Alex Sebastian Laibach | Say It Wisely / 2014

no wisdom here

by Douglas Messerli

 

Alex Sebastian Laibach (screenwriter and director) Say It Wisely / 2014 [7 minutes]

 

Sorry to say this lament of losing one’s partner to death is about as empty and badly conceived as anyone could imagine.

     Our poor hero, Boris Borisov, is diagnosed with “schmuckhidrosis.” He might live 18 years or die tomorrow, sort of the condition in which we all exist. Even a fortuneteller predicts his early death.

     But how to tell his gay lover, Loris Lorisov. Why all the characters appear to have Russian names in this Canadian short, I have no idea. But that seems to be the situation, that Boris resists the kisses of his older lover Loris, and, unable to admit to his lover that he is dying—the condition, of course, of all of us—he instead lies, suggesting he has fallen in love with another.

     When Loris is outraged, he admits that it is not another man with whom he has fallen in love, Loris presumes that his gay lover has suddenly found a woman with whom he is enchanted, and is even more incensed.

     Finally, in order to explain his condition, he sings a terribly bad ballad about himself and, apparently speaking for his lover’s viewpoint, sings of his own praises, and incidentally terrible song meant to evidently represent this guitar-strummers talents.

     They fall back in love apparently, and all is well, without this short film’s plot making any logical sense.

     Given the terribly bad acting, the empty dialogue, and the truly incoherent logic of the work’s so-called plot, plus the stupid jokes about his disease from the first moment on, this might be described as one of the worst comic films about death that was ever created.

      My prescription: skip it. Get your own diagnosis and live your life as long as you can. This empty shell of a movie has nothing to offer anyone, being an example of one of the most embarrassingly bad short films I have ever endured, despite its short running time.

      Nothing about this film in any manner suggest an iota of “wisdom.”

 

Los Angeles, September 20, 2026

Reprinted from My Gay Cinema blog (September 2026).