Leanne Hanley | Sapphire / 2021

the addictions

by Douglas Messerli

 

Harry Hains (screenplay), Leanne Hanley (director) Sapphire / 2021 [14 minutes]

 

In this rather superficial, apparently autobiographical tale, a trans man Ethan, addicted to love and drugs, creates an alter ego named Sapphire (Andreja Pejic) who struts across the set in lovely colored wigs playing out various tropes of film musicals, romances, and trippy drug scenes.

  She falls in love with Max (Lachlan Woods) who desperately loves her, the two quickly becoming a couple. While they make intense love, cocaine and heroin soon take over, and even Max who attempts to control her intake finds it impossible to help.

    We see the story played out primarily through the memories of Ethan/Sapphire, but at moments we get what appears to be the viewpoint of Max, who proclaims “At first she helped me escape my misery, but then she became my misery,” which, obviously, might also be the observation of Ethan/Sapphire as well.

     Within the depths of her suffering, Sapphire locks herself away in the bathroom, shoots up, and nearly dies before being finally sent away to an institution for help.

     The film is basically beautiful to watch, but an empty story with regard to such a serious drug addiction; certainly, it offers no deep insights about how the addictions developed or how they might be contained, although it does appear that by film’s end Sapphire has found peace with her Ethan half and, obviously, is able to talk somewhat objectively about her problem.

     The writer of this work, Australian actor Harry Hains, died in Los Angeles one year before the release of this film at the age of 27 of fentanyl intoxication. In photographs of him I’ve seen, he looks a great deal like the figure telling Sapphire’s story after the fact. And the final film was produced by his mother, Jane Bader, who plays a saintly nurse in the movie.

 

Los Angeles, October 7, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (October 2025).

 

Armen Kazazian | Gold / 2005

heart of gold

by Douglas Messerli

 

Armen Kazazian (screenwriter and director) Gold / 2005 [16 minutes]

The “kept boy” of Canadian director Armen Kazazian’s 2005 Gold, Jay (PJ Laic) is asked by his elderly lover, the now blind artist Calvin (Aron Tager) to paint under his careful instructions of where and how to place and push the brush across the canvas. It is a grueling and quite impossible task, particularly for a young street boy who has learned nothing about art in his youth, and given the fact, moreover, that Calvin is painting through his lover’s eyes simply out of need, a sense of pleasure which the boy cannot share, with no intention of selling the works.    

     The artist’s temper, moreover, is nearly impossible to deal with, and when Jay complains, Calvin’s only reaction is a further threat. It is a relief when the boy is sent off for cigarettes. He also stops by to pick some art supplies, where a young painter working in the store extols the wonder of Cal’s paintings, pointing to a new hardback edition of a book of the artist’s paintings.

   The young artist complains that he can never succeed in attaining the vision of Jay’s artist friend, to which Jay simply and quite innocently suggests that he should perhaps get his “own vision,” a viewpoint mocked by the would-be artist, Barry (Darryn Lucio), who suggests Jay stick to what he knows best, demeaning his role as Calvin’s gigolo, which seems to be knowledge shared by the whole city.

     Hurt, Jay cannot resist joining up for a few moments with an old street friend, Ken (D. Garnet Harding, who also performed in Greg Atkins’ Build of a year earlier) who stands at his usual corner, sharing a few snorts of cocaine and a good fuck. Ken admits that before Jay, he was Cal’s sweetheart and he can’t understand why Jay doesn’t take advantage of the blind old man, after all accidents do happen. His paintings must be worth a fortune. He brags of having stolen the wallet of a john who Jay knows as a kind man who pays well. It is apparent that Jay is disturbed by his former street-friend’s suggestions.

      When he leaves Ken’s apartment and returns to the corner, a car slows down and he, almost by rote, gets in, picking up a man for suck as in the old days. Clearly Jay is conflicted and can’t resist returning, at moments, to his old ways.

     But he does finally arrive back at Cal’s with the packages. Cal knows where he’s been and is angry, but is so anxious to continue the painting that he can hardly take the time out to reprimand his lover. As Jay again takes up the brush, he insists he can’t, that Cal find someone else, but the old man insists he needs only Cal, and together they make another painting; Cal holds Jay’s hand, guiding it to the center of the canvas where he puts a large daube of red paint that drips slowly down the canvas. “Bleeding, it’s called bleeding,” Cal purrs into Jay’s ear, his head almost resting on the boy’s shoulder, shuddering with pleasure in what might almost pass for an orgasm. Art is clearly necessary to his life, and Jay is willing and being paid to help him find it.

