Song Huang | 触碰 (Touch) / 2019

“looking” for love

by Douglas Messerli

 

Song Huang (screenwriter and director) 触碰 (Touch) / 2019 [13 minutes]

 

Having recently gone blind, Yue (Du Yusen), a young gay man, sits in the bathroom where he dials up presumably a Grindr subscriber, Gabriel, on his cellphone, asking if he might have a voice message and explaining to the man at the other end that he need not say anything as he masturbates to his silent presence—obviously a momentary relationship completely borne out of Yue’s imagination.

      The doctor claims there is little chance, for someone like Yue suffering from optic atrophy for full sight being restored. The father reports that for the last months they have gone through many different treatments with no results.

      Returning home, Yue once again connects up with Gabriel. It appears his telephone partner has figured out that Yue is calling from the bathroom given that he’s relying so much of voice messages. But Yue argues that no, he’s just too lazy to type.

      Gabriel’s response is a strange one, that his ex-boyfriend would say the same thing, but when Yue asks what his friend was like Gabriel refuses to discuss him. Yue’s response is at least clever: “I guess you like someone who is too lazy to type,” perhaps the first moment of real personality he has let slip through the wall of silent passivity he has created.

      Gabriel does respond, and Yue returns to their intense pants of shared masturbation. But in the middle, Gabriel wonders if they might have a video chat. Yue asks Gabriel not to stop since he’s close to coming.

       Afterwards, Yue sits in the bathtub bathing himself. His father calls him to remind him that they have an appointment with the doctor the next morning.

       Gabriel has left him to messages: “What is love to you?” “Is this love between us?”

       Yue responds that “Of course it is.”

       But Gabriel responds by sending him a new picture of himself that he took that very day, adding that he has not yet seen a picture of Yue. But what is love with a person you cannot see and with whom you communicate only by short voice-activated comments.

       The film ends with Yue deleting Gabriel’s comments and deactivating all communications with him, a true act of ghosting by a man who clearly now feels that he himself is a ghost.

        ZIZI has a sent a new message: “Hey handsome,” adding an emoji.

        Yue responds, “Hello. What are you looking for?”

        But the real question, obviously, is what he is looking for—with all that metaphor’s literal meanings attached—as he attempts to chart new territory, to find entirely different ways to seek out love in a world in which it is already difficult to maneuver.

        Director Song Huang has chosen to render most the scenes of this short film in nearly total darkness (I have significantly brightened the above filmclip), with only the light of the cellphone messages illuminating Yue’s face. One can totally comprehend that choice to force us to experience something of Yue’s world, of the darkness into which he has suddenly been plunged. But alas, it merely helps to exclude us from the character’s world, pulling Yue even further away from even the viewer’s sympathies or simple empathies. And the film, ultimately, turns itself into something much like a computer voice mail message, removing us almost entirely from Yue’s presence except for a few vague words and the kind of sexual pantings one might hear in telephone scatologia.

      

Los Angeles, October 18, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (October 2023).