Kristina Arjona | Max / 2020

a balm to help the bad to pass

by Douglas Messerli

 

Jono Mitchell (screenplay), Kristina Arjona (director) Max / 2020 [10 minutes]

 

In Kristina Arjona’s short film Max we get to meet a character who doesn’t turn up that often in contemporary LGBTQ films: an overweight, very recently divorced figure, Jeremy (played by the film’s writer Jono Mitchell) who, even before things grow hot with the call boy he’s ordered up— Max (Gregory Piccirilli)—he wants slow things down a bit.

     Fortunately, Max is an accommodating sort, who offers himself as being open to Jeremy’s seeming whims. But Max does observe that it’s Jeremy’s first time with a call boy, which Jeremy at first denies, but then wittily comments about Max’s surefire observations: “So tonight’s going to be magical whether I like it or not?”

     We recognize suddenly that we are in somewhat different territory from the usual confrontation between such types, that Arjona’s film is not going to be about a man coming to terms with his sexuality, but rather one struggling to come to terms with why his relationship has not worked and perhaps, given his personal problems, he may never find another person to replace the one he’s lost.

     But Max doesn’t back down easily. In response to the comment about magic, he replies: “Depends, what’s your budget?”

     Jeremy admits he could afford a little magic.

     He continues, “My husband took half of it in the divorce.”

     The divorce took place, so Jeremy admits, only this morning. And he wonders whether Max might not perceive him as a bad person for signing the papers and calling up someone immediately after to have sex.

     But Max, now perceiving the situation, wonders, “Who says we have to have sex?”

     The metaphoric “ball” is now Jeremy’s court. He undresses.

     “So what do you think?

     “About what?

     “About me.”

     Max smiles. “I like you. I think you’re cute.”

    “That’s bullshit. Tell me. Nothing you can say can be worse than what my husband’s said or what I’ve said to myself. …They call me a monster.”

     There’s little else to be said, as Jeremy’s self-loathing and exhaustion becomes so apparent that all he really does need is someone there for him to lay his head upon his chest and reconsider some of the years of turmoil he’s just suffered.

     True, there were good times, but as Max points out, we mostly remember the worst. And the worst memories for the overweight, not terribly attractive Jeremy are nearly overwhelming. To summarize: “We reached this point when we’d just sit in silence cut off from the outside world. Because hating each other at home was more convenient than doing in the company of others. Marriage became this void that we wanted to fill with anything other than love and appreciation of the other person.”

     Yet, when Max suggests he never wants to get married, Jeremy strangely shifts, asking “Why…because the good times can be some of the best moments of your life.

      “And what about the bad?”

      “They pass. No one can feel this awful forever.”

      Max kisses him, but Jeremy finally asks him to stop. “Will you hold me? …Just lie here quietly and don’t hate me.”

      And so Max does, Jeremy finally finding a sense of comfort his arms, still throwing out names that imagines might be Max’s real name, since no one these days names their son Max.

   This short film, so very well acted, is remarkable for what it doesn’t do—to become a large confessional cry fest or a drama of pain and regret. The gentle arms of max, rather, represents a new commitment to possible love and life after the void he has endured—a balm that helps the bad to pass.

 

Los Angeles, June 25, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (June 2023).