Joseph Amenta | Haus / 2018

being fabulous

by Douglas Messerli

 

Joseph Amenta (screenwriter and director) Haus / 2018 [15 minutes]

 

In the tradition of Jennie Livingston’s 1990 documentary Paris Is Burning, Canadian director Joseph Amenta explores a world that probably those involved do not even know has been the subject of much gay attention in the past.

     The Toronto Ballroom where much of the action of this short film takes place, seems at moments as if it were located in outer space, but it is a “haus,” a home for the boys caught on camera in this work, such as Makai, who works as a busboy in what appears to be a school or hospital and rushes to change his clothes out back the moment he’s free.

    He meets up with his gay boyfriend and they’re off via bicycle to the Kiki Ballroom, where vogueing, posing gestures that flow into dance—for those who can afford, it performed in drag— are the statements that help to express their fractured lives.

     There’s not much else that happens in this film. Makai and his friend, out of money and in need of a “bottle,” hit up on his brother Durrell, who berates his younger sibling for having fucked up his family in not bothering to return home and care for their ill mother—and obviously for being gay and living a life foreign to his straight conceptions of reality. Durrell clearly blames his brother for her condition. He gives his brother the money, but tosses it to the ground, forcing him to pick it up like the beggar he sees him to be. Makai has been sleeping on his friend’s couch, and has no intentions of returning “home.”

     As they get high and drunk, his friend recounts a scene in which he has entered a dark room where someone fucks him so hard that he hits his head on the bedframe, the mattress sliding off and hitting the window shade that allows in some light. When he sees the man fucking him, he perceives he is extremely ugly, as ugly as Quasimodo. But he doesn’t leave: “He might have looked fierce, but I looked fabulous.”

     It is just another tale of how these two young men perceive themselves in the world of degradation in which they live. If their world is brutal and ugly, they meet it with beauty and grace. Is it any wonder that the ballroom, an exaggerated expression of just those elements, has become their shrine?

     This film beautifully celebrates their dancing dreams. But a short while after, while relaxing in an alley, they talk seriously, Makai’s friend advising him to go see his mother. Makai argues that “she wanted me gone,” but his friend counters, “She was fucked up.” Makai recalls that “She couldn’t even look at me!” The pain these boys have to deal with never truly leaves. And the very next moment a straight couple come wandering down the alley, the male commenting, “Sorry to bother you ladies.” In his anger, Makai turns on him, telling him “All right, you can leave.” The challenge quickly turns into a fight, Makai ridiculously asking him, “Do you need some change for the bus?” He throws down a few coins, demanding he pick them up, just as his brother had demanded something similar earlier on. And finally, he slugs the stranger, his friend suddenly pushing him away as the two boys speed off from the confrontation. The violence is simply a  meaningless expression of the meanness he receives daily. If they seek beauty and grace on the dance floor, they find only ugliness and violence in their daily lives.

      As they rush off into the subway, they demonstrate a kind of horrific joy in their behavior, and on the ride home they fall asleep on another’s shoulders like lost lovers.

      The cast, who are not assigned character names, include Mark-Ché Devonish, James Bailey, Adrian Wallace, Christef Desir, Colette Liburd, and Jacob Tsafatinos.        

 

Los Angeles, March 17, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (March 2023).