PROVINCIAL LOVES
by Douglas Messerli
Given the fact that so
many millions of young men and women throughout the world who having grown up
in rural areas move to urban areas, it should come as no surprise that the
genre of leaving an early close friend or loved one behind is as old as
literary history. One might even argue that the Odyssey is just such a story,
although its hero spends most of his time struggling to return home. But as
writers throughout history have observed again and again, you cannot really
return home; nothing is the same and you would have been a different person had
you stayed “back home of the farm,” especially after having seen “gay
Paree.”
My
collections of queer essays have already contained a great many stories of
provincial loves. But it was still interesting to me that the genre had even
migrated into the 21st century queer films I was observing. Some I have collated
into other variances of the genre, such the French film by Olivier Peyon Lie
with Me (2022). Others simply speak for themselves. But I have collected 4
of these films and one music video, with only the video representing a US
production. The others, French, Spanish, Italian, and Dutch— Bernard Alapetite
and Cyril Legann’s Like a Brother (2005), David Velduque’s No Place
Like Home (2017), Alice Rohrwacher’s Italian-based Happy as Lazarro
(2018), and Joren Molter’s Dust (2018)—represent the usual pattern: a
young man has fallen in love with a local boy, often a lifetime friend; yet his
love is not reciprocated, even rejected, sometimes violently, and he has no
choice but to move away physically or, if nothing else, as in Dust, socially.
The video by American singer Kyle Mottsinger expresses it quite clearly, he
even attempting to imagine what his life might have been like had he remained
back in the country with the truly handsome hunk he left behind, where, he now
realizes, we would not have been able to survive in that “parallel universe.”
What
all of these boys and young men quickly realize is that in some way their must
move on to different worlds, to spaces that are not as enclosed or dismissive
of their sexuality. Generally, their move to urban settings is what permits
them to become who they really are, changing them so completely that when they
re-encounter their boyhood crushes, they can hardly recognize the young men
they have become.
I
might easily have been able to make a selection of films representing this
genre from every couple of decades, but I finally chose these particular works
because I wanted to reiterate just how important this form has been to the gay
imagination. And these films seemed to all suggest different versions of the
common experience.
After I had left home, and gone off to the university in Madison,
Wisconsin, I suddenly was visited by a young woman who I had taken to prom. It
had not been a serious relationship; I had once visited her on her family’s
farm and had a lovely day riding a horse with her. At the prom, since she was
the class photographer, she carried a large camera around her neck. I don’t
know whether or not we even danced together. But suddenly it did become
apparent that she had taken my attentions quite seriously, and had come all
this way from Wakesha in an attempt to reignite a relationship which had never
been. I took her for sandwiches, and we walked around the campus for a short
while, but what could I tell her, that I was gay, had never been truly
interested in her, had never been in love? It was a sad experience, both for
her and for me. Nothing was said; she made no pleas; did not attempt to remind
me of our “special days.” But I realized, and suppose she eventually she did as
well, that there was no going back—at least for me. I have always wondered what
she had hoped to achieve by her surprise visit, just as I wonder what Romain
might have imagined happening by his meeting up again with Sebastien/Zack in
Paris in Like a Brother. My “girlfriend” returned home, disappointed I
fear, while I never looked back.
Los Angeles, August 3, 2026
Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (August 2026).
No comments:
Post a Comment