     As they move up the stairs soon after to put Cal to bed, the artist admits that he only paints to feel, that all Jay needs to do as well is to “feel.” He brings him near to kiss him, but falls back against the banister, for a moment making it appear as if Jay might indeed to be playing out his friend’s scenario. But Jay pulls him back.

     As the boy pulls him close almost in tears, Cal asks why he does “this” to himself, that he’ll take care him, he doesn’t need to worry, suggesting that he has already sent up a financial support for the boy. The vague referent presumably refers to Cal’s continued backsliding into prostitution, Jay pleading that he feels “so fucking old.” “You’re damaged, that’s all,” Cal insists. “You just have to heal. I healed. You will too. You just have to try.”

     Suddenly he asks the boy, “What color is your hair?” Jay mutters, “Brown.” “What color are your eyes?” “Brown.” “What color is your heart?” Jay smiles, kissing the artist. “Jay, what color is your heart?” From rote, apparently a kind of litany they have exchanged before, Jay whispers, “Gold.” “That’s right,” Cal concludes. Obviously in Jay he has found the fabled prostitute with a heart of gold.

 

Los Angeles, March 27, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (March 2023).

 

 

Bastian Schweitzer | Gigolo / 2005

the whore

by Douglas Messerli

 

Bastian Schweitzer (screenwriter and director) Gigolo / 2005 [15 minutes]

 

Karim (Salim Kéchiouche) is a gigolo for a wealthy unnamed Parisian female (Amanda Lear) who is growing increasingly frustrated with his brooding silences and calculated lies. Even in his diaristic correspondence the good-looking Karim writes “Trust no one. Don’t say anything. Talk to no one. Conceal everything.”

    Although he claims to be a former Egyptian boxer he is really, so she has uncovered, Algerian. She doesn’t mind that, but the lies, his refusal to speak, to talk about his past finally has lead her to the realization that her dream of having a youthful lover that might bring out her own beauty is over. As she confides to a telephone correspondent, “Karim must go.”

     Yet we see the situation also from Karim’s eyes, learn of his increasing frustration of being a plaything for wealthy individuals and his growing his anger for even having come to Paris. On the side, we quickly discern, Karim is also being paid by an equally wealthy male (Stéphane Rolland) to be his lover, to make high-class semi-porn movies, and to serve his purposes as well.

 

    At other moments, we see Karim getting fucked by toughs under Paris bridges. And we gradually learn something about his own childhood, how his mother, a prostitute herself, left him, and how he was used as a male prostitute back in Algeria as well. He describes himself, through his Paris life, as being no one but a whore, a dog who has learned to bite.

    French-speaking Swiss director Bastian Schweitzer’s film hands us a firecracker about to explode. The melodramatic situation he has created, in fact, does finally break Karim apart, as he is forced to leave both of his wealthy supporters and attempts in a long drug-induced period of a few days to spill out his memories and feelings in the form of a vast apologetic letter to the woman for who he could not be the lover she desired, and who apparently he most desired to please.

     Schweitzer’s work, although beautifully filmed, is far too psychologically explanatory and sentimental for my taste, but reminds us that there are individuals trapped within a world of sexual relationships not entirely of their own making. If nothing else, the director provides with a quick glimpse of the underbelly of the privileged world of Parisian wealth in the early 21st century.

 

Los Angeles, March 27, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (March 2023).

 

Joachim Back | The New Tenants / 2009

dancing

by Douglas Messerli

 

Anders Thomas Jensen and David Rakoff (screenplay, adapted from Jensen’s original Danish short film De Nye Lejere), Joachim Back (director) The New Tenants / 2009 [21 minutes]

 

Almost as if David Mamet were attempting to write a play in the style of Harold Pinter, Joachim Back’s 2009 dramatic comedy begins with a long harangue by Frank (David Rakoff)—as he sits across a small table from Peter (Jamie Harold)—concerning the terrible world we live in including mass shootings, meaningless deaths, etc., all of which, he argues, none of us can properly assimilate. We assume that before death we can make sense of things, but we all disappear with kind of whimper and a desperate cry out that death has come too soon.

   Peter is attempting to consume a lunch of shish kabob, but finds I difficult to eat given all of the smoke coming from Frank’s cigarette. They are clearly opposites, the one quiet, patient, Peter, dressed in a white T-shirt, the other, Frank, garbed in a beanie hat, scarf, and coat as if he were freezing on an icy street, with a demeanor that suggests he might be trying to channel Peter Falk. They can hardly bear each other’s company, yet here they sit, a gay couple, we soon find out, who have just moved into this apartment.

