Ana Kokkinos | Head On / 1998

the no-man’s land between love and hate

by Douglas Messerli

 

Andrew Bovell, Ana Kokkinos, and Mira Robertson (screenplay, based on the book Loaded by Christos Tsiolkas), Ana Kokkinos (director) Head On / 1998

 

It seems rather surprising to me, given the fact that as early as 1994 Australian cinema had totally embraced the gay drag and transgender road comedy, Stephan Elliott’s The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and beat all the other English-language countries by featuring gay characters in an ongoing TV series as early as 1972 in Number 96, that Australian director Ana Kokkinos’ hard-hitting 1998 film Head On met with great controversy not only because of its presentation of the large Melbourne Greek community—arguing that it was intensely homophobic—and for the fact that it presented Australia as a country more than a little xenophobic, but simply for its graphic presentation of sex. Unlike the trio riding the outback on the Priscilla bus, the lead character in Head On, Ari (Alex Dimitriades), is not at all the cute boy like the character Guy Pearce plays in Priscilla who likes dressing up like a girl, but if necessary you can take home to your mother; Ari rather is a confused, intensely angry, closeted, drug addicted, almost S&M-oriented gay man who in one long 24-hour period goes on the run for someone who might possibly be able to help him come to a solution and whom he might even come to love.

     In this film Ari does not succeed. To put it bluntly, he totally fucks up. Yet in his desire, the trajectory of the film, and his underlying dreams, the central character of Kokkinos’ film shares a great deal with the characters featured in a genre that became popular that same year as evidenced in British filmmaker Simon Shores’ Get Real and US director David Moreton’s Edge of Seventeen. These were the earliest of a new version of the “coming out” genre which I have dubbed “version B,” a radically different species from the earlier, gritter testimonies beginning in the late 1940s with the works of filmmakers Chris Harrington, Kenneth Anger, Gregory Markopoulos, Jacques Demy, John Schmitz, and others that seemed to come to a transitional ending in A. J. Rose, Jr.’s Penis of 1965, works I describe as “version A” of the coming out genre.

      Except for Ari being two years older than the usual 17-year old figures of this genre, facing their sexuality at the moment of their graduation and leaving school and home, he is also very much in the process of coming to terms with his identity and is desperately seeking a way—despite his inability to find or job or perhaps his lack of desire to seek one—to leave his parents and his adolescent life behind, announcing himself to the world as a gay man.

      The differences between Ari and most of others of this genre, however, is crucial in that he seems unable to find a way out, meeting up in every direction he turns with a wall of human beings shouting out for him to turn back: his parents, his friends, his community, police, and the society itself. He cannot even turn to a treasured past—since it was a fascist world against which his parents and most of the elderly members of his Greek community stood against and finally fled. And in the Australia of the day, hostile to all of its millions of immigrants from all corners of the world, there is no future as well.

      Yet, unlike the gay figures making the same journey earlier, he does not “die,” even symbolically. As he reports at film’s end, his father’s abuse only makes him stronger. And there is something at least hopeful in his daily challenges to a world in which as a stunningly beautiful but bitterly gay immigrant he has no place. His no-man-land’s condition makes me want to suggest that this quite amazing film is perhaps the missing link between the version A of the coming out film and version B, when everything, despite the difficulties in explaining to the world that you don’t share their sexual outlook and a great many attendant values, became far easier to announce family, friends, and all the others who may hate you, “I’m gay, and that’s who I am.” As some survivors have described the major difference, in late 1940s and early 50s, there was no one to come out “to,” no place in which one would be permitted, a situation not so very different, despite the existence of bars and the possibility of gay friends, to the way Ari’s sees his world.

      The film begins in heterosexual paradise, at a wedding of family and friends in which Ari leads the celebrants on a Greek line dance—the first of many such dances which will link this film through all of its segments with family, culture, and pleasure which everything, including family and culture, will attempt to cut and sever.

       Even here, Ari immediately breaks away, heading off in a brooding manner into a world that is the inverse of the that from which he has just escaped. Desperately angry with his situation, hating his family and its ethnic traditions, and detesting himself for being sexually different, Ari seeks out punishing sexual encounters at the Melbourne shipping docks. Throughout the film, almost all of his “lovers” are ugly brutes, whether they be Asian, Greek, Turkish, or “wogs” (a word that originally signified a “westernized oriental gentlemen,” but now suggests any immigrant who pretends assimilation). Even his masturbation is violent as the film reveals in a full nude scene early on—a scene attacked by easily offended would-be censors.    

