accomplice to a suicide
Anthony Rangel Coll (screenwriter and
director) a BLOOM / 2021 [24 minutes]
Nick (Stefan Erasmus) has just been released
from gay conversion therapy, and instead of his father driving him home—the man
who has clearly put Nick into therapy—he simply does show up. Away on a
business trip, he sends a cab in his place.
The
people at the center are proud of the man Nick’s become, sending him off with a
book titled Straight Man.
Friends from his past show up on his phone, but he quickly deletes their messages. But a phone call from a former friend insists they’re on their way, no “buts” about it, to pick him up and celebrate.
It
clearly is not what Nick wants at the moment; but perhaps it is what he most
needs. Yet the friends seem at odds to how to deal with Nick’s three-month
absence. While he was gone, Thato (Thabang Mashiane) has come out as a lesbian,
and his other friend Aidan (Aidan Scott) simply chatters on without even
acknowledging Nick’s stubborn silence.
But
while they take sides, Thato arguing that something terrible has happened to
Nick and Aidan trying to ignore it all, Nick gets totally lost in the stare
from across the room of a beautiful stranger (Jonah Dollery).
When the stranger gets up and leaves, Nick also scurries off, unable to
deal with the arguments of his friends and his full attraction to the stranger.
Even more mysterious is the fact that the stranger seems to know Nick,
sending him a cryptic message saying “I knew it was you.”
Aidan follows, ordered by the father not to leave Nick alone while he’s
away. But Nick rejects his friendliness and retreats to his bedroom, being sure
to take the pills he was given by the nurse at the conversion center. What
these pills might consist of—a sex inhibitor, a drug to knock out sexual
desire?—is never explained.
But is also suffering another kind of anxiety, the loss of his former
girlfriend (Kelly Meyer) someone he deeply loved but with whom he obviously
couldn’t maintain a relationship. He seems to be wearing her sweater and
attempts to masturbate to thoughts of her, without success, as he falls asleep.
It was clearly her loss that was involved with his agreement to undergo
conversion therapy.
Meanwhile, Nick begins chatting with “The Stranger,” even at swimming
practice, as the two locate themselves in relationship to one another. Once
again, they plan meet up in “The Raptor Room,” to play the staring contest, as
the stranger describes it. But Nick seeing him through the window, rushes off,
afraid of what it might lead to.
More pills, frustration, and conversations with the ghost of his former
girlfriend follow, Nick admitting that he likes the stranger, she perceiving
the suffering he’s going through. And in a sense, Nick realizing that she is
not truly “back,” does not truly represent love, she gives him the permission
to seek out the new gay relationship.
The
Stranger determines it is time to meet. And Thato, once more, reminds Aidan and
Nick that they are late to their meeting with her. Nick now tells Thato
everything, how his attempt to be honest with his ex-girlfriend ended their
relationship, and that he feels he is gay, which has resulted in his absence.
And finally, he admits how horrible his experiences at the conversion center
were: “weird group sessions,” “endless polls,” etc. Thato makes him promise
that he won’t go back to the center, telling him what all gays know: there is
no “cure” for being queer.
Suddenly the frame opens up, so to speak, to a split screen as Nick and
The Stranger text one another, Nick speaking honestly about his fears and
desires.
He
finally meets up with the man, and they have a conversation about love, their
own past lives. But Nick is soon talking again with his former girlfriend in
his imagination, a conversation about moving in together. She asks to know his
darkest secret, arguing that she needs to know if she’s going to move in with
him—clearly the conversation that led to Nick’s confession and her leaving him.
As if he has overhead the that conversation, The Stranger suggests “It sounds
like it was quite intense.” Nick adds, “The more you know about another the
harder it gets to let go. By knowing that one thing you become an accomplice.
You both share the crime and you have to live with it as if it were your own.”
Their meeting obviously does not go well, as The Stranger suddenly
declares he has to be going, after which Nick once more feels abandoned. His
mother was evidently a marine specialist who studied jellyfish, who, she
explains on tape, when they feel ill go to settle on the sea-floor, starting
life again as they become reborn.
The last images we have of Nick is him floating, fully clothed, for a
short while on the surface of the pool before he sinks out of sight.
Apparently, Nick drowned, based on the life and death of a real being,
Nicolas Coutts (1991-2019)—obviously a friend of the South African filmmaker
Anthony Rangel Coll—in whose memory this film was made.
Los Angeles, June 10, 2023
Reprinted from World Cinema Review (June
2023).
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