Giuseppe Fiorello | Stranizza d'amuri (Fireworks) 2023

the end of love

by Douglas Messerli

 

Giuseppe Fiorello (screenwriter and director) Stranizza d'amuri (Fireworks) 2023

 

The early 1980s were clearly not a good time to be discovered as a young gay boy in Sicily. One wonders if it is even that today, even after strong gay organizations had grown up to protect young gay boys such as Gianni Accordino (Samuele Segreto), the young, beautiful 17-year old of Fireworks. Having been observed by a young woman having oral sex—perhaps with and older boy Turi (Alessio Simonetti), who has never named as his partner, but probably was—is daily taunted by the boys who daily hang around the local café (Turi belonging to the group of his harassers) as well as having been totally ostracized and shunned by the community at large.

    His mother Lina (Simona Malato) is protective but clearly has written him off as someone unworthy of her full love, yet still makes sure that her surly and abusive husband, Franco (Enrico Roccaforte) employs him in the shop where he repairs mopeds. 

    On the day when we first enter the story of Gianni’s difficult life, he is commanded by Franco to deliver up one of the fixed mopeds to its owner, quite a distance away. In the meantime, hidden in the dark recesses of the garage, Gianni is sexually entreated by Turi to again provide him with a blow-job; it is clear that for Turi it not just sexual relief but that he is highly attracted to the boy. But when he is refused, he joins another tormentor Emmanuele (Giuseppe Lo Piccolo), the leading homophobe of the group, to go on the chase as Gianni escapes on the moped he has been tasked to deliver.

     In the adventurous chase scene, Gianni basically escapes his pursuers only to crash into another moped driven by the 16-year-old Nino Scalia (Gabriele Pizzurro), who has just received the bike as a birthday gift. Gianni, who has seemed to pass out, is resuscitated by Nino before continuing on his way, Nino, who believes the crash was his fault, sharing with him that when he returns he should visit who family who runs a fireworks enterprise.

     After delivering the still intact moped, he begins the long walk home only to observe a beautiful fireworks display over a small town, perceiving that it has been created by Nino’s family. He visits

the Scalias, primarily to apologize for the accident, which they feel was probably their son’s fault, inviting Gianni to join them in a joyous outdoor lunch which introduces us to many of the family members including Totò (Simone Raffaele Cordinao), Nino’s delightful nephew, his uncle Ciccio (Giuseppe Spata), Pietro (Roberto Salemi), Isabella (Maria Giuditta), and Nino’s father, Alfred (Antonio De Matteo), who when Gianni lies, claiming that his father works in Germany and expresses his work ethic values, is offered a job at Alfredo’s brother’s quarry.

     Gianni is so relieved to be free of his life in his step-father’s garage, and is so delighted to be accepted by the friendly Scalia family, that he is actually happy to work at the quarry, where because of his age of fragile frame is mostly given lighter jobs than the heavy daily laborers who each day line-up to work there.

   Most important, Gianni soon becomes a daily part of the Scalia family’s life, he and Nino growing close while the outsider also begins to hope that he can save up enough money to help him and his mother escape Franco’s abuse. He hides his reputation as a outcast and keeps from Nino the details of his homelife.

     But his new rapture is short-lived when he spots one of the bullies from his village joining up the quarry crew, which forces him to immediately quit his job. When, as usual, Nino comes to pick him up after work, he is told that Gianni when home ill, Nino making the voyage to Gianni’s home town, where now he two is mocked by Emmanuele and others, which reveals to the young boy not only his friend’s sexuality, but that he has lied about his father being a worker in Germany. Yet Nino does still seek out his friend, arguing that he doesn’t care about the rumors, but begging him to never lie to him again.

   If, despite the difficulties that Gianni faces, we have gotten glimpses in the Sicilian landscape a kind of paradise, the film now almost takes to a new level of euphoria, as the two boy’s relationship grows into something other than a mere friendship. As Italy scores a goal during the 1982 World Cup match in soccer, the two boys run outside in celebration, suddenly sharing kisses of joy before hiding themselves away in a storage room behind a closed door to release the passion for one another they have long been holding in.

    As Nino’s father Alfredo’s health begins to decline, his heart making it difficult to work on the many fireworks celebrations he has commissioned, Nino convinces him that he, with Gianni’s help, can take over the setting up, lighting, and performance of the family’s glorious fireworks displays. And for a while they do just that, luxuriating in the glow of the fireworks grand explosions, their youthful joy in one another’s bodies matching the sky-bound wonders that wow small-town local audiences.

