Ethan McDowell | Lúbtha (Queer) / 2019

just one night

by Douglas Messerli

 

Ethan McDowell (screenwriter and director) Lúbtha (Queer) / 2019 [14 minutes]

 

“Lúbtha” is the Gaelic word for “queer,” which growing up in Northern Ireland in the early 1990s might have been the least of one’s problems. Even children are shown carrying real guns, and  it’s difficult for someone like Fintan (Oliver Scullion) on his way to school to explain to his young brother Séamus (Josh Hegarty) why even pretending to shoot him with a tree branch is a dangerous act.

     Fintan, not generally known as the “queer”—that term is applied mostly by his abusive alcoholic mother (Geraldine Galligan) to Fintan’s best friend Caelan (Conor Gormally)—is forced also to be the father to his brother, making sure that he’s dressed, had breakfast, and is out the door on time to get to school, calling out to his mother, clearly still in bed, that there’s some leftover stew in the fridge.

      But even Séamus is curious why his brother and mother are constantly fighting and reports that he’s heard that Caelan and he are boyfriends. What’s Fintan to do but scream out “Shut the fuck up!”

    As the boys, Fintan and Caelan, shower together in the empty morning school locker room (they clearly shower before the other boys arrive to not to be bullied), Caelan wonders whether his friend has been in a fight since he has a mean mark on his back. Fintan refuses to talk about it, obviously a gift from one of his mother’s furious rages.

       Back home again his mother screams at and attacks Fintan for having left Séamus in the care of “a fucking queer” (Caelan) and shows up the torn-up photos she’s found hidden of the two friends together. She spits in her son’s face.

       Knowing that it’s going to be one of “those nights” again, Fintan asks Caelan to send his brother home and wonders whether he might not spend the night at his place instead of returning home.

       Is it any wonder why Fintan feels bitter, arguing that even Caelan is of no good to him. Like so many young gay men of his age he can only dream of escape, even from the one he’s been accused of loving—but then there’s Séamus; how can he leave him behind.

       When Caelan earlier asks what’s wrong now, Fintan pours out his sorrows: “You want to know what’s wrong. This shithole of a town, my ma, mus [Séamus], wherever the fuck my da is and you! Fucking stupid you asking these stupid fucking questions.”

       Caelan Murphy may be hurt by his words, but compared with Fintan he has the perfect mother (Ciara Gallagher) who tucks her guest in with kind word, to which even the angry Fintan responds “I’ll be grand, Mrs. Murphy. Don’t you be worrying,” words for which Caelan later teases him.

       He tries to sleep, but Caelan comes to get him out of bed for a bike run down the streets, sharing a liquor bottle and a few cigs en route. Hunkered-up against a wall, Fintan wonders is it wrong, “me and you.” “I want to be normal for just one night.” But then they kiss and everything, for just a few moments, seems right.

 

Los Angeles, August 3, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (August 2023).