Unknown filmmaker | Adulterous Scratches / 1999 [commercial advertisement]

ménage à trois

by Douglas Messerli

 

Unknown director Adulterous Scratches / 1999 [commercial advertisement]

 

In a short ad clearly influenced by the films of Luchino Visconti and Federico Fellini, a beautiful woman, dressed in an open-collared tuxedo, descends the grand staircase to the lobby of a deluxe hotel, photographers snapping her photograph as she descends. She moves off into the hotel bar, lined with paintings by or copies of works by the Polish bisexual Art Deco artist Tamara de Lempicka.

    She moves to a high table facing a fashionable late 1930s attired woman who faces a handsome man.

  The celebrity orders a Campari and gently taps her stiletto-like fingernails against the glass. The gentleman grabs his shoulder revealing a set of scratches on his neck. Immediately the woman sitting across from him rises, goes to the man and grabs him by his collar which further reveals the nail marks. She thrusts the rest of her drink into his face and seductively saunters over to the woman, revealing on her hand the same set of nail marks.

    The two women, a bottle of Campari between them, stare over at the startled man, who standing now realizes that the women are perhaps more deeply in involved than he is with either of them.

    It’s sex so very Italian, so Campari, so classy.

 

Los Angeles, January 2, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (January 2026).

Saatchi & Saatchi Agency | Girlfriend / 2005 [commercial advertisement]

his approval

by Douglas Messerli

 

Saatchi & Saatchi Agency (screenplay and direction) Girlfriend / 2005 [30 seconds] [commercial advertisement]

 

In one of the first advertisements of car manufacturers to feature a lesbian couple on TV, Toyota Corolla Canada presented a brief father and daughter discussion as they sit waiting on the porch for the daughter’s new date.

    “Mother tells me you think you’re in love.” says the father.

    “Yep,” his daughter firmly answers.

     “Is he just like all the others?

     For a very brief second, his daughter pauses before replying with a slight smile, “Nope.”

     In the next instant, a Toyota Corolla drives up, the driver remaining unseen by the camera.

     But the father immediately satisfied. “I like him.” He gets up and walks inside, his approval being all she could hope for.

     The daughter walks to the car and gets in, kissing her lesbian lover.

     A single like of text reads: “One thing you can count on.”

    Some didn’t like the mistaken pronoun, and even wondered whether the ad was hinting that you could trust your Toyota more than your father. But any solid-headed viewer recognizes that the father was approving of his daughter’s choice of a companion, if only because she had the sense to buy a Corolla. Perhaps he can’t see the driver either. Or perhaps it doesn’t really matter; such a smart driver can take his daughter anywhere she wants, even if she is another woman. All he cares about is her safety and the driver’s careful choice of the right car.

    

Los Angeles, January 2, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (January 2026).

Unknown filmmaker (BBDO Worldwide agency) | Sleeper / 2004 [commercial advertisement]

‘til flight doeth part

by Douglas Messerli

 

Unknown filmmaker (BBDO Worldwide agency) Sleeper / 2004 [1 minute] [commercial advertisement]

 

Apparently it’s karaoke night at the local Tiki bar, a quite plump, pot-bellied man singing out the Bee Gees favorite “How Deep Is Your Love” to a rather lean man, both dressed in matching Hawaiian shirts. We soon watch the two dancing through an open field, obviously in love, one handsome one with a sweater tied around his neck, the heavyset man with an open shirt. They share a rowboat, sit together under a tree reading.

    At home, the thinner man is spinning a clay form on a potter’s wheel when the other enters the room only in his shorts, with protruding belly. The two can be seen bathing in a bathtub together, surrounded by candles. A frame latter, the thin one holds up a giant jockstrap, clearly sizes for his friend. Together they bite a strawberry and they sit before a fire. By this time in their relationship it is clearly time to witness their wedding vows in a church (same-sex marriage became legal in South Africa, the source of this ad, in 2006).

    As they lean in for a kiss, the music suddenly stops, and we see the two, likely strangers, on an airflight, the heavy-set slob having fallen asleep against the shoulder of the taller, leaner other, who seems quite discomforted for the fact. A voiceover speaks: “If you wanted to sleep with him, you would’ve married him.”

    The fat man snorts and falls closer.

   “Fly Virgin Atlantic upper class,” purrs the narrator, as we quickly see a flatbed suite being opened up for a single man’s pleasure.

    This ad was made for Virgin Atlantic South Africa, but the company have long been supporters of gay ads over the years, featuring a gay kissing ad for Virgin Cola as early as 1994.

    Since I can’t afford first class, next time I fly Virgin Atlantic to Cape Town I will simply demand to be seated by a cuter guy.

 

Los Angeles, January 2, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (January 2026).

 

 

 

David LaChapelle | Make Love Not Walls / 2017 [commercial advertisement]

blow the walls down

by Douglas Messerli

 

David LaChapelle (director) Make Love Not Walls / 2017 [1.37 minutes] [commercial advertisement]

 

In 2017, in direct contrariness to US President Trump’s wall-building mania along the Mexican border, the Italian-based fashion line Diesel produced an ad that took the “Wall” as a major symbol standing for the borders created by many forces between love between cultures and individuals

    This ad begins with a handsome, tattooed young man wandering a sort of desert path to come up against the crude metal wall topped by barbwire, the strains of Alex Vargas’ song Higher Love calling out like an Odyssean siren.

     Among the piles of junk and other discarded objects lined up against the wall, he finds a single white aster that clearly has been tossed over from the other side.

     He tosses it back over, and another appears. He tosses that back, and we see from the other side a beautiful woman and a man, soon joined by many others.

     They join together to crawl over the top, as the original man makes a couple of dance pirouettes, as the others finally break through leaving a heart-shaped opening. Others take back-leaps over the walls, one man being hugged and kissed by the original young man.

    The Vargas song, meanwhile, almost chants: “you giving me higher love yeah you / giving me high love you giving me high / love you giving me high love.”

      As they all break through, dressed in various clothing from numerous cultures, almost like a kind of hippie gathering, full of color, with women kissing men, men kissing other men, and others just moving into sexy positions.

 

    An inflatable multi-colored tank enters the picture, obviously the one which has shot a heart through wall, as the words appear on the screen: “Make Love Not Walls.”

 

Los Angeles, January 2, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (January 2026).