   But this is Sicily, a world a small town gossip and always observing eyes, who witness the boys increasing intimacy, reporting it through a local woman, to Nino’s mother Carmela (Fabrizia Sacchi), who in turns shares it with her family. Even Gianni’s mother shares with Carmela her fears that her son will be destroyed by his association with Gianni. Nino is questioned by both is father Alfredo and Nino’s uncle until he finally breaks down in tears, denying and betraying his lover in his insistence that he has any sexual involvement with Gianni and that gay people disgust him.

    The splendiferous world they have inhabited has turned into a world of dark, hostile shadows. The glow of fireworks no longer has any meaning.

     Separated from love, Gianni once more loses his job and his love, forcing him to return to work in Franco’s moped shop with the tormentors just outside his doorstep. Alfredo’s brother hires a couple of thugs to beat up Gianni on the very street where he lives to serve as an example. The bar boys watch with silent delight. But in this instance even Franco is shaken by the violence, as Turi and Guiseppina, a sympathetic female hanger-on—who in fact may have been the one to see Turi receiving a blow-job from Gianni—help take him home to recover. Despondent he is visited by a priest who can offer him no consolation.

     At the final round of the World Cup, Nino, now isolated from the rest of the world, escapes his families’ intense watching of the game, to peruse some drawings of fireworks he once shared with his beloved friend. His uncle Ciccio joins him, suggesting that Nino might choose the life he seeks, suggesting himself as an example, if he is only more secretive and what we would describe as closeted.

    Nino suddenly determines to ignore all the advice and mopeds to Gianni’s home at the precise moment of the celebrations for Italy’s football victory. And despite, his mother’s protests, he runs to greet his lover. Together they escape into the countryside to a secluded spot to where they have previously shared, kissing and holding hands through the crown of celebrants waving the Italian flag. The two escape back to their Arcadia, holding and deeply loving one another is nature. Two gunshots are heard as the screen goes black.

    The movie is based on the real-life murders of two young gay boys, Toni and Giorgio killed in Sicily in 1980 simply because they were in love.

    To me, this film, after it’s delicious moments of two beautiful boys sharing themselves with one another, has declared the end of love. Homophobia be damned, wherever it exists, continuing even today all over the world. Every society might be a utopia but cruelly chooses to remain as unnecessary dystopias.

 

Los Angeles, April 28, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (April 2026).

Sharlin Lucia | In einem moment (In a Moment) / 2019

the fortress crumbles

by Douglas Messerli

 

Sharlin Lucia and Madita Rutten (screenplay), Sharlin Lucia (director) In einem moment (In a Moment) / 2019 [17 minutes]

 

The coming of age gay short by German director Sharlin Lucia is certainly not original. Like so many other films of its kind, a young school boy, Max (Björn Jochum) arrives at a new school with fear and trepidation. But here he is met by several students willing to be his friends, including Anna (Juliane Selesnew) and a young basketball player, Leon (Aaron Rufer). Although Anna seems to be an all too ready girlfriend, it is the beauty of Leon that most strikes Max, as it does apparently all of the girls in school in well.

     Yet, Leon seems utterly willing to strike up a friendship, asking about Max’s interests—which seem to be mostly musical—without portraying any of the US high school confrontations given that his passion is basketball. Indeed, he encourages Max to perform in the open mic night of school musical performances.

     For Max, his sudden gut response to Leon’s open friendship is immediately confusing, especially when Anna tells him that Leon’s “not into girls.” At home, later in the week, he can hardly eat a meal, while his macho father (Christoph Nitz) drills him about whether he’s met any interesting girls yet, suggesting that by his age he had already had several female relationships.

     Max’s mother (Stefanie Renk) reminds him that his father, who has by this left the table for the TV soccer game, is just boasting. “You know how he is?” He didn’t have a girlfriend until he was 17, she consoles him. “You’ll find the right girl when the time comes,” she further tortures him with her reassurances. Max hurries off to bed.

     Working on a musical composition in the classroom before school begins, Max is disappointed with what he has written so far. A sympathetic teacher (Frank Katatsch) suggests he write something honestly from the heart, even if it feels uncomfortable. You never know how it will affect people, he optimistically agues.

     In the meanwhile, Leon has invited him to play three-man basketball with another friend, an invitation which Max willingly accepts. Remarkably, Max is not at all an incompetent sportsman, stealing the ball at one point and putting the ball through the hoop at another moment. More importantly, he actually makes physical contact with the handsome Leon, who readily pushes back, the two temporarily falling to the ground with Leon, on the top of him, about ready to plant a kiss upon Max’s lips before the friend calls out, “Are we hear to make out or play ball.” Suddenly Max pulls away and reports he has to go home, leaving Leon a bit confused.