    There is but one exception in his pattern of sexual partners, a young man he meets in his brother’s and sister-in-law’s house, Sean (Julian Garner), a blond-haired gentle-speaking boy of his age who immediately seems attracted to Ari, as Ari is to him.

     They have breakfast together before Ari is forced to leave him, his brother having received a desperate phone call from his and Ari’s parents asking for the boy’s whereabouts since he has remained out all night. His brother keeps repeating, “Boy, are you in for trouble,” which is not only the truth, but quickly becomes worse that anyone might imagine.

      The rest of the film might be described as an attempt—despite the endless roadblocks he and everyone around him put up to prevent it—to get back to Sean.

       If one thinks of the world of West Side Story, or Romeo and Juliet as being violent, after watching this film we might re-think those works in their two-sided battles as representing boys playing soldiers instead of going off to actual war. In Kokkinos’ cinema, Melbourne is a brutal battlefield wherein, as one character puts it, “everyone hates everyone.”

       Ari, accordingly is a Tony that will never find his gay Juliet because of the wounds he acquires in the process of simply walking the city streets.

      First of all, there is his father, a proud man who with his wife fought the Greek fascists before escaping to Australia. His password might be described as “freedom,” which is what he has fought for all of his life in order to be able to provide, like almost immigrants desire, a good life to his children. He wants them to become something of importance, a doctor, a lawyer, to marry, to simply be happy. But as Ari points out early in the film, the son is not bright enough to become a university student, too Greek to easily find an interesting job, and is gay, having no desire for the traditional family into which he has been born. In short, in the eyes of his father, and therefore in his own eyes, he is a failure. His father’s much touted “freedom” permits no freedom at all for his son, locked away as he is in his family’s bedroom and even at 19 attacked for staying out all night.

      They not only know nothing about his sexuality, but have no comprehension that in his anger and frustration and just simple boredom he has turned to drugs, not just marijuana, but coke and heroin. Yet the first thing his father does in his attempt to restrict his daily wanderings and nights out with friends, is cut off his small allowance, forcing Ari to gamble on quick loans from his own brother. He wins, and all seems well for a few moments, until various other barriers arise.

      There is a moment with his mother in the kitchen in which we almost witness familial love as they dance to a contemporary song. But when his father witnesses the event he turns off the radio replacing it with a Greek record, he joining his son again in a Sirtaki for a few lovely moments. But soon after when Ari says he’s going out for the night with friends, his father demands he join his mother and himself at a party, he storms out of the house; his mother calling after him to keep a watch over his younger sister, Alex (Andrea Mandalis).

       Another friend, Johnny, now Tula (Paul Capsis), a transgender woman who looks to Ari for her survival, is vilified by her father, an old friend of Ari’s dad who won’t even acknowledge their friendship anymore due to what Johnny/Tula has become. Tula begs Ari to join her for the night, he attempting to explain that he has other plans.

       At the required party, Ari’s best friend Joe (Damien Fotiou) announces his engagement to his girlfriend Dina (Dora Kaskanis), to which the already emotionally fraught Ari finds it difficult to respond in the positive manner they expect. Taking Dina aside, he hears her confession that she is not so much in love with Joe but, basically speaking, is bored with her current life and wants to take a trip with him to Greece as a wedding gift. Like all the women in this film, she is really attracted to Ari.

       Ari also quickly perceives that Joe is not desperately seeking to marry, and later accuses him of what is probably the truth, that Joe has been paid by the girl’s family to marry her, a traditional way to arrange that an overweight and not so beautiful daughter might find true happiness.

       And then there’s Joe’s neurotic sister Betty (Elena Mandalis) to be cared for. Ari not only provides her with the drugs for which she’s desperate, but tries and fails to satisfy her sexually as well, she realizing in the process that he’s a “poufta,” a fag, for which she wildly mocks him.

       What Ari’s parents don’t know, as well, is that their own daughter is seeing Charlie, a Lebanese boy, an impossible relationship given the ethnic rifts that roar through this movie. Even Ari doesn’t like the situation, but won’t be a hypocrite by standing in her way, even if his responsibility demands that he must.

