given name. He reacts the way so many faced with this situation probably do, at least at first, imagining the it first as a “costume,” perhaps a school project, a trick, a game.

    When all of those options are denied by Ophelia, the father takes the next more convenient alternative, that his son Noah must be gay. But when yet again his new daughter insists upon a gender difference not merely a sexual one, he cannot comprehend and insists that Noah simply needs help, help that he is unable to provide.

     His final solution, and it is a bit like a murder of his offspring, a sacrifice of his first born to the god of conventionality, he orders Ophelia to get out of the house.

     At his girlfriend’s house, now in full sunlight—evidently a continuity flaw in this seemingly home-shot movie—Noah’s former girlfriend goes similarly through the same process of thought, denying Ophelia not only her support but her comprehension and empathy. Stephanie doesn’t even believe, so she insists, in the “that transsexual…I don’t believe it’s real.” In short, she denies Ophelia even her reality. Stephanie even suggests that she let her know “if things go back to normal,” adding abnormality to Ophelia’s nonexistence.

     “This is what’s normal. Finally…this is who I am,” the brave new woman explains.

     Yet those simple words are incomprehensible to the people upon whom she most counts to help her in her transition. She also demands he leave the house and leave her alone.

      Ophelia retreats to an iron bench in the cold winter air. A mother and her very young daughter (Hannah and Lyric Caramto) pass by, the child asking “Why is that lady crying?” For the first time someone has identified her recognizing her own gender, and Ophelia looks up with a flash of hope. The mother, recognizing what she perceives as an imitation, quickly pulls her daughter away. But those words finally make this tearful Ophelia vaguely smile.

     This film’s title, of course, commonly is used to explain an attitude or stance, a way of thinking or of positioning one’s body. But as a verb it can also mean to “strike an attitude, to put on airs or behave affectedly. Yet in it’s archaic meaning it can mean a particular attitude or pose. And in all cases it is related to the word “imposter,” rooted in the concept of putting on or placing upon oneself an attitude or pose. In other words, a fraudulent position or stance.

       Yet the child immediately cuts through all social conventions and recognizing Ophelia for what she truly looks like and therefore, logically speaking, is: a lady.

       Surely the bad acting, costuming, camera work, and lighting of this short work will put off most viewers. But the script nonetheless may be one of the most honest expressions of what it must be like to finally “come out” as a transgender individual, an act that often quickly alienates the individual from all those she or he most loves and needs in order to survive.

 

Los Angeles, August 22, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (August 2025).

Christopher Sampson | Miles / 2017

the next move

by Douglas Messerli

 

Christopher Sampson (screenwriter and director) Miles / 2017 [15 minutes]

 

Australian filmmaker Christopher Sampson’s short film Miles is not only about a road trip three close, life-long friends make together, but the miles of time they have reached to arrive at this important juncture where they will finally have to decide how to proceed for the rest of their lives, at least in terms of their sexuality and relationships with one another.

    Michael (Jye Whatson), so we discover, has just lost his father, and evidently feels a great deal of guilt for not expressing his love to him. But the dead father is not only one to whom Michael evidently has difficulty in expressing his feelings. He is currently in a relationship with Ashley (Madi Jennings) who knows his male friend, Edward (Nathan Draman) quite well without perceiving that he has had a far deeper, possibly sexual relationship with him before his now heterosexual focus.

     But it’s clear she has her suspicions, at one point suggesting that Edward be careful in expressing his affection to Michael, because doing so at this time, she argues, will simply make him back away; which is perhaps what she has discovered without really knowing the reason Michael is hesitant in expressing his full love. She attributes it to his father’s death, not to the fact that Michael is basically engaged on this trip in a kind of threesome, possibly to help him come to a decision of which direction to move.

    There are many things about Michael that we, as the viewer, also do not know. Is Michael basically bisexual or is he a homosexual attempting, in relation to what his father might have wanted for him, to convince himself that he will be happy in a heterosexual marriage? It matters a great deal to know whether it is simply a choice between two individuals or whether it is a kind of self-enforced transition in his life, a denial of his actual emotional state.

     I might suggest from what little we are shown, it is the latter, and a great deal of what Ashley perceives of grieving for his father is Michael’s suffering over his own sexual indecision. It is rather clear, in fact, that he prefers Edward’s company. And the most telling moment—certainly the most dramatic—is when, after all three have been sleeping for a while in the car, Michael attempts to steal away with Edward to spend some time with him, leaving the more deeply sleeping Ashley a note as to his whereabouts.

     As the two males sit upon a cliff overlooking the ocean, Michael again expresses his regret that he has not expressed his love to his father; but we sense that what he is really saying is that he is frustrated that neither Edward or he have expressed their love for one another. Edward, attempting to remain as neutral as he can in making up Michael’s mind, suggests that he’s there to listen, to hear and help with whatever Michael needs in healing.

    But Michael sees the offer as patronizing and certainly not attending to the heart of the matter, and turns to leave, Edward calling him back: “Michael, you can’t just walk away from me.”