     But obviously, it is Max who is confused, taking a long shower as he replays the scene with Leon over in his mind, finally producing a wry smile upon his face.

     In the next scene, he has evidently just played the song for Anna in his bedroom, who suggests its truly a beautiful work, but adds: “Do your parents know?” If nothing else, we now know that this song is for Leon.

      Bravely, Max’s parents in attendance, he performs the song at the school event, a quite lovely musical work about how he has long protected himself in a fortress but with the love of someone he’s met can now leave it and join the world—composed by the film’s cinematographer (and evidently makeup artist) Paul Schiefelbein. It is this gentle “coming out” song that really makes this film somewhat different, similar to the country western performer Will Worthington’s revelation in the TV series Nashville of his gay sexuality through music.

      His school mates enthusiastically applaud the song and its message, which emboldens Max to walk down from the stage and shyly kiss Leon in front of his peers and parents both. Max’s mother smiles in pride and even her husband can’t help but share a reluctant grin.

      Numerous other films have shown us far darker pictures of LGBTQ sexuality in high school halls and locker rooms—just yesterday I watched a locker room murder in a short film in which the boys had loved each other since their childhoods. And above I comment on the far more difficult coming out film, Fag. But we need more of this far gentler kind of cinematic depiction to remind us that discovering one’s sexual identity to be queer does not have to result in emotional trauma.

 

Los Angeles, January 19, 2021

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog and World Cinema Review (January 2021).  

 

Jessie Levandov | Baby / 2019

der rosenkavalier

by Douglas Messerli

 

Jessie Levandov (screenwriter and director) Baby / 2019 [8 minutes]

 

Jessie Levandov’s 2019 short Baby begins with what critic Chelsea Lupkin describes as “a seemingly innocuous scene, where a group of teens hang out on benches smoking and listening to music, the early imagery…immediately conjur[ing] up assumptions about how these individuals must be somehow ‘tougher’ than your average America.” Some outsiders might seem them as not only “tougher” but “meaner,” but that would simply suggest that they do not know them and cannot read behind the masks these kids must wear in order to survive.

      But even in this first scene wherein one figure goes on about the ribs and rice of the them is eating actually being “rat,” when the central figure on the bench, the teenager Ali (Ali Mian)—sitting with a girl stroking his head and neck—asks for a light for his cigarette and a boy standing just behind him, Solo (Soloman Breland), leans down immediately to provide it, we sense a subtle relationship between the two of them the isn’t apparent even to the others.

     Over the next several frames we follow Ali—who wears a head covering for most the early part of the film—as he visits a Bronx barber where he gets a special “wave” cut for what the barber presumes is a date with his girlfriend and stops by a bodega to pick up a single rose. The musical accompaniment of the song “Baby” sung by Donnie and Joe Emmerson suggests a kind of “romantic feminization” in the perspective of the heavy masculinity required of this Dominican-American boy as he makes his way through the hood. As he struts through the streets, high-fiving friends en route, if nothing else, we observe a gentler, unexpectedly “preening” Ali.

      And when, with rose in hand, he makes his way back to the bench near the basketball court where the action presumably began, finding it empty except for Solo, we realize his date is a one-on-one basketball game played out on what Solo describes as a “brisk” day. For a moment before, they sit side-by-side, Ali handing over the rose not quite as graciously as a Viennese Rosenkavalier, but just as meaningfully as the two gradually inch their hands toward one another—their eyes darting about to make sure no one else is around—to briefly touch. Accomplishing that simple act becomes what director Jessie Levandov describes as “a personal victory,” and they move to the court to play ball with the joyful eagerness of engaging in a sexual act played out in the dance of a sporting scrimmage.

       A long-time teacher of filmmaking in the New York City public high schools, director Levandov worked with her own students in creating the film, using former students and their friends to play the roles in Baby. Levandov comments: “I adore teenagers, I think they’re brilliant. They have so much to say, and it’s such a specific and tender time in one’s life where you’re really trying to figure out how to carve out space for yourself in order to be who you are. I wanted to tell a tender, queer coming-of-age love story that brings you into the world of this particular group of young folks in New York City.”

      Baby was awarded the Grand Jury Prize for Best Narrative Short Film at Outfest.

 

Los Angeles, December 28, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (December 2022).