Martin Reinhard | Svans / 2016

dropping the soap

by Douglas Messerli

 

Troels Linde Andersen (screenplay, based on an idea by Patrick Helledie), Martin Reinhard (director) Svans / 2016 [18 minutes]

 

The title of Danish director Martin Reinhard’s 2016 short film means “faggot” or “fag,” which connects it in many ways with Olivier Lallart’s Fag (2019), on which I have previously written. Both films explore the lives of 16- or 17-year-old schoolboys, in this case one of whom is openly gay and the other who is a popular sports enthusiast who hangs out with his like-minded friends, who, although not using the denigrative term “fag,” nonetheless mock and dismisses the gay boy Alexander (Mikkel Albinussen Møller).

     The film begins with a recreation of the kind of homoerotic locker room behavior of many young high school boys, in this case one of their group running in to photograph his showering buddies, which turns quickly in a towel fight, in which the towel is snapped against another boy’s wet bottom, a kind of game that braves sexual imitation which the fighters know to be safe since their fellow battlers are equally heterosexual. Yet even this early in the film a gay observer might recognize that one of their group, Axel (Jonatan Tulested)—in his somewhat amused observation of the roughhousing and in his clear determination to stand slight apart from any participation—represents a kind of “outsider” to this very group, interrupted perhaps by his buddy as simply being a little quieter and enigmatic, without fully realizing that he might be nervous to involve himself, particularly as a voyeur. The line is always a very thin one: when does the group leader in his seemingly objective reserve and apparent maturity become the group pariah, an alien where he previously helped to define them. Once more it is the role played by John Dixon in Get Real and Esteban in Lallart’s Fag.   

     Our suspicions about this attractive blond-haired boy are quickly confirmed as we observe in the very next scene Axel calling in to Alexander to open up his window so that he might crawl in and passionately fuck the school queer. The two have evidently been sexually involved for some time, and Alexander attempts to encourage him to stay for breakfast, his mother apparently having no difficulties with having a gay son. And as often happens in films in which one partner is open while the other is still closeted, Alexander subtly attempts to encourage his friend to realize that if he admits to being gay, his world will not end.

      But that is precisely Alexander’s fear, that if he were to reveal the truth to his buddies, he would lose not only their friendship, but his role in the social circle that is the envy of many of their schoolmates.

      When, however, upon hearing that an attractive girl has broken up with her boyfriend, and the others encourage Axel to pursue her, reality comes a bit too close. When he doesn’t immediately take up their suggestion, they remind him that he and the girl, Simone (Emma B. Marott), had been attracted to one another years earlier and wonder what has happened to him now; has he, they joke, sworn off girls, has he turned gay? His failure to answer means multitudes to young men and women who are hypersensitive to what every word and glance might mean to their lives.

      And later in the day, as they stand in what appears to be a student gathering spot near the campus, he meets up with Simone, walking away with her and the others as he catches Alexander’s slightly nervous glare. The openly gay boy knows that having fallen in love with a popular sports player he may at any time lose out in the pull of social pressures Axel’s peers enforce.  

     Yet the next night Axel shows up again to Alexander’s house, but this time instead of “crawling in and out the window,” as his friend has accused him of doing, he rings the doorbell and his happily greeted by his lover’s mother. This time he stays through the night and shares breakfast, the two of them even sharing a goodbye kiss in the doorway.

       At that very moment, however, a voice calls out his name from across the street, a friend who just as suddenly realizes what he is witnessing and quickly goes cycling off. Terrified (that word again), Axel suddenly accuses Alexander of having known the other boy was there, of setting him up for an “outing” that he has not yet sought. And he slugs his friend in response several times before himself running off to ponder his next move.

       As anyone who has been in a position where it matters knows (admittedly I was never in such a position as a youth performing, somewhat unknowingly, the role of the outsider gay boy) by the time Axel reaches the school everyone will have been told that he is not only gay but is involved with the school “fag.” Axel is so confused by the situation that he appears to have turned into a version of Oz’s Tin Man, a being who can no longer move and, because of his actions against the boy he loves, no longer has even a heart.

       Coming upon him, Simone wakes him up from reverie, suggesting they’ll both be late to school as she jokes about what everyone will think when they show up together, she being, evidently, the only one who has not yet be told the truth.

        Just as he feared, no one will speak to him in the school hall. All seemingly turn away from him they moment he’s spotted. The showers, obviously, loom up like a nightmare (the director does not explain why Axel takes a shower without first working out in the gym or joining the others in a game of soccer). Once more, none of his former friends even acknowledge his presence.  

      As in walks into the shower room, they all turn away from him and, on cue, drop their bars of soap, bending in unison with butts facing him as if to taunt him about their availability. Understandably, he is speechless.

      But Denmark is after all a Scandinavian country, long known for its open acceptance of most sexual activities. In 1964, as a young man in Copenhagen, I noted that nearly every newsstand featured all sorts of sexually explicit porn magazines, including some, which would surely be banned today, of underage boys. One by one his friends pass by him, to give his shoulder a squeeze to reassure him that his being gay doesn’t matter and means nothing to them. He will still remain their friend.

      For a citizen of the US, it all seems a bit unbelievable, something cooked up to reassure those fearful about coming out that everything will be just fine if they only admit it to themselves. Yet something quite similar occurred in the far more sophisticated feature film of 1995 Sebastian (När alla vet) (When Everyone Knows) by Swedish director Svend Wam, so hopefully it’s true. The fears that rendered Aksel immobile were all of his own imagination—at least with regard to his Danish school chums. Had I only seen a film like this in 1964 I might have taken up the offer of some of my Norwegian schoolmates and joined them in their dorm room beds. But would I have been able to return for a final year of US high school after that?

      In this instance, accordingly, we do perceive that a great deal of the problems encountered by young 16-20 year old boys has to do with their fears instead of the classroom of 2016. Yet other films do not seem to posit that reality.

      Yet even the still loved Aksel must attempt to repair his relationship with Alexander who has suffered the most for Aksel’s selfish fears. When a crisis occurred, Aksel was clearly more concerned with how it would affect him rather than what it might mean for his lover. Does this Tin Man, even now that he’s been reoiled, truly have a heart?

 

Los Angeles, January 4, 2022

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (January 2022).