    At least they have moved back into the subject that is truly troubling the handsome youth. “What do you want from me, Ed?” Michael responds.

    And finally Ed admits what is at the heart of the problem: “I want you to tell me where we stand. Stop being so distant. I want you to understand everything I do is for you.” In short, even pretending objectivity has been an action of love, not passivity or disinterest. “I know this is the

worst time possible,” he continues, “but I can’t help smiling every time I look at you.”

     The honesty puts a smile on Michael’s usually troubled face and he turns back to Edward, his friend explaining to him that he cannot go on in this manner, that every time he tries to communicate, Michael turns away. “So what do you want?”

      “I don’t know what I want.”

    Putting his hand to Michael’s face, Edward answers, “I do.” We wonder in fact whether he is speaking for his friend’s desires, making it clearer for him, or simply speaking for himself, admitting the fact that he knows what he wants.

      Michael’s answer, “I know,” appears to suggest the latter, but perhaps he is admitting that he too would truly like their relationship to continue. There is no way of knowing, for as soon as the two boys begin a deep series of kisses, Ashley, having awakened and read the message, arrives on the scene, hurt and deeply angry for what she has just witnessed and now knows is the truth.

     Before, in her mind, they were just close friends, but now….

    Noticing her existence, Michael goes to her, attempting to touch her face, but she cannot accept it, and he walks off, the girlfriend walking over to Edward and shaking her head as if to suggest that he has betrayed her.

     She turns back for a moment to look at Michael before walking in the other direction

   When Edward reaches out to comfort Ashley, she violently pulls away, and walks off, Edward attempting to call out to her, but she turning back for only a moment to shake her head in the negative, before herself leaving the frame.

    Edward remains standing at the very edge of the cliff, and we as observers can only fear for the possibility that he might attempt, out of love for Michael, to make his decision easier by disappearing in a single leap. One commentator on Letterboxd, at least, argues that Edward now believes that Michael would choose Ashley (and the escape of heterosexual marriage) to him.

      There is no answer of course, and women, I believe, are at least of two minds when it comes to marrying men who they know to be bi- or homosexual. In many cases, females are convinced that being of the opposite gender gives them the advantage and they might certainly cure their husband’s malady—at least that was long the view held when the world was not so very aware of other sexual choices.

     In today’s world, it may be far more difficult for a woman to enter marriage with someone who they know may at any moment relapse into desire for the same sex or possibly lose entirely if or when he realizes that he actually may be gay. And Ashley, who may have suspected her boyfriend’s attachment to Edward, now knows that he has been in love with him and perhaps still is. In short, the decision may now be out of Michael’s hands.

      Having revealed his sexual confusion, Michael has lost the ability to choose for whatever reasons he may have wanted that one remaining power. Ashley may pull him back to her demanding promises of renunciation, or outrightly reject her lover for not being a reliable choice of a mate.

     Whatever decisions are made, it will be a horrible time for all as they return from their revelatory trip back to what we absurdly describe as civilization.

     Sampson’s film is far too probing and complex, I’d argue, for such a simplistic act of Edward making the decision for his lover by abandoning all hope. That certainly might have been the decision of lovers in the films of early gay men such as Kenneth Anger or Curtis Harrington, but in today’s world Edward also knows that unless he determines to fight for Michael, the decision is hers to make.

      Throughout this well-filmed work, Sampson places his characters in the landscape a bit like Resnais does in Last Year at Marienbad, as figures on a metaphorical chessboard who seek out solutions to resolve the various pulls of imagined love. As the screen goes black, we now are left to imagine the next move.

 

Los Angeles, August 22, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (August 2025)

Barry Morse | Mouse's Birthday

 

five deadly sins

by Douglas Messerli

 

Barry Morse (screenwriter and director) Mouse's Birthday / 2010 [4 minutes]

 

This odd fairytale-like film that involves music, lyrics, masks, puppets, animation, and other special effects, is a cautionary tale about a great many things including gluttony (a mouse falls into a birthday cake and dies), lust (a wealthy woman of the 1920s with razor sharp fingers consumes cockroaches as her punishment), vanity and sexuality (a punk gay boy with an outlandish mohawk stares at the mirror as if he were Narcissus), and homophobia (a gang of gay-haters surround him and evidently do him in).

 

     What it all means, however, is a mystery, unless the code is in the director's name (u for r in Morse's name, an in joke for his birthday?) Other than some clever effects, I certainly cannot find a coherent relationship among the so-called sinners of this supposedly comic affair. Perhaps it’s just that none of them are who they appear to be, the punk rocker played by the author/director Barry Morse and the 1920s Woman performed by Keith Glen Schubert. And does that mean that performing in drag will send you straight to hell.

      As the IMDb comment observes, perhaps it’s just a “whimsical visual poem.” But frankly it just doesn’t work for me, even after watching it now 3 times over a period of several weeks.

 

Los Angeles, September 22, 2024 / Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (September 2024).

