Michael Calciano | But He's Gay / 2024

he hurt me!

by Douglas Messerli

 

Michael Calciano (screenwriter and director) But He's Gay / 2024 [11 minutes]

by Douglas Messerli

 

But He’s Gay is a rather silly comedy in which, quite by computer accident, Will’s (Dion Costelloe) ex girl-friend Maeve (Meagan Kimberly Smith) gets invited to a party to celebrate Will’s relationship with his boyfriend Christian (Cole Dorman).

   Apparently, the breakup was particularly bad for Maeve, who evidently didn’t have a clue that the then highly confused Will was actually gay. Her behavior during the breakup was so endlessly traumatic, in fact, that she lost most of her former friends in the process. Yet, here she is a party where those very same ex-friends are now celebrating the changes Will has made in his life.

    Everyone, particularly Ricky (Nile Harris), the host of the party, who is terrified of her yet again making a scene. But, at first, Maeve just seems happy to see all her old friends again, possibly having gotten over the fact that Will has hurt her so deeply. But even now, she can’t quite accept the fact, demanding to meet with him for a moment in private, where once again he apologizes for having made her suffer through their sudden break-up.

     She now seems almost conciliatory, until she finally discovers on her cellphone another message from Ricky warning others that she is “here,” meaning at the party to which she was not truly invited; she goes ballistic, again replaying all of the angst she previously put her friends through.

     Now she declares, despite Will’s denials, that he was not gay, but bisexual, despite the fact that he finally shouts out the message that he was gay during their relationship and is gay now.

     I know the problem, in my attempts to imagine myself as straight, I too dated a couple of women, who later appeared hurt and confused when I quickly abandoned them upon actually coming out. Did they imagine, even though I did not have sex with either of them, that I was truly bisexual? Yes, they were hurt, and I had inadequate language to explain to them why I quickly left them in the lurch. I was selfish perhaps, but so relieved at having discovered who I really was, that I simply had no way to explain the transformation properly to them.

    I hope they perceived and accepted the new reality, but perhaps, like Maeve, they never came to terms with it. I was such a nice boy, whom their mother’s adored, the perfect gentleman caller. But when it comes to sex you can only be a gentleman for so long.

      Clearly Maeve has not fully come to terms with the fact as she finally holds up a container of pepper spray, ultimately squirting it not only into the eyes of Will, but most of the other party-goers as well, who finally in pain and tears also have to laugh over the truly ridiculous situation.

     This is an ensemble production in which all the actors work together nicely in their reactions to the woman who still cannot face the reality of everyone’s dislike for her endless homophobia and lack of understanding. Maeve is a bit like a black girl version of Blanche DuBois who can’t get over the past.

 

Los Angeles, May 2, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (May 2026).

 

 

 

 

Louis Malle | Les Amants (The Lovers) / 1958

from darkness into light

by Douglas Messerli

 

Louise de Vilmorin (screenplay, based on the novel Point de Lendemain by Dominique Vivant), Louis Malle (director) Les Amants (The Lovers) / 1958

 

When Louis Malle’s film The Lovers first premiered in the US in 1959, people were scandalized by its open sexuality; a theater manager in Cleveland Heights, Ohio was arrested and convicted for the public depiction of obscene material. Appealing to the United States Supreme Court, Nico Nacobellis won, with the court finding the film was not pornographic, but there was no agreement among the justices about what might constitute pornography or whether or not it was even illegal. Perhaps Justice Potter Stewart expressed the opinion best in his now famous statement: “I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.”

     Today, in fact, the lovemaking in question is so innocent that we can observe far more steamier scenes on daytime television, although surely, to many Americans, the story of a beautiful, wealthy woman (Jeanne Moreau)—married to newspaper editor, Henri Tournier—who has an affair with her friend’s polo-playing boyfriend, Raoul Floes (José Luis de Vilallonga) and who later spends a night with a much younger guest, Bernard Dubois-Lambert (Jean-Marc Bory) for whom she leaves her negligent husband and beloved daughter, might still raise hackles. Malle was only 26 at the time of this film’s release, about the age of his anthropology student hero.

     If the plot is thin, the actors make up for it, particularly the ever evocative Moreau, her best friend Maggy (Judith Magre), the suave de Vilallonga, and the highly romantic Bory. Moreover, whatever this love triangle suffers in tension, Malle’s and Henri Decaë’s beautiful cinematography makes up for it. Particularly the scenes in which Moreau, traveling from Paris to her home Dijon speeds through avenues of plane trees, where Malle’s camera reveals how the trees mask the light behind them, hinting at how Madame Turnier feels trapped and spends too much time in France’s capital city.

    Henri (Alain Cuny), moreover, makes a perfect villain, a man so caught up in his work that even when his stylishly dressed wife makes a sudden inexplicable visit to his workplace, where the printing presses run at full speed, it appears to care less, sending a secretary out to intercept his wife, as she dodges the woman—who for all she knows may have a closer relationship to her husband than she does—to confront him, without finding the words to say anything but that she is lonely before quickly leaving again.

    The film becomes particularly interesting, however, when late for her own dinner party for her friends in Dijon, where she meets Bernard. She is desperate to get home in time for the event when her car breaks down, and she is forced to catch a ride with a young man. The wonder of the entire sequence of events is that, as furious to move forward in time at high speeds to get her date, Dubois-Lambert drives slowly, insistent about stopping off in a small village to visit a former professor on his birthday. Obviously, he caring, solid, and steady—all in opposition to her insistence to keep up with social fray, which is also, of course, what keeps drawing her to Paris and to her friend Maggy, described by the young anthropologist friend as “empty-headed.”

     It is only in the final night scene when Jeanne and Bernard spend time together in a small boat, that we realize also that this young man is incredibly tender and loving. Perhaps the scenes on the boat and after when the two make love—as I mentioned earlier, quite chastely—which seems so scandalous to the 1959 US audiences. In these scenes the actors truly do seem to be actually in love rather than just acting, unembarrassed by their actions. Truffaut described these scenes as “the cinema’s first night of love”—an overstatement, perhaps, but close to the truth.

     Malle show the pair in various sensuous positions, obviously in the whirl of dizziness that good sex for the first time often carries with it, the director moving the camera through what appears to be a gauzy haze of romance.

      Clearly it is enough for Jeanne, who in the next scene packs her bags and takes off for a completely unknown territory with the young student, realizing that, if nothing else, it will certainly be better than the duplicitous life she has been living.

      Finally, Malle’s film is a highly moral one. As he, himself, described what he as attempting to do in this film: “I wanted to devote an entire film to the study of a woman who gives up a routine of the usual morality for a higher morality of self-realization.” If this is pornography, so is everything.

 

Los Angeles, September 2, 2016

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (September 2016).