Zachary Ayotte | Mon père travaille de nuit (My Dad Works the Night Shift) / 2018

the choir boy who only pretends to sing

by Douglas Messerli

 

Zachary Ayotte (screenwriter and director) Mon père travaille de nuit (My Dad Works the Night Shift) / 2018 [14 minutes]

 

The cute 14-year-old Canadian-French speaking choir boy of Zachary Ayotte’s short film has a father (François Trudel) who works the night shift, which means, quite obviously, that this school boy sees very little of his dad, except for at the dinner table and weekends. In short, it is quite clear that Félix (Victor Boudreault) lacks the parental attention upon which nearly any young boy, for better or worse, needs for love and guidance; there is no mother in his home.

    Moreover, this young boy, in his attraction to an older boy, Vincent (Antoine L'Écuyerat) he observes the swimming pool near his school, is beginning to realize he is gay. And Vincent, perceiving the attentions of the schoolboy, is not at all shy about encouraging something that goes beyond the young male gaze. At first he merely queries the kid about his attraction, stuffing his swimming trucks into his face and awarding them as a prize, inside of which his written his erect cock size, 7 inches.

    Félix, like many young boys, moreover, knows his power over older men, not only how to attract a boy like Vincent, whom almost taunts through his pretended innocence in the locker room, but how to draw the attention of his own highly conservative father. At first the father simply wonders whether his son must always wear the small diamond stud in his ear, Félix arguing that if he removes it, the hole will close up.

     Soon after, the boy casually asks how much is 7-inches, his father, although curious about the question, using his hands to demonstrate.

     But Félix also leaves the swimming trunks, with its secret declaration, openly on his bed, along with his cellphone featuring a picture of Vincent, which in a home of no locked rooms his father inevitably discovers, confronting him about the matter before he heads off to work.

     “I don’t need to tell you everything…,” Félix provocatively responds to his father’s question of “What’s going on when I’m not here?” His son remains silent, and the father stands, screaming out that he does, in fact, need to explain when he lives under his roof!

    The boy stands still, pretending obeisance just as he pretends to join the others with his voice in the church choir. The father asks “How old is this boy?”

     But a moment later Félix truly taunts the older man: “You know what dad? Your seven inches,” he turns toward the hall to his bedroom, “kinda looked more like five.”

     The father has no comeback and leaves for work without any violence. And when he returns home near morning, he is even ready to apologize for his temper.

     In the meantime, however, Félix has texted Vincent, and the older boy is now lying beside him in his bed, presumably after a night of sexual delight, hears the father’s return, getting out of bed and quickly dressing.

     The father approaches his son’s room, opening the door to repent his anger.

     We don’t see the apparently violent fit that followed. We see photos upon the floor, their glass frames in splinters, we see the furniture overturned, a chaos of what used to be a home, in the very midst of which sits a seemingly satisfied son.

     We can only wonder what happened to Vincent and pray that he got away before the worst of the hurricane—although his purposeful seduction of an underage boy might draw the ire of many viewers. Canada, however, has “close-in-age exemption,” wherein youths of 14 or 15 may consent to sexual activity with those of five years older, which probably applies to Vincent, who, it is established early in the film, remembers Félix from his elementary school days.

     The question remains, however, why has Félix so blatantly arranged to have his father discover them in bed together?

 

     I have already suggested that he wanted the attention of his father. But surely another reason is so that he will not have to “come out” to a conservative alcoholic. Had Félix attempted to verbally reveal that he was gay, the father would have surely seen to it that dire limitations would be put upon his son’s life or that he would be kicked out of his home. This way, the boy has revealed the truth to his father at a moment that the father’s ire surely was directed at the individual such a macho conservative would see as the perpetrator, the older seducer Vincent. And the result of his mad rampage will now haunt the father in any further dealings with his son. He has betrayed his own uncontrollable rage, and Félix now has the upper hand. What might have simply been imagined has already occurred, and the father must now deal with a son who is no longer a virgin choirboy he might hope to protect. And if he did actually hurt Vincent, it is he who be carted off the jail or even prison.

     We can only suspect that Félix will now have a freedom that before was unimaginable. Unlike the earring in his ear, any attempt at removal of the incident will not heal the hole. The boy has gotten what he wanted: attention and freedom in one fell swoop.

     Blake was right, innocence, even when pretended, can truly be evil.

 

Los Angeles, August 28, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (August 2025).

    

Madeline Kelly | Nineteen / 2015

before leaving

by Douglas Messerli

 

Madeline Kelly (screenwriter and director) Nineteen / 2015 [11 minutes]

 

A young 19-year-old boy Blake (James Fraser) has arranged for a call boy, Henry (Benjamin Mathews) to visit him in a motel room, already an odd twist given the fact that Blake certainly is attractive enough that we presume he might attract boys of his own or even older age.