       Escaping the party he makes his way to a Greek bar where none of his friends like to go anymore, but then neither do they like the poufta bars which he haunts. Besides, the Anglo boy Sean will be there, presumably to eat up some of the Greek culture since the bar features excellent Bouzuki playing, singing, and dancing.

      But Sean seems to be attached to a Greek girl who speaks out against racism and espouses liberal causes. The magic between them the two men seems to have dissipated.  Disappointed, Ari catches the eye of an older Greek bearded man who looks like the archetypally aged sailor, the two sneaking out for violent back alley sex, Ari sucking off the man and demanding, in turn, that the brute at least “pull” him.

     Angry at the situation once more, Ari dances out some of his frustrations. This time his beautiful moves are clearly meant to catch Sean’s attention. But instead, Johnny / Tula shows up, shocking everyone in the restaurant which, as a central Greek gathering place, is not open to the idea of a transgender suddenly appearing amongst them. She demands that Ari dance with her, but Ari cannot possibly do so without announcing his being gay to the entire community. He moves away, and she dances alone, actually engaging some of the crowd while others boo her.

      Furious with the situation, Ari leaves and attempts to hail a cab, but both Sean and Johnny stop him, Sean finally admitting that he finds him attractive, as Ari and Tula head off to a gay bar where Sean promises to meet them.

      On their way, Tula passes Ari more drugs in the form a sugar cube, and two, discovering their driver is Turkish, suddenly become engaged with their ancient “enemy” is a loving display of songs and cultural sharing, having so much fun that the cabbie drives through a red light, the police stopping them.

      Ari begs Tula to remain quiet, but she cannot, asking in the noir femme fatale manner of someone like Lauren Bacall, “What seems to be the problem officer?” Despite the severity of the situation, they break down into a fit of laughter.

     Neither they nor the audience are prepared for what follows. Taken into custody, two policemen force them to strip, and proceed to beat Johnny simply because of the fact that he is a woman with a cock. Ari can do nothing to help her as he watches her beaten and kicked again and again while he stands stark naked in a white-walled, fluorescently-lit space.

      After, he begs for forgiveness, but Tula, it appears, is tougher than even he is. When Ari argues that she should have just kept her mouth quiet, Tula answers by pulling Ari to his knees: “Every time you keep your mouth. Every time you keep quiet, that’s where you’ll stay! You have to stand up against all the shit and all the hypocrisy. That’s the only way to make a difference.”

       If this is a coming out story, Tula has already outed herself, realizing what Ari hasn’t yet quite been able to come to terms with. You need to take a stand no matter how much you’re beaten and you suffer. Like their parents, Tula is brave, fighting for her own cause.

      Finally, long after the appointed hour, Ari shows up to the gay bar unable to spot Sean anywhere. In a lurid tour of the backrooms where everyone seems to grabbing out for a piece of him, he finally spots his “Maria.”

     And for the first time the two engage in a deep kiss, Ari beginning the motions of sexual engagement. But Sean gently whispers, “Not here.” And a few moments later, he shows Ari into his own apartment where, unlike all of the other brutal engagements Ari has undergone all day, someone stands behind him and lovingly strokes his beautiful face, Ari accepting what he has never encountered previously, a true embracement. Sean whispers, “I think I’m falling in love with you,” and his kneels to suck Ari’s cock.

     Ari’s head falls back in utter pleasure, but before we can even register the fact, he is again thrusting violently forward, wildly like an animal, not a lover. Thrown to the floor, Sean stands and pushes him down, trying to imagine what is happening. When Ari attempts to regain bodily contact Sean grabs and wrestles him down, pulling his out the door and tossing his clothes after, rejecting the utter violence he has not expected.

     Ari sits against the wall, unable after all that he has been through to even move, simply repeating the words, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

      Once more at the docks we see Ari, whose image alternates with archive film of the arrival, perhaps at the same dock, of boats of political refuges such as his parents, as his voice firmly intones: “My father’s insults make me strong. I accept them all. I’m sliding toward the sewer. I’m not struggling, I can smell the shit. But I’m still breathing. I’m going to lead my life. I’m not going to make a difference.”

     Ari begins once more to dance.

     “I’m not going to change a thing. No one’s going to remember me when I’m dead. I’m a sailor and a whore. And I will be until the end of the world.”

