dress rehearsal
by
Douglas Messerli
Tristan
Scott-Behrends (screenwriter and director) The Man of My Dreams / 2021
[4 minutes]
Whatever
led Criterion—usually very choosy as to the films they show on their site—to
find Tristan Scott-Behrends’ 4-minute
dream-like landscape of the particular pockets of Manhattan where actors Henry
Bae, playing Christopher, and DJ Reed (appearing and reappearing as his lover)
traipse around in the newest trans outfits provided by the Swedish H&M
(Hennes & Mauritz) and Zara clothing enterprises, to be of significant
interest I can’t imagine. At least it’s nicely filmed; but the cinematic voice droning
out a truly empty narrative about the love Christopher imagines one day
encountering and by the end of their brief rouge-lipped kiss-fest actually does,
is truly amateur stuff.
There’s
nothing at all even slightly profound about this work. And who it might have
been made for totally stymies me. Are gay men and women just dying to see a
couple dressed up for a poor man’s fantasy of a Met ball riding the empty
subway where Christopher intones “His beautiful red lips would whisper, ‘I love
you,” and “How quickly stranger’s stares turned into love when they recognized
the love radiating between us?” I guess we have to imagine that we’re the
strangers traveling along on their imaginary journey to nowhere.
But then I have come to learn that I’m
simply not the right audience for Tristan Scott-Behrends’ makeup fantasies. I have
to admit that I find his filmmaking almost embarrassing. If nothing else, this
is certainly better than Lilac Lips, Dutchess County released the same
year, which equally flummoxed me when it appeared on Dekkoo.
Los
Angeles, January 20, 2026
Reprinted
from My Queer Cinema blog (January 2026).
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