David Färdmar | Love (My Name Is Love) / 2008

gay rape

by Douglas Messerli

      

David Färdmar (screenwriter and director) Love (My Name Is Love) / 2008 [20 minutes]

 

Love (Adam Lundgren), a straight guy on an open date with one of his female roommates, Frederika (Alicia Vikander), is at a party which he clearly is not enjoying. To console himself he’s busy with the beers, and even when Frederika asks him to dance argues he’s busy drinking, but obviously rather passive by nature, stands nonetheless, to move his body around like the numerous others about him.

     But suddenly as he stands rolling about his torso a boy comes up and gives him a short kiss on the cheek. At first Love is somewhat annoyed, raising his hand to place where the kiss was planted, but clearly also intrigued, confused a bit by what such an action might have meant.

  We see him, soon after, asking Fredericka if they might go home, arguing that she had promised him….we don’t know what, that their stay at the party would be short, that they might have sex that night? In any event, she’s having fun, she declares and wants to stay for a while longer.

      At one point in wanders the floor again looking for her to observe her busy flirting with another guy. He leaves the party, only to cross the street and, as he passes a small group of diners sitting outside a café, spots a good-looking blond boy, and turns his head back to look before physically turning and moving on in yet another direction.

      Something is clearly happening to Love’s psyche that we and, more importantly, he can’t quite comprehend. Combine that with the fact that the director keeps interspersing what we can only presume are later scenes of Love running down a street in tears, entering his apartment with a sour expression upon his face, and puking in the middle of an empty street—a scene intercut with the moment we see him entering the dance room with a drink other than beer which suggests he’s now mixing alcohol—and we realize that it’s not going to be a pleasant night for our unstated hero.

       But in the very next scene with Love walking down an entirely empty street he encounters another lone blond boy (perhaps the one at the café, perhaps simply another attractive Swedish boy). He again turns back to look, as does the other, who asks from the distance now between them, “Did you want anything from me?” It’s an odd question which could be a challenge by a homophobe to a gay man, or a gay come-on, a way to engage the other.

        When Love simply asks “What?” the blond boy, moves closer to him, repeating the question. And when Love mutters “No, no,” moves even closer toward him, he asking what is now obviously a come on, “Are you sure?

      Despite Love’s fears and protests (“Usually I don’t do these kind of things”) he nonetheless agrees to join the stranger in his apartment only a block away. This is the night, we can only imagine, that Love has been longing for, an opportunity to try out same sex love.

      The usual introductions are made, drinks offered, names exchanged—although Love is understandably bashful about offering up his first name, the other is named Marcus* (Jonas Rimeika)—ages confirmed, an important thing evidently in the Scandinavian countries where underage sex can mean arrestment (the age for consensual sex in Sweden is 15; Love is 22 and Marcus 28), and occupations explored: Marcus is in “Economy. Kind of.” And Love is a history of literature student at the University. At that point, inevitably, Marcus begins to make his move to overcome the general reticence of his guest, stroking his shoulder gently, and moving Love’s hand onto his own thigh and his cock. “Do you like it?” he asks, Love answering, a bit surprising for his total honesty, “Yes.” But when Love still remains passive, Marcus looks carefully at him to inquire: “Don’t tell me I’m your first guy? Are you a virgin?”

      When Love does not respond, Marcus immediately tells him to leave. “I don’t want to be with someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing? Just go.”

       In hindsight that should have been an obvious clue for Love to leave. This guy is clearly into something that a newcomer won’t be able to comprehend or deal with. But Love is interested, now sexually aroused apparently, and lies. It is not his first time. Like so many young men and women in society Love has been taught that virginity is something about which to be embarrassed, as if there was never a first time to experience something new.

      We are hardly prepared for what suddenly happens as Love moves toward him for, perhaps, a deep kiss, an exploration of the other’s nipples, an unzipping revelation…whatever a young man seeking same sex for the first time might imagine.

       Marcus immediately pulls his own shirt off and then Love’s, turns him over, pulls down his pants and proceeds to fuck him hard, Love at first protesting that “it hurts a little,” but soon screaming out in utter pain, pleading with him to stop. Marcus continues with even more abandonment, Love shouting out: “Please stop, stop, it hurts?” while the other responds “You like this don’t you? It’s doggy style!”