     If Ari is not yet dead, the fate those of those early “coming out” figures had at least metaphorically to face, neither is he fully out, and he may not ever to able to advertise himself the way Tula does. What he realizes is that not everyone can be a hero.

     But he’s so close to being there we imagine the next battle he faces the very next day might take him there. If he is truly sorry, if he is capable of learning from the lessons Tula has taught him, he will be able to move on, take his head out of sewer and stand up proud, like all the young boys were beginning to do at the end of their movies in 1998. This wonderful film leaves him painfully just shy of his goal. But his dance suggests he will soon link up with a new freedom he seeks—a freedom different from that of the older generation. Perhaps he already has, and his dance is the first announcement to the world.

 

Los Angeles, November 18, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (November 2012).

Frank Mosvold | Bølgene (Waves) / 1998

in search of it

by Douglas Messerli

 

Frank Mosvold (screenplay, based on the novel by Øyvind Ellenes), Frank Mosvold (director) Bølgene (Waves) / 1998

 

Norwegian director Frank Mosvold is one of the several Scandinavian directors who came to age as significant filmmakers in the last three decades of the 20th century, and have continued to produce significant works since.

     Mosvold’s early works such as A Kiss in the Snow (1997) and Waves (1998) are laconic dramas of deep friendship that very subtly spill over into a quiet expression of love which is all the more dramatic given their unexpectedness. In the former film that moment comes when one boy in the midst of a snowball fight suddenly kisses his friend. Nothing really changes in their lives; indeed the boy who kissed his friend soon moves away. But a long delayed letter expressing his love still speaks of an earthquake of change which will likely affect these young men for the rest of their lives.

     Nothing quite so dramatic occurs in Mosvold’s beautifully understated film of the next year, released in Norwegian as Bølgene. Outwardly in this film things go on in a rather unchanging rhythm not unlike the quiet waves that lap against the shore of the island where two teenagers have made their way for the last ten years of their lives.

     But this year is somehow different without having outwardly changed at all. Indeed the 10.34- minute film begins with one of the two (played by Erick Ferguson and Stian Barsnes Simonsen) claiming that “Everything stays the same, nothing changes.” But as the other responds, “Everything changes sooner or later.” And we know by the end of this work that something very important has begun to change.

     Indeed, that possibility is expressed in the very first line of the film when one of the boys says, “You think about it too, right?” a vague statement with, between the two of them, a very particular referent in the “it,” to which the other pretends ignorance by answering, “What?”

    That referent is, in fact the subject of this film, as the two recall their many times of having made the annual retreat to the island, their childhood experiences there such as climbing trees (“No one has climbed as many trees as we have”), swimming, and just staring into the cabin fire with a cup of hot chocolate listening to the rain outside. As one of them puts it, “We always have a nice time out here.”

    They feel absolutely comfortable with one another and can speak with each other about anything. One of the boys suddenly asks, for example, “What was it like,” the other stating “At first I did it for her, to avoid not hurting her feelings.” What he is describing, obviously, is his sexual encounter with a woman. “Was it nice?” “Mostly it felt strange. Especially the warmth. I didn’t expect it to be that warm.”

    The other, obviously still a heterosexual virgin, wonders if he will ever do it, the experienced boy dismissing his statement to suggest that clearly he will once he finds the right woman. “You’re just picky,” he insists.

    But the boy proclaims: “I want someone I can talk to about anything. Like you.”

   “It’s different with girls.”

   Yet the boy remains adamant in his desires. “I only want to make love to someone I can talk about anything.”

    Apparently, what he is saying just below the surface is that he wants only to make love to his friend. Yet neither can admit that or openly express their feelings toward one another. 

    Earlier, when one of them suggested “Don’t you think it would be different if we lived here,” the other quickly shut down that avenue of conversation: “Don’t say that.” Asked a few moments later, “What’s on his mind,” the first answers, “You told me not to think like that.”

    We sense, accordingly, that we are getting closer to the “it” of their first sentence, the something that not only cannot be said, but cannot be thought of.

    But this time these two teenagers realize that they have suddenly grown into young adults, and they worry—the shy one perhaps more than the other—about what will happen in the future, how, despite his insistence that “everything is the same,” it may be different, everything having changed despite their desires that their world remain in suspension.

    In the middle of the night, one boy asking if the other is still awake, ponders “Do you realize it’s been ten years.”

