by Douglas Messerli
Jake Graf (screenplay), Alicya Eyo and Sophy Holland (directors) Brace
/ 2015 [30 minutes]
For many in the LGBTQ community, sex is
complicated, particularly when it comes to gender. It is, after all, the
same-sex attraction of homosexuals and bisexuals that has created such a
bugaboo to the heterosexual majority over so many centuries that is the source
of so such unabating prejudice and hate. But as British filmmakers Alicya Eyo
and Sophy Holland reveal in their short film Brace that problem is minor
compared with the complications of their central characters, Adam (performed by
the film’s writer Jake Graf) and Rocky (Harry Rundle) surrounded by a fine
supporting cast.
Adam, in married relationship with a woman, is having difficulties
sustaining his relationship, and clearly is ready to shift his sexual interests
to the gay world, having been secretly cruising the gay clubs for some time.
We
recognize early on that there is more to this story when Adam’s father reacts
to the news with the words, “Jesus Christ, now you’re a bloody poof,” and
accuses him of continually dropping bombshells on them.
But
as we watch Adam move into the world of London gay club life, we are distracted
as the new freed gay man meets ups with a cute boy named Rocky. At first, Adam
is someone distant, but as he encounters the new boy again an attraction begins
to develop between the two as Rocky, admitting he’s from up north and new to
London, suggests that Adam and he go for a tour of the city. As they do so they
quickly begun to find themselves falling for one another.
Again, we sense something deeper going on when as the two (who make up a
kind of “brace” in hunting terms) visit a bar where a customer begins to react
negatively to seeing two such queer boys together, Rocky seeming to be more
than a little sensitive about the situation. And we can only wonder whether or
not he too is new to the gay world. Some of his overreaction may have to do
with the fact that, as we discover, he grew up in foster homes, and therefore
never had parents to help him build up the kind of defense mechanisms
traditional parents require. I had never before perceived that our some of our first
realizations that the differences one is feeling will eventually have to
involve one’s own parents serves almost as an inoculation against all the later
outside reactions to one’s sense of queerness. For the young Rocky being openly
gay in the world is a bit like opening himself up to all the fears and hatreds
he has not previously quite imagined and certainly not had to immediately
endure.
In
this case, Rocky must soon face the very worst that this communal homophobia
has to offer. The first incidence seems of minor importance. As the two boys go
walking down the street, Adam suddenly pulls Rocky into an alley to give him a
long kiss; but Rocky pulls momentarily back, suggesting that there's something
important he has to tell him first. Adam claims that they all have secrets and
that's important they first just get to know each other, refusing him the
opportunity of telling him what Rocky feels is important. “Let’s just get to
know one another first, like normal people.” Their kiss seems to resolve any
difficulties.
An
evening later begins with Adam having to tell his ex-wife, who has planned to
join the “boys,” that, having forgotten she was joining them, he’d planned on
going to an all-male bar Mamba, so she won’t be able to join them. She wishes
them a “great testosterone-fueled night,” a statement for more ironic than it
seems on first viewing.
But
after their night they are confronted at another quick food stop by a real
brute and his friends. As Rocky stands up in defense, he calls him a “fucking
queer,” and forces him to sit back down before living with his pack. As Adam
and Rocky separate for the night, Rocky encounters the gang again in a back
street and is brutally beaten so badly that he ends up in a hospital.
Meanwhile, having not heard from him for days, despite a good-night
kiss, Adam is afraid “he’s just off me,” worried about the fact that he can’t
contact his new friend, his phone having been switched off. But a telephone
call from a hospital where his name has been found in the wallet of a patient
named Sarah Gibbs soon reveals Rocky’s whereabouts.
Of
course, Adam knows of no Sarah Gibbs but still visits the Royal Park Hospital
the next morning to discover what it’s all about. The nurse (played by
co-director Alicya Eyo) replies, when he upon suddenly seeing Rocky lying in
the bed why he is in here among all the women, “Because she is a woman. She’s
one of those transsexuals. She hasn’t got a penis and that’s a woman in my
book.” Suddenly Adam denies knowing “her,” and quickly leaves only to stop for
what is now evidently the perquisite vomiting required of males who discover
that they have been kissing and contemplating love with a woman who is really a
man (as in Neil Jordan’s 1992 film The Crying Game) or in this case with
a man who has been involved with a woman he has thought to be a man. I presume
that there is a great deal of humor on Graf’s part in reversing the situation,
although even that soon turns more complex.
Regretting his behavior, he returns to the hospital only to find Sarah
has released herself from care. “I’m looking for my friend. He was in this
bed,” the nurse replying “He? More like it? We all saw what she done to
herself. Freak of nature if you ask me.”
“Where is he?”
“The young lady has gone.”
Such medical disdain for transsexual individuals is far too common.
When he attempts to make contact again with Rocky, he wants nothing to
do with Adam, having heard his denial of even knowing him to the nurse. He
relates how earlier in his life he was attacked for being a “tranny” and now
he’s beginning “queer-bashed,” and he’s sure that now Adam will leave him as
well.
But
Adam assures him he’s not leaving, even though Rocky himself admits to feeling
he’s a freak. And the relationship picks up again, the two getting on quite
nicely. In a gay bar restroom, they begin to kiss, this time Adam attempting to
pull back as Rocky pushes forward, moving his hand down to feel his cock only
to discover that Adam is also transsexual.
The next day when Rocky confronts Adam about his own reaction, he
attempts to explain: “All my life I just wanted to fit in. …I wish I were like
you. I want to believe that things are changing and that people accept us, and
if we have each other we’ll be okay. All I want more than anything else in the
world. I just want to be normal.” And having said that, he walks away to find
his personal version of what he believes is “normal.”
Normality has new and strange meanings in this world of gender confusion
and fluidity. Being normal is apparently defined by someone like Rocky (played
by Rundle, a cis-gender male, after Graf and Sophy Holland could not find a
suitable trans male to play the role) as being with someone of the opposite
sex, something Adam has also attempted in leaving his same-sex marriage for a
gay man, representing a sexual world that most heterosexuals would not imagine
as being “normal,” but obviously in traditional gender definitions, makes for a
kind strange logic.
Increasingly, the LGBTQ community has made clear that there is no
“normality,” merely a statistical preponderance. Nature does not care about
normality, but finds wonderful ways of constantly creating new desires and
intersexual possibilities. Why shouldn’t two transsexual individuals fall in
love and want to spend their lives together?
As one of the most visible trans men in the United Kingdom Graf has
talked about the self-hate that continues even after transitioning for
transsexuals. He himself first lived in lesbian relationships before, after
testosterone injections, he began to find himself attracted to men. But he now
claims that his attractions are to individuals without regard to gender.
Given its limited budget, Brace is an amazingly well-filmed and edited
movie with one of the most complex and sophisticated scripts about transsexual
relationships to date. Graf has gone on to work on other films and I hope
others with comparable talents soon take his example in creating such
interesting projects concerning such figures.
Los Angeles, January 11, 2023
Reprinted from World Cinema Review (January
2023).
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