Tony Krawitz | Into the Night / 2002

broken versions of love

by Douglas Messerli

 

Cath Moor (screenplay), Tony Krawitz (director) Into the Night / 2002 [15 minutes]

 

 Australian filmmaker Tony Krawitz’s 2002 film Into the Night—not to be confused with one of my favorite films from 1985 by John Landis—begins with two teenage rent boys, among others, standing against a wall in wait. Soon Damien (Sam Barlow) and his friend are joined by a much young pre-teen kid, who the two tell to get lost, the boy responding by calling them “fags.” But we already realize, as they also do, that there is no “away” to go. The child represents yet another boy tossed into the dark streets, just as they have been.

   A customer, Marcus (Bryan Marshall) drives up, and Damien goes up to the car window to check him out. The middle-aged man has the money, he assures him, and the boy gets in. But first there is a “stop off,” the boy insists, for sandwiches and chips, clearly a way to put something in his stomach for work.

      The man takes him back to his beautiful home, complete with a small indoor greenhouse. Marcus offers the boy a drink, the boy responding that he’d like a scotch, clearly no beginner in the ways of adult hard living.

      Perhaps with the suggestion from his host, Damien is next seen in the man’s step-in bath, enjoying the hot suds, and cleaning off the city grime that has accumulated. The man takes up a bar of soap and washes the boy’s back, noticing a heavy black-and-blue bruise near his shoulder where he’s obviously been beaten.

      Coming out of the bath, Damien wanders about the house a bit more, commenting on the man’s photographs, particularly one of his mother and himself as a child, the boy commenting that he can tell the man was his mother’s favorite simply from the expression of love of her face. The boy admits to having no father, but says nothing about his mother.

      When Marcus goes to urinate, the boy checks out the video player, observing a young boy standing near a pool and playing with a dog, a boy nearly his own age in what appears to be a home-made video.

    The moment the man returns, Damien blurts out, “I’ll suck you off, but I don’t fuck,” the man, smiling in reaction, answering, “Well, I’m glad we got that settled.” Soon after, however, we watch the man giving fellatio to the boy who seems to be quite enjoying it. But when after he goes in for a kiss, Damien forcibly shoves him away, “I don’t kiss!” And with that, the boy seems to be on his way. “Besides, you don’t need me, you’ve got your videos!”

      Somewhat startled by the comment, the man explains the boy on the video is his own son, not porno. “That’s all I have of him,” he adds, hinting that either the boy is dead or a more likely scenario that he has been taken away in a divorce proceeding concerning the man’s sexuality.

        He offers to pay the boy more to stay on for a while, as we realize Marcus’ utter loneliness. In the next frame the two are laying side by side on a bed, the man asleep, presumably after further sex. The boy gets up, checks out his wallet and takes all the remaining cash within.

        He makes a telephone call and says one single word, “Dad,” before the person at the other end hangs up.

        Damien’s father has obviously forced him out of the house and will not speak to him. In this film everyone has been both abused and, in turn, are abusers, even the boy’s adult abuser being a gentle and loving man who has had nearly everything taken from him that truly matters. As the film’s own publicity reads, it is sometimes difficult to know the difference between the betrayer and betrayed.

       When Damien returns to his wall, the young child is still sitting there, nearly frozen. He scolds him once more for not having left, but then encourages him to come along, the camera trailing them to a spot outside of pastry shop, Damien coming out of the store with a package and a bottle of soda in his hand for the kid. The boy is also seeking, obviously, the love of someone else, an older boy like Damien, perhaps reminding Damien of his own not so long ago past.

      In this world of total abuse, the three have each offered up broken versions of love that won’t replace the real love that they are all seeking, but will at least get them through another day and into another night. This moving movie is accompanied by a beautiful score by composer George Papanicolaou.

       Théo Lemouzy’s Condition Humaine (Human Condition) and Harrison J. Bahe’s Nobody’s Boy, both from 2021 bear several things in common with this film, although the later working boys are older than in Into the Night.

 

Los Angeles, January 12, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (January 2023).