Gracie Otto | Broken Beat / 2005

the perfect relationship

by Douglas Messerli

Gracie Otto (screenwriter and director) Broken Beat / 2005 [12 minutes]

 

In Australian director Gracie Otto’s 2005 film, we meet two young men obviously in love and living together for evidently a short period of time, Will (Ed Cooper Clarke) and Jacob (Jamie Coombes).

     Like so many film lovers, these two lay around in bed when the alarm sounds, both hoping to keep the other’s body near him as long as possible, Jacob finally convincing Will that he might be late for his evening appointment so they might enjoy one last sexual escapade, but finally himself having to shower for his own job.

    Will insists that his lover might also stay a bit longer, arriving late to his job, but Jacob reminds him that if he doesn’t work, he isn’t paid. After a long shower and a snort of coke, he’s ready, despite the fact that even his lover suggests he looks a bit on the pale side. Nonetheless Will drives Jacob to his job site, and pulls away, reminding him that his mother has invited them out the next day for lunch.

     In the next few minutes, what we are about to discover represents not only a completely other world than we might have expected, but a cultural and social disparity between the two that we soon realize has destined their “perfect relationship” to failure.

     As the director herself notes of their superficial differences:

 

“Will and Jacob are lovers but are worlds apart. Will is a golden boy, tall, fair, and accustomed to success. He is loved by his family, has "come out" to his parents, but conceals his homosexuality from his colleagues. Jacob, on the other hand, is as dark as Will is fair, of a large hardworking Italian family who could never accept his homosexuality.”

      

      But it is the truly darker differences that make this film so fascinating. The moment Will has dropped him off, Jacob changes his clothes becoming a recognizable male prostitute hustling johns in cars, mostly it appears for “head”—a blow job—at 60 Australian dollars (about $40 US dollars). In the few moments of this 12-minute short, he evidently picks up a couple of guys, joining them in their cars, while one potential client rudely rejects him.

       On this night, however, Jacob is also apparently picked up by the cops. We see only the aftermath, as Will seems to have bailed him out and driving away from the police station suddenly demands that Jacob leave the car and his life forever, as he speeds off.

       That act signifies Will’s painful decision—at least one about which he appears to suffer in dejection and second thoughts—throughout the rest of the film.

        But the rejection is obviously far more horrific for Jacob, who has no other place to go. He attempts to telephone, trying to explain that he has only loved Will, and fragmentarily conveying that perhaps Will was the only one who seemed to love him for someone other than simply a paid-for body.

       Apparently, however, hustlers are not allowed to have real-life lovers, especially if there is the vast class difference on top of Jacob’s outcast behavior. Even Jacob’s return to the apartment door, where he cries out for Will just to let him talk is to no avail, as the cowering Will sits within determined to have nothing more to do with the man a few hours before he claimed to be in desperate love.

        The only problem with his revelatory black-and-white short is that we find it a little difficult to believe that Will would not by this time have perceived that his lover was not working in a restaurant or involved in some other nightly employment. But then we also perceive that Will, living in the bubble of apparent wealth and social approval might not be able to imagine a world so very different from his own blessed state of being. He will surely get over the breakup.

       But Jacob, we perceive, may not. Without anyone solid in his life, he sits brooding at film’s end on a park bench where another stranger (Ronny Mouawad) approaches him, offering only 50 for head, Jacob having no choice but to accept the offer. And we realize that for Jacob, survival is now all that he has left, and that will surely be a downhill battle.

       Will can now join his mumsy and friends for lunch without the embarrassment of his gay friend.

 

Los Angeles, November 9, 2021

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (November 2021).