     But as he showers, coughing heavily, we already sense something is different here, a feeling confirmed when as Henry quickly moves in for the sex act, Blake asks if they might first talk and admits it isn’t like he imagined. What quickly becomes clear is that Blake is also a virgin.

      Henry fortunately is empathetic and begins gently to massage the young boy’s neck, relaxing him before they finally fall into a kiss and embrace.

     After sex, Henry even asks vaguely if Blake might want to do something else, hinting at either some after sex play or a conversation, whatever the boy might wish. But Blake, seemingly satiated by the sexual act comments, “No, I think I get it,” presumably meaning he now understands the joys of gay sex. Besides, as he puts it, “he feels like shit.”

     Obviously, Blake is ill, and we suspect that it’s a serious illness, and that having realized his sexuality too late to fully suffer and enjoy the teenage angst and pleasures, he is now attempting to experience it before he dies.

     As the two dress, Henry stares at him, obviously perceiving the scenario I just suggested. Blake, aware of his feelings, declares he needn’t feel sorry for him. But he never pictured himself having sex with an old man—a strange statement indeed since Henry, at most, is in his late 20s. But a few years means everything to youth. Blake admits, that he should have done it a long time ago.

      But he is suffering and quickly asks Henry to bring him his pills. Afterword, Henry gently strokes the young man’s hair, noticing that he comes out in his fingers in clumps. “I hope this was good enough,” he quietly comments, Blake ironically responding, “It was the best I had.”

      Blake has called his sister Sophie (Shannon Ashlyn) and she is now outside waiting. The two boys leave the room, Blake handing over Henry’s payment, and Henry hugging the boy close somewhat to Blake’s surprise. Blake’s sister, who may have arranged the meeting, gives Henry a nod of thanks as she enters the driver’s seat, Blake looking back at Henry with a smile of wan pleasure and almost, strange to say, a nostalgia that is already sadly settling in for someone so very young.

      Inevitably, such a scenario risks a bit of sentimentality, but Australian director Madeline Kelly has done a near perfect job at keeping it in obeyance, focusing instead on one of the most significant joys this young gay boy experiences about his life before so quickly leaving it.

 

Los Angeles, October 8, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (October 2023).

Nate Trinrud | Goodbye, Charley / 2015

suffering the consequences

by Douglas Messerli

 

Nate Trinrud (screenwriter and director) Goodbye, Charley / 2015 [6 minutes]

 

Using the age-old trope of a ghost haunting his past and even attending, as Huck Finn does, his own funeral (in this case, in form a school memorial service), US director Nate Trinrud introduces us to Charley (Austin McKenzie), a high school boy who no one seems to remember.

     In the brief 6 minutes we catch images of reasons why Charley’s death may have been a suicide: his love affair, in back hallways and empty locker room between him and the popular school athlete Chris (Ryan Nunn), the empty stares when his name is invoked in front of other students, and an incident when Chris himself has sprayed his friend’s locker in red letters reading “Faggot.”

     It’s not always a good thing to haunt one’s own past, particularly when homophobia still stalks these high school halls. The Principal (Elizabeth Herron) announces a memorial service, which only a handful of his peers attend. And when the school loud-speaker notifies students that they are able to seek counseling if necessary, but we are certain that no one will rush off to the counselor’s office in the next days.

     But finally, alone in the locker room, the ghost of Charley finds the seeming unflappable school jock Chris, sitting alone bawling his eyes out, clearly in need of counseling, but given his homophobia and self-hate unable to seek it out.

     Alas, the dead cannot succor the living, and Chris destroyed the love that might had transformed him into a happier human being. This is yet another short tale that shows us the tendency, as Oscar Wilde put it, of each man destroying the thing he most loves.

      This film of deep sentiment has some problems concerning its inability to distinguish events from the past with those going on in the present moment of the framed story. Although it appears that Chris scrawls “faggot” on his locker door while Charley is haunting the halls, it would make far more sense to have located it in the past, representing another cause of Charley’s death. And we might have felt more involved with both Charley and Chris if only we had been provided with a little more backstory about their relationship other than being broadcast the standard tropes that spell out what we know too well about brutalized gay boys in a high school setting. And in that sense, Trinrud’s short seems to be more of an essay on the problem than a heartfelt rendering based on his own or someone else’s immediate experience.

      And, finally, there are other ways of reacting to gay school romances than to reveal the homophobia of the other. One only has to turn to the first of the contemporary “coming out” story Get Real of 1998 to perceive that the hurt of being rejected because of the other lover’s inability to accept his own sexuality need not end in death.

 

Los Angeles, February 10, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (February 2023).

