Greg Atkins | Build / 2004

concrete

by Douglas Messerli

 

Greg Atkins (screenwriter and director) Build / 2004 [23 minutes]

 

The first few frames of Canadian director Greg Atkins’ Build already establishes the basic situations of three broken individuals. The least reformable is clearly Sherry (Nancy Beatty) who is an alcoholic mother, and as we glimpse in the first few moments of the film, the former wife of a man who walked out on her and her son, Crete (the boy played by Milan Malero, the man by the writer/director Atkins).

     From the time of her marriage to the time when Crete has become, so it appears, an architectural student, nothing has changed in her world as she sits on the couch sipping her scotch. Even his early return from school is a cause for a celebratory drink.

     We also catch a glimpse of another outsider, Garnet (D. Garnet Harding), a man who has obviously been thrown out of his apartment for non-payment, who when he comes to collect his possessions within the 7-day period his landlord has promised to hold them for payment, discovers she has sold them or given them away.

      Garnet is also a male prostitute we soon discover, after, even more startlingly, we perceive that after Sherry falls asleep and Crete tucks her into her bed on the couch, he too hits the streets to partake of man’s oldest profession, selling himself for anyone on the take. He has ensconced himself on a corner that Garnet claims for his own, and when the other man arrives, Crete gracefully moves to the other side of the street. Both of them get picked up this first night.

       But while they wait, we see Crete imagining a situation not usual for male prostitutes, fantasizing a sexual encounter with his fellow street hooker standing a few yards off. From the dozens of films I’ve now watched about male prostitution, by and large such individuals, young and older, all claim to be heterosexual and certainly do not engage in sexual activities with their fellow male friends—at least not openly. And throughout this short film, despite Crete’s obvious longing for the man who—since he no longer has a place to sleep—quickly becomes Crete’s bedmate, Garnet shows utterly no sexual interest in the handsome boy, announcing as he pulls down his pants to join him in bed: “I only take cash; no major credit cards will be accepted.”

      Crete, it is clear, is not just looking to make some money to help support him and a mother who has no way to earn a living, let alone to pay for his education, but is looking for someone whom he can love. His choices seem more than diminished, just as we soon discover that he has delimited the possibilities of his life by dropping out of architectural school, despite his love of the profession. The backpack he leaves the house with each morning is carefully hidden in a in a crawl space under the porch; and Crete spends most of his days staring lovingly at the buildings in his city under construction, longing for a career in which he will never be able to engage.

      Garnet, meanwhile, who runs into the mother after Crete leaves the house, gets on wonderfully with Sherry, the two sharing a bottle of whiskey and a joint with total drugged-out and drunken abandonment. Garnet doesn’t even bother to show up for work at night, while Crete, having run across a couple of more johns, brings home bags of groceries, only to discover Garnet fucking his semi-comatose mother.

     When Garnet joins him in the bed later, Crete hints that it’s time he moves on. Apparently, however, Garnet finds a way to get back for the rejection. When Crete returns home from his wandering at the end of that day, he finds his backpack gone, his mother and Garnet waiting for him on the couch, his mother obviously having been shown his pack of books and told of his son’s late-night activities.

     Her anger and hurt dissipates as she hurls accusations at her son while realizing that she has only contributed to his situation. Their world is falling apart, and it appears that Crete is also now ready to totally abandon his dream for the cold streets where he will have to face off with the likes of Garnet. Will Sal, Sally, his real name as Garnet has learned from his mother, not, as Garnet puts it, “con-Crete,” be able to withstand the loveless world he must now face? Even blocks of concrete, as we observe in one metaphorical scene, will break when they come crashing down unto the streets.

 

Los Angeles, March 25, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (March 2023).