Anthony Schatteman | Petit ami / 2017

two faces

by Douglas Messerli

 

Anthony Schatteman (screenwriter and director) Petit ami / 2017 [14 minutes]

 

Vincent (Thomas Ryckewaert), a handsome man in his late 30s or early 40s has rented the poolroom of the Petit ami gay hotel for the 3-day Christmas weekend where Jasper (Ezra Fieremans), a 20-some year-old who looks more like a teenager meets up with him in Belgian director Anthony Schatteman’s 2017 short film Petit ami.

     It is clear that Jasper is an experienced pleasure boy who when the two encounter each other Vincent immediately fucks standing like an animal in rut; the two hit it off, the younger offering the other the lovemaking and, at moments, the enjoyment he appears to be desperate for, Schatteman and cinematographer Ruben Appeltans’ camera lushly capturing their erotic activities which are the focus of this film. Champagne, pizza, and sex in bed, pool, and everywhere else, in fact, seem to resolve the problems faced by Jasper’s obviously desperate Christmas weekend customer. But even the boy who whips up a good time in a mean holiday cannot help but feel some sympathy for a man who, he gradually discovers, has left his wife and two daughters for the comfort of an almost teenage kid.

     The promotional entries for this film all seem to suggest that Jasper discovers the “secret” that Vincent is hiding; but even the laziest of sleuths would have been able to quickly deduce that Vincent has missed this family celebration because of his sexual ambiguity or, at the very least, he is replacing the obviously failed marital relationship with the substitute that may lie at the crux of his familial problems.

      And Vincent's overhead telephone conversations along with Jasper's reading of the beginning of a letter addressed to the man’s wife do not, thankfully, fully explain the reason for his john’s 3-day reservation nor his sudden decision to cut it off now that he has resolved some of his emotional turmoil.

      The depth of this superficially beautiful film lies in how much each viewer is willing to plumb the possible explanations for Vincent’s Christmas fireside absence. Has his wife suddenly discovered his sexual desires and sent him packing? Has he himself, having obviously lived in a kind of closeted marital hell, finally determined to leave those he clearly loves behind? Has he broken up with his wife for other reasons and is merely using this despairing weekend as an opportunity to explore alternative forms of lovemaking or seeking out what he has often done of business trips and covered up through the years?

     Any of these time-worn and predictable narrative solutions, which at least engage our minds, would explain Vincent’s almost brutal introductory rape of Jasper upon their meeting, and his gradual softening as the experienced prostitute applies his sexual balms. What is perhaps somewhat more interesting is how Jasper’s own inner feelings are altered despite his outward charming engagement of his customer. And it is apparent that by the time Vincent is willing to send him packing that he is not sure that he truly is ready to leave, that he has developed a kind of sympathy and perhaps even a bit of love for his customer not permitted in his profession.

       Schatteman’s long focus on Jasper as he leaves in the early daylight a day earlier than scheduled is fascinating when compared with the boy’s nighttime arrival two days previous.

       In the earlier night shot he seems to be wistfully looking off into space, his lips expressing no obvious emotion, the creases around his mouth, although almost straight, are very slightly raised as in a would-be smile. He is, in full, enigmatic, a boy without seeming empathy or even emotional depth, ready to move forward, we soon discover as he enters the hotel where he meets up with his customers, to do whatever is required of him without question or judgment. In a sense he truly does look here like a teenage boy, a bit wide-eyed and open to the world if, we can well imagine, worn out by what he has already at his young age witnessed and experienced.

     The second image shows the man, dressed just as he was two nights earlier, but his eyes glancing away to the left, which transforms his whole face, including the equivocal position of his lips, into what appears as, even if it actually is not a slight frown. Whereas in the first frame his face is represented as a near circle, in the second daylight photo we observe a more ovalene head, which hints at an elongated, less open expression. If nothing else, the second boy is less eager, less sure of his actions, or even of the meaning of those actions. There is a slightly circumspect look, in general about what the camera catches in Jasper’s countenance by the end of the film.    

    He is still an enigmatic figure and we realize that whatever we may be reading in his face represents only a second in time, not necessarily a dramatic or permanent change of being. But there it is nonetheless facing us, the boy who might pass for a teenager and the twentyish youth who has just spent two nights picking up the spirits of a dejected man who it is apparent, as he writes in the short, never-sent note to his wife, was “not able to live up to whom he should [italics mine] be.”

    Has the boy helped him to transition into what clearly will be a new life? The film does even attempt to explore that. But any empathetic viewer might hope that Vincent can gradually convert the “should” into a someone who “would” or “will” be, or at the very least an acceptance of what that being “is,” gradually converting a failed past into a present that can imagine a more successful future.

     In this instance, it appears—at least superficially—as if the young prostitute might have helped point his brief encounter in that direction.

 

Los Angeles, November 11, 2021

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema (November 2021).