who am i?
by
Douglas Messerli
Alex/David and a man with many another name (Tomás Bares) is a thief, stealing everything from a bottle of liquor to the billfold out of a man’s pocket as he sucks him off.
He doesn’t even have time to check out the
billfolds he’s already filched before it’s time to keep his appointment with an
internet meet up (Jirka Černý).
His host insists they first share a light
meal, and when he goes off to the bathroom returns to find his guest already in
the kitchen looking through the drawers. He queries his host if he has just
moved in, but the host argues no, that he simply likes to live a minimalist
life, offering to show him the rest of the flat.
As they join one another in the bed, the
thief takes the role as the top, but the host soon flips the situation, and suggests
that he might like the experience of handcuffs; but when he puts them on,
addressing his guest not as Peter which is the name he has taken for the
evening, but the string of other names he has used in his many robberies, the thief
recognizes that his bedmate is a policeman.
Asked outright why he is a thief, the man
replies that he has been kicked out of the orphanage, and no choice in order to
survive.
The inquisitor finds that he wears a small
necklace with a fish, and recognizes it immediately as being a symbol of the
same orphanage from which he was released. Obviously, he has found another
route into society, but recognizes how difficult it was.
He releases his prisoner and demands that
he leave immediately. Peter/Alex/David does so, but first places the recently
stolen billfolds and his necklace by the door, indicating perhaps his
intentions of attempting to change his life or, at least, his desire for
reform.
I’m not at all fond of the standard self-descriptions
of this film, touting itself as a work about the dangers of meeting up on the
internet. This could have been so much more profound without that claptrap:
“Nowadays,
many people use dating apps just for hook-ups. If you want to have sex, you can
have it almost instantly. However, the price for this is our lost identity.
This has many advantages but also many disadvantages, which some people may
misuse. What happens if a thief and a policeman decide to use such a dating
app?”
The fact is, that this is a tale of
desperation and sympathy the likes of which is seldom shown by police
officials.
Surely our underground cop will have to
pay in some manner for releasing his prisoner back into society without due
justice. That such empathy can still be represented even by officials should
remind us that they too are human beings. It is hard to perceive that with the
daily reports in the US of ICE round-ups and murders of normal migrants and
citizens. In the Czech Republic, apparently, there are still empathetic officials,
no longer from the world of Kafka.
Los
Angeles, September 23, 2026
Reprinted
from My Queer Cinema blog (September 2026).
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