Leon Lopez | Almost Saw the Sunshine / 2017

the difficulties

by Douglas Messerli

 

Leon Lopez (screenwriter and director) Almost Saw the Sunshine / 2017 [30 minutes]

 

British director Leon Lopez’s film begins with Rachel (Munroe Bergdorf) dressing for work in the morning, a seemingly self-confident young black transgender woman happy with herself after what he know must have been a series of difficult years. If nothing else she still has to cope, as we soon discover, with a drunken mother who has failed to do dishes for days, and whose beer cans litter a living room upon whose couch she lays sprawled.

     We see Rachel on the bus on her way to work, definitely being given a careful look over by a young man, Nathan (Craig Stein), Rachel self-consciously attempting to ignore his attempts to make his feelings about her clear.

      Working in accounting in what appears to be on-job training, Rachel arrives late yet again for work and is put on probation. But in the next scene the workday is over and she returns home to discover her mother Carol (Elizabeth Carling) has finally found her way into her bed; relieved Rachel carefully applies make-up for an evening at the local gay bar with friends. 

     On the way into the bar she again runs into Nathan, suggesting this time, half-jokingly, that it appears he’s stalking her. In their brief conversation she resists his attempts for a pickup, suggesting, when he asks whether she has a man or not, that “it’s difficult.” It appears that for transgendered women, that almost everything involves difficulties.

      The difficulty for a woman like Rachel is truly layered for many reasons. Does the young man truly recognize her as a transgender woman or does he see her simply as an attractive female? Despite his good looks, might he truly be “stalking” her? Males who hate “the idea of being fooled” often take out their own insecurities on transgender women. And finally, there is the problem of her mother, a white woman in this case (her missing father is obviously black) for whom she cares.      

     Yet when she shares the fact that she has met the handsome young man with her best friend Jody (IMMA) and her gay friends they cannot believe that she’s passed up on the chance of going home with him. A nightclub scene with plenty of booze, intense kissing, and dancing follows.        

    Leaving the club with Jody, Rachel again encounters Nathan, this time declaring that she now knows that he is stalking her. her friend quickly leaving so as to not interfere; when Nathan declares he knows what he wants, making it clear that he is aware of her being transgender, they end up in bed. But even here there are important warning signs, as he fucks her with his hand around her neck as ready at any moment to choke her to death. And she awakes confused, pleased for the encounter but troubled over his sexual behavior. She also realizes that she may be late for work once again!

     Rushing off, she makes it on time to work but is reprimanded for still wearing her evening club outfit, her boss suggesting she take the day off and think about her behavior. On her way home she once more encounters Nathan with a male friend (played by writer/director Lopez) taking a cigarette break, but as she passes on the street, trying to get his attention, he ignores her, clearly indicating that he can’t have her kind intermixing with his everyday reality, another expression of rejection she has probably experienced throughout her life.

     Returning home she encounters Carol, up for a change, but already drinking wine. But if we might have expected her to reprimand her mother, she instead breaks down in tears, crying in her mother’s arms. Darkness has once more descended on her moments of possible joy.

     Another discussion with her friend results in her observation, “I’m telling you, boys cannot handle girls like us.” Rachel declares that the only solution she can imagine is abstinence. Perceiving suddenly that Nathan is standing across the way, Jody suggests, “I think that we should probably just go, this way,” moving in the opposite direction from him.

     Back at home, she tries to prevent her mother from going out since she is drunk, but the woman argues and begins also to abuse her, suggesting she’s “just like the rest of them,” the “them” probably representing a broad range of her mother’s resentments, including her former son’s transformation. But she soon breaks down in tears, apologizing.

     Unable to control her mother any longer, however, Rachel seeks out her father who also won’t even recognize her in front of others, and standing on the street in front of his small grocery store claims there is nothing he can do for his her, he’s lost his son. Rachel tries to explain it is her mother who needs his help, but he refuses.

     Soon after, Nathan physically confronts Rachel near her home, demanding that she get together with him, stopped from further physical action by Rachel’s gay male friend who Nathan also threatens. We can almost see what is coming.

     But the dreams and events of life have a way of hiding the lurking horror. Rachel takes her accounting exam and when she retains home, her father George is waiting on the stoop, come to take her mother Carol on a ride. He even has come to a kind resolution to tell her daughter that she is indeed pretty. What they don’t see is Nathan, lurking outside.

     As her parents depart for a hopeful trip of resolution, Nathan shoves his way in, at first imagining that her father is the “someone” who she has declared she’s seeing.

      He rapes her, leaving her dead.

      The endnote to this film reads: 2,609 Trans people reported murdered Jan 2008-Sept 2017.

 

Los Angeles, June 21, 2022

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (June 2022).