Hugo Kenzo | No Clothes / 2012

clothes fetish

by Douglas Messerli

 

Hugo Kenzo (screenwriter and director) No Clothes / 2012 [13 minutes]

 

Alan (Jordan Firstman) is busy putting his clothes in a public automated washing machine when Joseph (Tommy Lewis), doing the same a couple of machines over, notices a flowered shirt Alan is about to add to the others, complimenting him: “Nice shirt.” And asking him what the material might be.

      They shake hands, and a moment later a seeming hobo (Nicole Delaney) pushes her way in between them.

      Joseph moves off to a bench to wait for the finish of the wash and dry, Alan soon after joining him. These boys appear to possibly be gay, so we await some sort of development of that story. But, no, Joseph gets a call from someone he describes as “Babe,” after which he turns to Alan asking him if he’d mind looking after his washer while he makes a quick errand.

      Alan agrees, and soon after falls to sleep. When he awakens, there is still no sign of Joseph, finding the “hobo” sitting next to him instead, looking beatifically into his face. When he goes to check on his own clothes, he discovers that they have disappeared, only a sock remaining.

       The hobo reports that his “friend” took them.

       Alan immediately goes on the chase, discovering Joseph not far away with a full bag of clothing. He runs off, Alan following after. It’s clearly a purposeful cat-and-mouse game, as Joseph, looking behind him to see where Alan is, darts around corners, races across a pedestrian overpass, and then sprints out of sight, the obviously less physically-in-shape Alan losing his breath and having to give up.

       Yet, as he looks down from the bridge, he sees Joseph back on the sidewalk, who waves at him before hurrying off.

       Having basically given up, Alan trods slowly back to his apartment. On the front steps of a nearby apartment building, however, he finds the mate to his sock. He checks the list of tenants, but at that moment one of the them is exiting, Alan pulling the door open after her and entering the building. At the apartment where Gary was evidently listed, he takes out a credit card to slip open the door, which gives way easily. And there he discovers—in what must be surely the first of a clothes fetish gay film—dozens of baskets of stolen clothing and backpacks.

     When he finally discovers his own, he picks it up only to stumble, spilling out its contents, Joseph suddenly appearing dressed in Alan’s pink floral shirt and blue jeans. He demands to know what Alan is doing, as the intruder points out “that’s my shirt,” Joseph simply denying it. Alan finally forces him to remove his shirt and pants, as Joseph stands handsomely in his blue jockeys, Alan clearly impressed by his look.

      Alan nods, and before we can even quite catch on, the first of the credits pop up, returning to an image of the two of them sitting on the couch together with each other’s shirts laid over their cotches. Picking up a pair of swimming trunks, Alan comments “I like these,” Joseph suggesting he got them from a laundromat just down the street, open 24-7. And after a few more credits they are sitting on that couch with a cute Asian boy between them.

     So does US director Hugo Kenzo introduce to the world to a completely new method of how to pick up young gay men.

 

Los Angeles, August 19, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (August 2023).