coming to terms
by
Douglas Messerli
Giorgio
Besc (screenwriter and director) Cité capable d’aimer (Suburb Able to
Love) / 2022 [14 minutes]
This
short film from France begins in a small playground where Jordan (played by
director/writer Giogio Besc) and several of is friends are playing a rather
argumentative game of soccer. As with jocks, the world over, each talk about
their experiences with women and girlfriends.
But when they begin to talk about
accosting women, and finally, disliking a man (whom we never see) dressed as a
trans, their conversations begin to fade out, as Jordan seems particularly
disturbed when they suggest “slapping” the trans man.
Later, he speaks at length via cellphone
with is girlfriend, who appears to have left with their baby to visit her
mother, and doesn’t apparently know when she might return.
Both express their love for one another,
but almost before she has hung up, Jordan has made a date to meet up with a man,
Tom (Alexandre Laugier) to have sex.
Jordan is still slightly paranoid, but
once the curtains are closed he seems to have more than satisfactory sex with
his new partner.
Asked to stay the night, however, he almost
goes into a harangue, reiterating that he has a girlfriend and finally
repeating to Tom that he has a girlfriend, he’s not fag like him.
In his hurry to leave, however, he forgets
his cellphone, and Tom accosts him this time in his own neighborhood to simply
return the phone.
Jordon has just delivered up a bag of weed
on a friend, who just quickly appears to move off, but, however, has stayed
behind and noticing him in animated conversation with the stranger, begins
filming the scene, catching, at one point, when the unreluctant gay man briefly
gives him a kiss, which Jordan cannot resist in returning despite his utter
paranoia for the visit on his own turf.
By
the time he reaches his football-playing friends they have seen the film, and
now punch, beat, and kick him. His horrific secret is now public knowledge in
these mean, homophobic suburbs.
Hardly able to walk, he returns to Tom’s
apartment, and when his friend asks what happened, he can only whisper out, “I
lost everything.” “They saw us,” he admits, “they beat me up.”
Yet finally, Jordan admits in his
statement, “You see what they do to people like us,” that he is “one of the
fags,” that he is a homosexual.
His
friend suggests he stay at his place and they’ll get a lawyer and file a
lawsuit.
“Why are you doing this?” Jordan asks, Tom
explaining, he was the one who knocked at his door.
It’s all a little to pat, of course, and
the idea it with put to rest the local harassment is more than idealistic,
particularly when the closing frames fast forward to the two in marriage with a
young daughter.
This film is pretty much a two-man movie,
with Laugier serving as editor and Besc himself writing some of the music. And,
unfortunately, this short, despite its important message, shows no signs of
brilliance. Yet, surely it deserves our respect and appreciation for what it
attempts to document, a man so unable to admit his sexuality that it takes a brutal
outing to help him reassess his life.
Los
Angeles, September 5, 2026
Reprinted
from My Queer Cinema blog (September 2026).
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