Art Arutyunyan | Christmas Coming Out / 2021

visions of sugar plums

by Douglas Messerli

 

Armand Petri (screenplay), Art Arutyunyan (director) Christmas Coming Out / 2021 [17 minutes]

 

I love Christmas, and I suppose Christmas now will always include a parcel of packages of Christmas films, several of them now gay. Gay or straight I’m not fond of Christmas movies, the gay ones generally even more sentimental and unbelievable than the straight ones. Most of them, thankfully, are just about the stress that gays feel for coming home and having to pretend they’re  straight or bringing home their unsuspected boy and girl friends. But a coming-out Christmas has got to be the worst! The dilemma of Christmas celebrated by closeted gay boys is bad enough on just a normal day, but add to it all the hoopla, decorations, fruitcake, dinner recipes, and all the other nonsense that Christmas brings with it, one simply doesn’t want to hear the whimpers, whispers, and fears of family abandonment of a too timid gay boy who has somehow decided to spill the news to Santa Claus.

     A frustrated boyfriend, such as James (Arthur Marroquin) who is convinced this Christmas celebration is finally the time to throw the hot plate onto his in-law’s laps is someone, moreover, I can never appreciate. And his lover Patrick (Ford Nelson), having been a wimp for all these years is someone you can easily despise, particularly when in order to bring himself up to the challenge he imagines his childhood ranger character, “Courage,” (Tyler Horn) come to life as a full-size naked human being to help him stay true to the course.

      It doesn’t help that James has chosen this Christmas to award his lover a ring, presumably in an attempt to finally bring him closer to marriage, and that Patrick’s parents, Mom (Katryn Schmidt) and Dad (Timothy McKinney), perhaps as usual, pop in at their son’s beautifully decorated and Christmas attired house each year at this time, requiring that he pull down dozens of pictures of him and his lover from the walls which evidently make up the vast majority of their everyday artistic expression. Howard and I do have a couple of pictures of the two of us dotting our walls, but really an entire wall devoted to our self-portraits would be unthinkable. This couple, unlike almost all TV gay couples I’ve encountered, have evidently never seen the inside of an art gallery.

      James, in his own hysterical breakdown, “just can’t do this anymore, meaning pretend they are not a couple for the 4th or 5th year in a row. Can you blame him, particularly when he goes to buy a pecan pie, Patrick’s mother’s favorite, and Patrick asks James to exit through the back door? In retribution, James decides to finally open the front door, greeting the O’Malleys, who seem shocked to find that Patrick’s roommate is still in town.

      Patrick pretends to be sick, which of course brings out the deepest feelings of protection for their son from the O’Malleys. To say James is pissed is the inane drama’s major understatement. Mr. O’Malley, observing all the packages under the tree from James to Patrick, and occasionally even from Patrick to James, observes that “the boys” sure love Christmas.

      A photograph the O’Malley’s have brought along on their E-phone shows their favorite photograph of their son as a child with his toy soldier Courage, which he wouldn’t go to bed without. Unlike Barbie, Courage was apparently fully atomically correct under his plastic, removeable soldier uniform, because when he soon shows up, proving that nothing is lacking in his physical assets.

      Meanwhile, even the parents realize that the place could use a little art, and decide to bring in some of their son’s childhood posters the next time they visit.

      The rest hardly matters, after time and again of losing courage, his naked soldier puts Patrick’s heart into the matter, finally bringing the young childhood plaything into adulthood as Patrick gets up the nerve to admit that he and James are a couple. The worst of it is that Patrick’s parents knew it all along, and were just waiting for him to come round and admit to them.

      What kind of parents pretend to accept their son’s lies for year after year, torturing him and his partner, without being able to acknowledge the truth of their own perceptions. Forgive me, but these parents are worse than a homophobic nightmare. One word over the years might have freed their son from his fears, but they chose to keep their total acceptance a secret. Fortunately, director Art Arutyunyan hurries them off back home, with an invitation for the two boys to come visit them any time. James seems delighted, but if I were him, I’d stay away at Christmas and maybe even other holidays. And thank heaven they’ve now turned their son’s room into a gym!

 

Los Angeles, September 10, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (September 2023).