Alex Bohs | Mum / 2013

sharing the silence

by Douglas Messerli

 

Alex Bohs (screenwriter and director) Mum / 2013 [11 minutes]

 

William (David Thomases) has suffered, evidently, some traumatic experience regarding a brutal street attack. We never completely know what that trauma consisted of, but its effect is evident throughout the film as William swims back and forth in a public pool, sits in a basically unfurnished room in his house, paints walls—he evidently works as a house painter—and generally closes himself off from life. We get constant glimpses of the bar and dance scene in which he was previously involved, but everything in this film is very much like the first few scenes which are almost completely under water.

     We sense sounds and occasional voices but we cannot clearly hear them and what we witness might as well be through the lens of underwater goggles.

      All that changes one day when William finds himself in the pool lane next two a handsome young man Thomas (Jake Cohen) who, without speaking, challenges William to a quick series of swimming matches across the pool. When bad memories again challenge William, however, he quickly hurries off to the locker room to shower. But when he returns he finds a single sneaker in his bag, a note tucked within not only commenting on his attractiveness, but scheduling a meet up at a local bar. A bit like a Cinderella story, he is to bring the sneaker back to the man with the one naked foot in the bar.

      William arrives at the bar, but clearly has second thoughts about the encounter immediately upon entering, and disappears. He now finds a small picture in his sneaker, begging for a second chance. When he finally meets up again with Thomas at the pool, he discovers that Thomas is himself a mute, who signs to him, having given him also a book which one might presume is a book about signing for the deaf.

    Nothing special is made of Thomas’ being hearing impaired, and indeed it seems in perfect keeping with a film that has not contained a full spoken word and is filled only the ambient sounds of the world around the previously isolated William. But now William is clearly ready to take a second chance with Thomas as the men kiss, perhaps allowing William to rejoin the human race.

    Chicago director Alex Bohs’ Mum is far too opaque to fully engage its audiences, but it presents a touching episode in life a gay man that is certainly worth viewing.

 

Los Angeles, September 19, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (September 2023).