Jason Stuart | Like Father / 2017

a polite, pretend life

by Douglas Messerli

 

David A. Lee and Daniel Vaillancourt (screenplay), Jason Stuart (director) Like Father / 2017 [13 minutes]

 

Lenny (Jason Stuart) is dying of lung cancer, and on is death bed. A Jewish New Yorker, he has married a loving black woman, Olivia (Denis Dowse) and has a black son, Jake (Nic Few).

     As Olivia is busy counting out his husband’s daily pill dose, Jake wearily visits his father, a man who has seemingly rejected him throughout his lifetime for not plays sports like normal boys, and in particular being caught on the basement floor with a neighborhood boy Lenny discovers his son about to kiss.

     Nothing actually happened during the event (Jake admits he was only hoping it might), yet his father flew into a rage, and in Jake’s view through him out of the house at 17. In fact, the father, he reminds his son, did not actually throw him out.

    Yet, recognizing that he has not been a very good father, he nonetheless attempts to justify his failures, oddly enough insisting immediately to the boy that he has never cheated on his mother, Jake trying to even comprehend why he is telling him that.

   What Jake is still angry about is the old man’s lack of apparent love, even though he now claims he always loved him but simply couldn’t express it.

     Jake is still bitter, until his father finally admits that he saw his son as in a mirror image of himself in a carney fun mirror. He was envious of his courage, he argues. For the first time in his life, he reveals that he was always attracted to men but was afraid to act on his desires. He insists that Olivia saved his life through her love and caring, but the desire never left him.

    Shocked, the son sits and listens carefully to a father he has never known or ever comprehended.

   The father and son, perhaps for the first time in their lives have actually communicated, the elder revealing something so astounding that it takes several moments for his son to even assimilate the information.

     His father’s love was withheld because of his own inclinations. Does Olivia know? He presumes not, yet she seems committed to him until death, perhaps almost waiting for the release of her own life, frustrations, and sense of displacement in their lives. Perhaps she realizes more that he can imagine.

    Nonetheless, he has finally, just before his death, broken down the endless blockades he has put up previously regarding his love of his own son.

     This is a fairly moving tale, even if a little unbelievable. You might have imagined that if he had such feelings himself, he might have behaved far more emphatically toward his son throughout his life, instead of simply rejecting the obvious and playing into all the standard heterosexual notions of fatherhood. Even with his final confession, this is a man who ultimately he hard to forgive.

    And given their vast differences racially, spiritually, and mentally, it is somewhat hard buying into the “fun mirror” image. Surely, the son went through experiences of homophobia and racial bullying his father cannot even imagine in his polite, pretend life of cufflinks, cologne, and fresh handkerchiefs in his breast pocket.

 

Los Angeles, September 21, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (September 2026).