     Jeffrey Bowers, writing in the online magazine Vice nicely summarizes the situation:

 

“The tenants are an ‘opposites attract’ gay couple—Frank (writer/actor David Rakoff) and Peter (Jamie Harold). Frank, is a chain-smoking, world class loather who can’t stop ranting about life’s insignificance to his annoyed, yet caring lover. Peter, playing the film’s only caring character, is in for quite a ride when the apartment’s burdens literally come knocking on the door. First to arrive is a mad make-uped Grandma desperately seeking flour for a cinnamon bun recipe being baked for her granddaughter.”

 

     Frank, who answers the door, responds with the straight-faced jocular manner answering the old woman’s request that his relationship to flour is “not all it could be” due to not having baked since 1987. Perhaps she might try the couple who live below them.

     Delighted to share the gossip, she explains since they were shot; well, Jerry, the previous tenant who lived in their apartment was shot and when they came to see what all the noise was about, they too were killed. Didn’t he know that? Jerry comments that they hadn’t been apprised of terrible event when they signed for the apartment.

     Peter suddenly appears with a plastic bag of flour he has found in the kitchen cabinet, left we soon discover, by the previous tenant, finally sending Grandma (Hannah Hanft) on her way.

     It that same cupboard, Peter has also found some potato chips which he now begins to chow down, despite the odious cigarette fumes that once more make their way toward his nose and throat.

     Yet they hardly get another moment alone before the there is again a knock at the door, this time Peter answering it, as a rather obese man, Jan (Vincent D’Onofrio) pushes his way in, armed with a crowbar. He’s out to seek revenge on Jerry, who has evidently been seeing his wife Irene, whose mother, so it seems, is also the “Grandma” next door.

     When the astounded couple explain that they have just moved in and have never seen or even known of Irene, the sad husband sits and, with tears alternately flowing between bouts of further anger, briefly bleats out the sad tale of his wife’s unfaithfulness and her refusal to even let him touch her.

     But with another knock on the door, he again raises the crowbar into the air, and goes to face what he apparently believes is the miscreant with whom his wife cheated. He is immediately shot and killed by the newcomer, a local drug dealer Zelko (Kevin Corrigan) who perhaps was the man who killed Jerry and the couple downstairs. Pulling in Jan’s dead body, he demands to know if they’ve, by chance, found the bag of heroin for which Jerry still owes him.

      What else can the new tenants do but to deny any knowledge of such a bag, despite the fact that Zelko has noted their very brief contact of eyes in recognition of what was actually in the cupboard. He is ready to do them in as well and look around the place for himself. That is, until Grandma knocks loudly at their door, complaining even more she makes contact with them about the contents of the flour they have loaned her for her Cinnamon buns.

       Zelko shoots her dead through the door, opens it, and drags her body into the apartment to join Jan’s corpse.

       Do they know how much they now owe him, given the fact, as he perceives, they have handed over the heroin to Grandma? Cowering as he raises the gun, another interloper opens the door and conks Zelko with the crowbar over the head as he too joins the duo on the floor.

       She is the faithless Irene (Liane Balaban), now stoned out of her head. She curls up on the couch, recognizing her husband on the floor as well as her Grandma before she falls into a deep sleep from which she may not ever awaken.

       After a moment of absolute quietude and surely shocked relief, Frank takes out two cigarettes, lights them, and hands one to Peter, who this time readily puts it to his mouth. The two stand, move toward one another, reaching out to hold hands as they take each other their arms, slowly moving into a dance that takes them out into the hall and out of the building, dancing, dancing as a recipe for “Cinnamon Buns” scrolls down the screen before the credits. These two gay men have just escaped their abode where now 7 corpses have been left behind, all in the name of love and drugs. One might argue that in this short film, unlike Vito Russo’s theory that in Hollywood movies the gays must die, the only ones to survive are the queers, the sanest of species.

      This film won the Best Live Action Short at the 82nd Academy Awards, which is somewhat surprising, given that except for the strange camera aspect ratio of 2.35 : 1, making for a very narrow screen in which the action is shot up most close that primarily results in a sense of intense claustrophobia, this production, nonetheless, smells entirely of greasepaint and stage boards.

 

Los Angeles, October 6, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (October 2025).