Jason Karman | I'm in the Mood for Love / 2010

art vs. reality

by Douglas Messerli

 

Jason Karman (screenwriter and director) I'm in the Mood for Love / 2010 [7 minutes]

 

Canadian director Jason Karman presents us with two different scenarios in his charming short film I’m in the Mood for Love.

     In the first half of this film, a cute young man, John (Kyle Toy) spots his old boyfriend, Carl (Ed Fong) with his new lover, Trent (Julian LeBlanc) at a Chinese restaurant to which he and John had often dined in the past. The two apparently have only recently broken up, and John badly regrets the situation, still having deep feelings for Carl. He approaches the table, completely ignoring Trent and begs Carl to give him another chance, to possibly begin a new relationship. Carl explains that it’s impossible, and Trent tells him several times that he should leave—without success. The situation threatens to turn into a contentious situation, when, out the blue, John strikes up the song “I’m in the Mood for Love,” singing all of its lyrics by Dorothy Fields and Jimmy McHugh:

 

I'm in the mood for love

Simply because you're near me.

Funny, but when you're near me

I'm in the mood for love.

 

      It is so totally unexpected, and John sings it, slightly off key, so very engagingly that even Carl has to smile in wonderment, while at the very same moment Trent grows increasingly mean-spirited. But when it’s over, Carl again responds that their relationship is over.

      In the very next moment, as John stands at the entrance where we have seen him standing as the movie began, we realize that the above scene has all been a fantasy. This time, as he comes out of his trance, he asks for a table for one, passing by the two lovers and politely greeting them, Carl introducing John to Trent, with the two politely interacting, Trent explains that he has brought back the new hat which tops Carl’s head from Winnepeg where he was competing in a figure skating competition.

     When Trent asks what John does for a living, he pauses before explaining that he sings telegrams, Trent suggesting he perform one of his numbers. John suggests that he doesn’t necessarily need to, obviously afraid of the consequences, but Trent repeats his interest in hearing a performance. John sings a few bars of the same song, before trailing off and reassuring Carl that he’s fine as he heads off to his own table.

     This time John’s behavior, despite the possibly of his still being “in the mood,” is civilized and polite. His actions make sense and explain the previous imaginary encounter. I must admit, however, since I seldom prefer “reality” over the imaginative truth of art, I preferred the first version with the astonishment of John’s turning his feelings into song, the way stage musicals make life over into something far more charming and romantic than a touristy Winnepeg bear hat.

 

Los Angeles, April 16, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (April 2023).

Ryan Davis | Pink Triangle / 2010

warning from a dead man

by Douglas Messerli

 

Ryan Davis (screenwriter and director) Pink Triangle / 2010 [18 minutes]

 

One has to give more than simple admiration to a graduate student film—this from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts School of Filmmaking—that explores the Nazi attempt to eliminate homosexuality. This film appears to get most of its facts right, while demanding it present itself as a complex costume drama as well as having several scenes which shift in time, as the central figure, Harmon Lehmann (Jon Parker Douglas), even more interestingly featured as a Nazi informer, has flashbacks of memory which help explain how he has become the monster he now is.

     The film has minimal dialogue, with the visual predominating, putting a great deal of the film’s success on the acting skills of Douglas, who portrays the conflicted informer Harmon. Even before the film’s first scene, in which Harmon is forced to meet in a movie theater with the Standartenführer (Bill Moser) in charge of the homosexual arrests, probably an underling of either Heinrich Himmler or Reinhard Heydrich—the two major SS homophobes, Heydrich being the one who demanded an early round up of all homosexuals—it is clear that Harmon has already identified a great many of his former friends.    

     Among the pictures he is given to identify in this new batch, however, is one which he himself took of two lovers, one already arrested and probably killed, the other of Straussberg. The memory of the photo takes him back to the bar in which it occurred and to his own meeting there with his lover, Deiter (Davis Harper).

      That memory, in fact, lures him back to the now abandoned house in which Deiter lived, where he remembers their love-making and, more important for the movie, their arrest. During their torture, Dieter refused to name names while Harmon looked on, the Nazi inquirer threatening to slit his throat if he didn’t speak. Harmon, presumably in order to save Deiter, screams out: he is willing to give them the names of friends. It appears from the flashback, stimulated by the Standartenführer’s insistence—when Harmon has not quickly enough named the men in the photographs—that he observe yet another such session, that both the young man in the present and Harmon’s lover Deiter’s throats were slit for their refusals to betray other gay men.

       The second witnessing of torture utterly changes Harmon, who now sews an obligatory pink triangle on his shirt, cuts his hair short, takes up a gun, and returns to the Standartenführer’s office to shoot him dead. The film seems to lack some credibility in that fact that Harmon evidently escapes and at the end of Ryan Davis’ film meets Straussberg in a train station to hand over the photograph, a warning that he too is now being sought.

       Many gay men survived through early escape—Basel, Switzerland being a particularly important city for German gays. Others survived by entering into lavender marriages with pre-war lesbian friends. But a large percentage, close to 25% of those who were not arrested and sent to camps, committed suicide.

 

Los Angeles, August 7, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (August 2023).