Michele Josue | Matt Shepard Is a Friend of Mine / 2015

never lose your anger

by Douglas Messerli

 

Michele Josue (director) Matt Shepard Is a Friend of Mine / 2015

 

Although I followed the news stories after Matthew Shepard was brutally beaten by two homophobic men outside of Laramie, Wyoming on the night of October 12th, 1998, I have not been able to read further about him or his death in the eighteen years since, mostly because I sensed that, even though I was 30 years older at the time of this 21-year old’s death, I had had too much in common with the young man. Yesterday, watching Michele Josue’s 2015 film, Matt Shepard Is a Friend of Mine, those feelings were confirmed, as tears streamed down my face throughout.

     I too was afraid of revealing my sexuality to my own parents—although Matthew’s parents were clearly more open and understanding than mine. My own experiences in Midwestern Iowa, moreover, were not so very different from his in Casper, Wyoming, which—quite mistakenly I am convinced—my family has asserted was named after my mother’s family name, Casper. Nonetheless, Matthew Shepard’s experiences in Western America are very similar to mine, even if, decades before he was even born, I had lived in the context of different cultural perspective.

     I hadn’t known that Shepard, in a far more multicultural experience than my own, had spent his high school years in a completely other country, Saudi Arabia, and that he spent his last high school years in an even more multicultural experience in Lugano, Switzerland, where he met many of the young women and men who speak of him in this film, testifying to his dynamic personality—despite his small stature and personal doubts—in a world that allowed him entry into drama and other cultural experiences. I too sought those same experiences out in my small-town life in Iowa, performing in theater and attending any theatrical events I might be able to encounter. And I too lived in a remarkably liberating culture my senior year of high school in Norway, traveling with my family to Denmark, Paris, and Switzerland afterwards, so that they might gracefully return me to their, then Wisconsin, home. Another year of high school in the US matured me before entering the University.

      Matthew also traveled, to Rome and elsewhere, and, eventually, in a far more adventurous trip, to Marrakech, Morocco. Had I traveled independently, as I sought to, I too might have sought out those locations. But my parents didn’t permit that independence, although a couple of years later in college, I did run away to New York, involving myself in many of the pursuits that led one acquaintance to suggest Matthew had apparently “taken chances.”

     Nothing significant happened to me, while sadly, during one evening walk through Marrakech, Matthew was attacked, robbed, and raped by six Moroccan men—an experience which, as his friends and family detail, truly transformed him.

     So ends my links with this handsome young man, who those several decades later attended a college in North Carolina, eventually leading to a period of living in Denver, where he apparently did not feel at home, before returning to college, now at the University of Wyoming in Laramie, Wyoming. I could never have imagined returning to Iowa, although I did leave New York in order to return to the University of Wisconsin—a very different place in the late 1960s, surely, than Wyoming in the late 1990s.

      Although Matthew quickly became involved with gay rights at the University, as I too had, it is clear that his life in Laramie was totally different from mine in Madison—a difference that would mean everything for a young gay man. Like those I left behind in my hometown of Cedar Rapids, it’s apparent that Matthew Sheppard felt significant isolation in his college years. And on the night of October 12th he apparently struck up a conversation at a local bar with two straight men who were pretending to be interested in his gay sexuality in order to rob him.

      Whether or not, frightened by his sexual advances, they were led to greater violence doesn’t truly matter; they were extraordinarily brutal, determined to punish him for his own sexuality, leaving him to suffer their torture in an isolated place for hours before he was discovered. His wounds were so severe that even his parents could not, at first—after their rush back for Saudi Arabia to Wyoming—recognize him. Ultimately, a gay-friendly teacher was invited by family members to help encourage Matthew, still clinging to life, to let go and die.

     What Michele Josue’s film reveals to us—through photographs, videos, and diary entries—is that this young man was an engaging youth, dealing with friends, mostly women, in a way that showed him to be a stunningly out-going and amicable young person who might have been a significant diplomat (as he claimed he was seeking to be) or an actor (which he sought to be, perhaps, as a way to play out identities he was not permitted in daily life).

       It’s hard, indeed, to talk about this joyous young man without simply breaking into tears, as the director does when the local priest, who comforted one of the killers, Aaron McKinney, argues that he, too, as human being deserves pardon. Shepard’s remarkable parents, in fact argued against the death penalty for Matthew’s killers, and have worked endlessly since to help the cease the hatred that led to their son’s horrible death.

       If Father Roger Schmit painfully argues for forgiveness, at the same moment he proposes that those who loved Matthew should “never lose their anger.” Indeed, I have to admit after seeing so many images of the appealing boy, I too became angry. Why should anyone have had to suffer the death simply because of being sexually different from most of the culture in which he had grown up?

       This movie, fortunately, refuses to show that anger, instead reminding us of the love his friends felt for him, and demonstrating, remarkably, just how much he was loved—perhaps without even recognizing it during his brief life. Matthew Shepard, luckily, was not one of the forgotten, but continues to be, even today, a figure who has helped to change the entire American landscape with regard to sexuality. 

      

Los Angeles, August 2, 2016

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (August 2016).