    “What’s been ten years?” speaks the recalcitrant other.

    “Ten years since the first time we came here.” After a long pause, he continues, “I am glad you’re still here.”

    “I’m very fond of you,” the more reticent one finally admits.

    “You’ve never said that before,” responds the other.

    “No. But you knew it. I know you’re fond of me.”

    “I know you are to. But it’s nice to hear you say it.”

     I don’t want to make light of this touching scene, but it is almost as if we have suddenly been projected into the scene in the musical Fiddler on the Roof with Tevye and Golde singing in “Do You Love Me?” that “I guess I do.”

     And the next morning, as they sit ready to row back to the mainland, the slightly more mature boy takes their relationship a step further, asking if the other is cold, and when the other responds “A little,” putting his arm around his shoulder.

      The other again waxes a bit poetic: “Everything seems so distant. So far away.”

     “You’re so strange.”

     “And you.”

     “I’m not that strange,” suggesting a distance that still lies between them, the one far queerer than the other which forces them to keep their feelings of love for one another at a safe but almost intolerable distance.

      But then he adds: “But I understand what you mean. It’s as if nothing matters.”

      “Except us.”

      “Yes. us.”

      As they put the boat out into the water they repeat the opening phrases precisely, but this time the “it” is apparent and has been even admitted to, whether or not they can ever consummate their “marriage” with sex.

      Director Mosvold apparently proclaimed that this short film was grounded in the rules of Dogme95, which read:

 

Shooting must be done on location. Props and sets must not be brought in (if a particular prop is necessary for the story, a location must be chosen where this prop is to be found).

 

The sound must never be produced apart from the images or vice versa (Music must not be used unless it occurs where the scene is being shot).

 

The camera must be hand-held. Any movement or immobility attainable in the hand is permitted.

 

The film must be in color. Special lighting is not acceptable (If there is too little light for exposure the scene must be cut or a single lamp be attached to the camera).

 

Optical work and filters are forbidden.

 

The film must not contain superficial action (Murders, weapons, etc. must not occur).

 

Temporal and geographical alienation are forbidden (That is to say that the film takes place here and now).

 

Genre movies are not acceptable.

 

The film format must be Academy 35 mm.

 

The director must not be credited.           

       

     I have never been fond of putting strictures on what a filmmaker might or might do. And obviously, some of these “rules” have been intentionally bent if not broken in the example of Waves. Mosvold has accepted the credit for his film. The boy’s voices are often heard when the screen is black or a character is momentarily off camera. And I would argue that any movie discussing intense same-sex relationships, which this one does without specifically admitting it, is of the LGBTQ genre, since it still is perceived as something apart and different from the heterosexual normative films which dominate filmmaking. Moreover, this seems to be part of sub-genre of the broader gay category: if these boys haven’t just come out to one another, then I’ve missed the message of this lovely short.

 

Los Angeles, May 14, 2021

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

Frank Mosvold | Kysset som fikk snøen til å smelte (A Kiss in the Snow) / 1997

the rainbow

by Douglas Messerli

Tor Fretheim (screenplay), Frank Mosvold (director) Kysset som fikk snøen til å smelte (A Kiss in the Snow) / 1997

 

I say this with a sense of humor, realizing its absurd stereotypical assertions, but sometimes it does seem to me that Norwegian theater and screen writers have a habit of making a great deal out of nothing while making little out of highly significant events. A long stare out a window might seem to signify something of immense metaphysical significance while a roaring inferno of a fire in the orphanage might be dismissed as a casual misuse of a match. The latter is, of course, out of Ibsen, and the fire is of some importance since Mrs. Alving did not insure the building dedicated to the memory of her late husband; but since she finally comes to realize just how much she hated her husband and the disaster he has brought upon her son, she’s not really so very upset by the new building’s destruction. The long stare occurs in nearly every Norwegian play and movie I have ever witnessed, spilling over to the neighboring Swedish films of Ingmar Bergman and others.

     There is also a long stare out of the window of the apartment building in which Peder lives and  into which the new tenant Stian has just moved, that window observation saying a great deal about both boys who—after the pretense of their first meeting when Stian (Stian Barsnes Simonsen) visits Peder (Kristian Dale Hakkelberg) to borrow a pair of pliers to work on his bicycle—are fascinated with one another at first sight.

