Russell Kohlmann | Window Shopping / 2019

a dream grows in brooklyn

by Douglas Messerli

 

Russell Kohlmann (screenwriter and director) Window Shopping / 2019 [6 minutes]

 

I’m not sure who is the audience this fantasy film wishes to reach. If watching a young man, Sam (Russell Kohlmann) who is shopping at a clothes shop for a new coat, possible shoes or even cowboy boots, and a handsome young boyfriend, Jeff (Sam Stone) to go with them is something that excites you, I guess you’ve found your movie in Kolmann’s Window Shopping.

    Certainly, Sam has seemed to found his man in Jeff, who after an unlikely greeting of “Excuse me, can I help you?” even though he doesn’t work in the shop, Sam quickly cooks up a dream in which the friendly fellow customer invites him out for coffee, which quickly leads to an evening at the local bar, a subway ride home with Jeff’s head on Sam’s shoulder, and, before you can even say Abracadabra, Hocus Pocus, Alakazam they turn into boyfriend’s lounging around the apartment, cooking up little dinners together, a session of deep kissing, and an invitation for a party for family and guests, all of which ends finally in Jeff kneeling in the tradition of offering up a wedding ring.

    Sam is awakened by the actual shop owner/clerk, the boyish looking Michaela Grant. In fact, we quickly discern, Sam and Jeff haven’t even met up, and Jeff’s girlfriend (Ingeborg Reidmaier) quickly comes to kiss and claim her man, Sam stumbling out of the store onto the street in utter confusion and deep depression.

     It’s hard to know if we should feel sorrier for the character or for the audience members like me for having been forced to share Sam’s meaningless fantasy. Even the clothes weren’t the kind of threads I usually shop for so I might have wished writer/director Kohlmann and left me back on the street. There, at least, I might have found someone more interesting to go home with.

 

Los Angeles, March 26, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (March 2026).