discovering
acceptance
by Douglas Messerli
Jackson Lennon (screenwriter and director) Farfalle / 2024 [14 minutes]
If Irish director
Jackson Lennon’s 2024 short film Farfalle seems to get off to a slow start,
it is because we see its central figure simply as a young boy, Jake Ellis (Elliott
Douglas) dancing under his headphones, his mother (Linda Ryan) attempting to
tell him that he is soon to be visited for only a week by an Italian exchange student,
Maria Bacco (Sofi Sabbatini), whom she has invited to stay with them.
At first, he is reticent to even deal with
her, almost disallowing her entry to their home when she suddenly appears, with
dyed lilac hair at their door. She, moreover, can hardly speak coherent
English.
But gradually over the few days she is
with them, sharing tea together at a regular time, she manages to show him that
when she seems him dancing, she thinks he’s “cute,” and finally noting the
scars among his tattoos, asks him about them.
He
quickly admits that they are from his operation; that, in fact, he is a trans
man, something we previously might not even have imagined, but which suddenly
makes sense for his slightly off-center behavior. In fact, he has spent much of
his life in England with his father, which, as she notes, makes for a slightly
different language pattern that of his mother’s.
Her response is unusual, not to probe more
deeply into his past, but to simply ask if he is “happy.
In this encounter between the two, they have
their first kiss, which presumably leads to their closer relationship.
As all true first love stories often claim
of their lovers, however, their love is short-lived, and as Maria prepares to
leave, Jake lies in bed pouting, afraid, as he tells his worried mother, that
he will never again find someone who so understands him. She assures him he
will, but also argues that he will regret forever for not having come down to see
Maria off. But imagine how difficult it must be for a trans man to find a woman
who will fully accept and love him for he is. If the gay and lesbian pools,
particularly in rural areas, are narrow, it is nearly unimaginable for how such
young transgender men might find someone to love.
Farfalle may not be a profound or
even complex short film, but it captures something that I haven’t yet seen in
the many troubled transgender films I’ve witnessed, presenting a completely accepted
and open trans figure who is totally likeable, basically untroubled by his
world, and able to more forward with full love for the gender into which he was
previously born.
I loved this film because of it’s total
openness and compassion for its hero without condescension, apology, or resistance
to his new identity.
Why on earth transgender people in the US
and elsewhere are tortured and punished for their identities is totally
inexplicable. In this lovely Irish film, Jake is as normal as any young man
seeking new love, but, obviously, still haunted by a past that is not
catalogued by the film itself.
We don’t know what his true relationship
to his English father was, but there couldn’t be a more loving mother that his,
who not only accepts him, but encourages him in his attempts to discover what
can only be now described as heterosexual love. This film seems almost a kind a
break-through from all the painful transitions I had previously encountered in
films about transgender individuals.
So why, one might ask, are transgender
figures folded into the gay, lesbian, and bisexual world? Frankly, where else
might they find a home but in the LGBTQ community. That is the wonder of the
colorful umbrella of its embrace. Not everyone within the folds of its seeming
protection might find all the others to be equal sexual brothers and sisters,
but they all recognize that in the larger community, they are all outsiders who
might, at least, attempt to help one another find their footing.
Los Angeles, August 10,
2026 | Reprinted from My
Queer Cinema blog (August 2026).
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