      So too is Peder’s “sort of” girlfriend Cecile (Silie Andresen) who the first moment she spots Stian speeding past them through the snowy sidewalk on his bike declares him as her “type.” Upon her very next encounter with him she thinks he’s good-looking (to which Peder agrees) and a second latter declares that she’s in love.

      By the very next scene we see Stian dancing with Cecile, while Peder sits in the room where his previous friends seem to having an enjoyable time, he staring away into space, not appearing to care for their company and refusing, when asked by another girl, to dance. He suddenly seems like the new boy, while Stian was become an insider.

     When Stian later queries about his relationship with Cecile, whether or not she is his girlfriend, he answers “sort of,” yet explains that they are not really dating. But when Stian invites him to join him and some friends for dinner at a local hang-out, Peder states he has to help his mother.

      In short, the handsome new boy has almost appeared to usurp Peder’s role in his own social community—although by this time already, only about 7 minutes into a short 21-minute film, the camera has made it quite clear through the covert glances of both boys that they are attracted to one another. Perhaps what the dialogue by Tor Fretheim is telling us, as opposed to Frank Mosvold’s direction, is that the boys do not yet quite know where they stand, not only in relationship to one another, but concerning sexuality in general.

       In any coming-of-age American or British film the Peder figure would have already been discussing his confusion with his best friend, Cecile, who might have helped him realize that he was gay and argued that he more openly express his feelings; 4-5 minutes later they might have been in each other’s arms (I present as evidence my often-cited “coming-of-age” movie models, Get Real and Edge of Seventeen, both released less than one year after this short). In this version of that genre, however, his girlfriend is his competitor—or at least she thinks she is, even if Stian’s long sidelong gaze at Peder during his dance reveals something else.

        The only time the now brooding Peder seems to come out of his funk is when, joining both Cecile and Stian in a winter walk they begin to make snow angels in a nearby park, the boys briefly wrestling before Stian bends down to suddenly plant a kiss upon Peder’s pretty mouth.

        Peder quickly finds an excuse to head back home, and Cecile asks Stian why he has done that, he answering in the simplest way possible, with a slight giggle in his voice, “I don’t know.” It is almost as if it didn’t really happen.

        But, obviously, we know it is the central event in this film whose title makes note of that fact. In kissing Peter, Stian has officially come out—at least to himself, later admitting his love for Peder. Yet here, as in so many Nordic films, guilt immediately takes hold of his mind—not from a religious belief for behaving in an “unnatural” manner, but from a sense of social responsibility, having intruded upon Cecile’s previous camaraderie with Peder. Indeed, Stian later appears at Peder’s apartment to seek out his forgiveness, stating that he must also apologize to Cecile as well.

       Peder makes no response, but simply sits quietly, afraid to express his own feelings which the cinematography of Brian Harding—with its close-up focus of the camera lens upon Peder as he lies awake in his bed masturbating and after watching from his high apartment window Stian and Cecile below, with his memory of Cecile’s previous comments, “Do you think he’s good looking?”  and “I think I’m in love” haunting him as expressions now of his own feelings—giving evidence to the causes of his brooding quietude. 

        As the cliché goes, these two boys have simply met at the wrong time in their lives, for Stian soon after reports that he will be moving to Bergen to live with his father, a city on the other coast of Norway which to people on eastern Oslo side of the country seems as far away as Iceland. 

        It is only at that moment that is friends seem to provide some possible sense of resistance to the natural course of events, Cecile asking why he can’t make his own decision about where he lives since at 16 he of legal age, Peder questioning him about how it might affect his schooling.

       Stian’s admission of love comes, too late of course, in the form of a letter:

 

               Dear Peder,

 

               I hope you are not mad at me for not writing sooner. I have tried many

               times. I hope you are with Cecile. That all is like before you met me. I

               didn’t mean to take her from you. I just wanted her as a friend so that I

               could be with you. You have probably forgotten about making angels in 

               the snow. Your angel came out so nice. I just had to kiss you. You may

               not believe in miracles, but that kiss made the snow melt. I wish you

               could have seen the rainbow I saw. Please don’t get angry with me or

               think bad thoughts. That’s when I realized I was in love with you.

 

               Your friend Stian.

 

    Finally perhaps Peder can also see the rainbow. At least in the film’s final scene the sun has come out.

 

Los Angeles, February 6, 2021

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