Hong Khaou | Summer / 2006

wicked and good

by Douglas Messerli

 

Hong Khaou (screenwriter and director) Summer / 2006 [9 minutes]

 

British, Cambodian-born director Hong Khaou’s Summer chooses the path taken dozens of times before by LGBTQ directors, but his vision of the genre is fairly sophisticated.

     Two longtime friends, Leung (Peter Peralta) and Will (Jay Brown) are wandering the woods of Hampstead Heath in London on the look for botanical finds for a school class project in which Leung is enrolled.

     Like most schoolboy adolescent friends they roughhouse, push and pull against one another, and spend a great deal of time talking about heterosexual sex. Leung probes his friend to discover if he has had sex with his girlfriend, discovering that indeed he has had oral sex, curious, of course, to find out what it felt like. Will replies: “wicked”* and “good.”

     Will wonders if Leung has had any experience and he readily admits he hasn’t been fellated yet. “Don’t you want to?” Of course, Leung reacts, “You gonna to show me?” which receives the expected groans and disdainful reactions.

      But Leung seems to take it a little further beginning his next sentence with, “Umm, I was thinking, you wanna....,” Will immediately interrupting with “Give you a blow job? Come on...” And they walk on laughing, Will in search of a range of taller trees that his mother has mentioned where special leaves slowly fall to the ground. But Leung seems to want to continue....  “Have you ever thought about...,” but the fluttering of leaf to the ground sends Will on the run to catch it, both boys wrestling as they make the attempt for the leaf and others. When Will finally catches one, Leung demands it and they begin to wrestle more seriously, Will finally actually hitting his friend somewhat violently before Leung responds, jumping on him before suddenly bending in for a kiss.

     Will roughly extricates himself, shouting out, “What the fuck you doing you queer,” but quickly pulling his words back into the subject of “the leaf,” “You canna have my leaf. You’ve got to get your own leaf.”

      Leung walks away down a path, but Will follows tossing small stones at him until Leung turns back to what now seems like his former friend: “What’s your fuckin’ problem. All I did was kiss you.”

        “Nothin’ serious then,” Will mocks. “What do you want me to say? You have such soft lips.”

        Leung again turns to say, “Fuck you,” Will challenging him yet again with, “I bet you wanna do that.” And Will body-butts him again, Leung walking away and alone sitting on a hillock now in tears.

        Soon his buddy joins him, the two sitting next to one another in silence.

      Will breaks the silence. “I’m not gay. I didn’t know you felt that way about me.” He pauses to continue in his meaningful / meaningless chatter: “There are a lot of other people out there. I’m sure you’ll find someone you fancy, right?’

      What we have just observed is an important genre, a sort of sub-genre of the “coming out” film which I labelled—in my entry about another British film, Dear Friend of 2011 along with several others in this genre—the “daring friends” genre, suggesting that, while it is often one of the boys and girls who first admits the hidden feelings, it is presumed to be shared simply because of the long-time relationship. Here we have evidence of that when Will asks Leung, “How long have you known you were gay?” with Leung parroting back the question, and Will’s fervent response, “I’m not.”

    Leung’s very next inevitable question insinuates the real problem of a friend who claims to be innocent of any sexual feelings he may have aroused in the other: “Does anyone else know?”

     The other’s response, in this instance, is equivocal and comic, permitting Will to maintain his promise of still being his “mate”: “I haven’t told my dad.”

      Will: “Are you going to?”

      Leung: “When he dies I will.”

    Often such revelations gradually result in a shifting or even ending of the relationship. And on occasion it results in an admission of shared feelings. But nothing after can truly ever be the same for either since it generally becomes impossible for the other to comprehend what these unwanted feelings are and why the former friend feels them; or such an admission forces the other to come terms with his or her own sexuality before being fully ready. And generally, it represents in both young people and sometimes older people a rather daring con-fusion or mixing of two different roles that others play in one’s life: friend and lover. One person can perhaps perform both roles, but it is extremely difficult to play both roles to someone simultaneously.

 

*In today’s youth jargon “wicked” means many things, mostly pleasant, close to the 1950s and 60s word, “cool.”

 

Los Angeles, May 10, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (May 2022).