the last dance
by Douglas Messerli
Mathias Broe (screenwriter and director) Ung mands dans (Young Man's Dance) / 2014 [12 minutes]
Mattis (Lior Cohen) is a competition ballroom
dancer, and evidently an award-winning boy. As he combs and dries his hair in
preparation for the evening’s major contribution, his father enters the
bathroom to wash up his hands. When his son asks him if might attend that
night’s events, there is no answer as the father leaves the room; apparently he
is not happy with Mattis’ involvement with dance.
There may also be other reasons, we soon discover, why the boy’s father
is so opposed to the entire affair. We almost immediately discover that the
very handsome young man, of age 17 or 18, is in a sexual relationship with his
dancing teacher. How long the affair has been going on, how it started, how
involved to the two are, and how it began are all subjects we will never learn
in this short film—somewhat to its detriment.
But
the man quickly pulls away and leaves, as the movie pretends its real focus is
on the dance events themselves as in films such as Baz Luhrmann’s Strictly
Ballroom (1992).
It
almost immediately becomes clear, however, that despite the pretty scene in
which we now are witness to with Mattis and his partner moving in the flowing
rhythms of a waltz, Danish director Mathias Broe is not truly interested in
their ballroom maneuvers.
The
real dance of this film, more like a dans apache, takes place long after
the lights have gone out on the dancefloor, and the true competition begins
with the beautiful boy, now half naked, confronting his teacher at his car
parked alone in a nearby lot.
The IMDb and other blurbs for this film suggest that Mattis has turned to his teacher because of his father’s rejection. But that seems far too simplistic of a Freudian argument, which furthermore I feel is no longer a valid analysis of the psychological needs of this young kid. I would argue from the little context that we are provided, that although he seems truly to be seeking gay love and sex perhaps not easily available elsewhere to a young man in his position, the real issue here is power. Who is control of this societally “perverse” love, the man or the child? Surely the man’s guilt over what was probably at first been his sexual advances has led him to now pull away; but Mattis, who has apparently been more than receptive to those approaches, is not about to give him up as a lover. Indeed, he is almost smug in sense of entitlement and, more importantly, in is belief that his youth and beauty will surely win out over any self-control the danselærer is now attempting to maintain.
And
the visual dance between them as they sit in the front seat of the teacher’s
car is the true focus of this cinematic work. The worried looks of fear and
torture that crosses the elder’s face as he announces that he taking the boy
home, and the challenge of Mattis’ denial that he won’t go there is played out
in a sudden torrent of rain in a swirl of yellow, red, and blue lights that we
feel we have suddenly entered a musical sound stage. When Mattis puts his hand
on the teacher’s knee, he pushes it away and slaps his face, drawing blood.
Mattis’ response is truly masochistic, demanding that the man “hit him,”
again, the teacher finally so furious with the out-of-hand situation that he
puts his hands around the boy’s neck as if to choke him, which just as quickly
becomes a kind of sexual lap-dance, the man moving his hand to the boy’s chin
as his body thrusts in the rhythm of the fuck. A moment later they both sit
facing forward, the light having changed to yellows and greens that hint at an
after-coitus moment of rest.
Finally,
the man pulls over, insisting that it isn’t working out anymore. “You are not
well; none of us are,” he argues as if trying to shift the blame upon the
younger man, although given the boy’s maniacal behavior, he surely has a point.
Mattis only moves over to top him and bends toward a kiss, the other
finally getting out of the car and pulling the boy out the other side. He tries
to drive off, but even then Mattis keys the car as it attempts to pull away,
drawing perhaps his nails across the surface of the auto, the man stops, jumps
from the car and wrestles the boy violently to the ground in a manner that as
observers we truly do feel worried for the boy’s survival.
He
finally lets up, both standing, the teacher facing the camera as the boy slowly
wanders off, apparently having just performed his last dance.
Given the scene we witness, we can neither entirely blame the man as
pedophile, or exempt the young man as a victim in this struggle of release from
and desperate attempt to hold on to love—however that word might be defined. And I should point out, the in Denmark, the locations of these events, the boy is of legal age.
Los Angeles, March 21, 2023
Reprinted from World Cinema Review (March
2023).
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