       We are witnessing not a first love session, but a rape. And like most rapists, when Marcus finishes he simply orders the other out of house. (“It was nice, but you better go know. Just leave.”)

        Love, unable to even move, simply lies face down on the couch, almost as if dead. Marcus gets up to take a shower, leaving his victim to find his own way out.

       Slowly, gradually, Love struggles to stand and put on his pants. Hardly able to walk out the door, he breaks down into tears on the street as we have seen just before the film’s opening credits.

      As he later showers in his own apartment, we hear a call from a woman reminding him he needs to pick her up at the airport in the morning, perhaps his girlfriend or even wife who has been away. He himself now refers to the man with whom just had sex as “a fucking gay whore,” “a fucking fag.” Love, who the night before was ready to explore gay sex, now is speaking like a homophobe.

     Back on the street the next morning, he observe Love bend down and vomit, the frame we saw before placed into a new context. He is not drunk, but sick, perhaps still bleeding internally. Once again we see him running, breaking down in tears. Fredricka rings him on his cellphone wondering why he had just left her that evening. She’s at a gay bar, wanting to know where he is? “Or have you hooked up with someone already?” She hears him bawling, wondering where he is, what has happened.

      It appears that he has, in fact, discussed with her his desire to seek out a gay experience, and that the promise she had given him was to accompany him to a gay bar. His first sexual experience, alas, may have now made it nearly impossible for him to “come out,” or least create a huge block in the way of coming to terms with his obvious gay sexual desires.

    The early credits describe this as a true story, and unfortunately, it may be a too common experience for gay neophytes.

 

*The credits list the character’s name as Sebastien. Was the character lying even about his name? It is also, of course, possible that Marcus or Sebastien is the same figure at the party, with the group at the café, and alone on the street, which suggests an even more dangerous role for him as a stalker grooming his pick-up. Yet at the café the blond-haired boy is wearing a black top, while later on the street he is dressed in a light blue T-shirt. The boy at the party seems to be dressed in a white T-shirt.

 

Los Angeles, June 19, 2022

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (June 2022).

Yasujirō Ozu | 一人息子 (Hitori musuko) (The Only Son) / 1936

the good son

by Douglas Messerli

 

Tadao Ikeda and Masao Arata (screenplay, based on a story by James Maki [Yasujirō Ozu]), Yasujirō Ozu (director)  一人息子 (Hitori musuko) (The Only Son) / 1936

 

The first image of Yasujirō Ozu’s 1936 talkie, The Only Son, is a sentence, a kind of maxim: “Life’s tragedy begins with the bond between parent and child,” which could, in fact, serve as a prelude to nearly all of this great filmmaker’s works.

     The next “scene” shows us the hard-working widow, Tsune Nonomiya (Chōko Iida) at work in a silk production factory in the rural town of Shinshū in 1923. When she returns home to her son, Ryōsuke (Masao Hayama), apparently near the end of his elementary school studies, he reports to her that many of his peers are going on to Middle School, and it is clear that he would like to join them, while recognizing that she is too poor to pay for his expenses. He also perceives that his future in the rural outpost in which he lives is destined to be bleak.

   Ryōuske’s teacher Ōkubo (Chishū Ryū) also stops by the house, revealing his happiness that, as Ryōsuke has evidently told him, he will be going to Middle School in Tokyo; he, too, is soon planning to return to Tokyo. It is important for the child’s future, he argues, that the boy have future education.

     When Ōkubo leaves, Ryōsuke is punished for his lie, but his mother nonetheless realizes the truth of the teacher’s words, and is pleased by her son’s desire to continue his education. And she soon relents, saying she will simply find a way to make it happen.

     The film quickly shifts to Tokyo, thirteen years later, to a scrappy suburb of the city, where Ryōsuke works as a night-school teacher, hardly making enough to feed his wife and new baby. After all these years, Tsune has saved up enough money to visit him, and when she arrives, we can see her immediate disappointment about the location of her son’s modest home, and her surprise and hurt that he has not told her that he is married and has a baby. But, like the visiting parents in Ozu’s masterful Tokyo Story, she swallows her pain, and expresses joy in finding a new daughter-in-law and grandson.

    Ryōsuke (now played by Himori Shin’ichi) quickly borrows money from friends in order to buy dinner and a pillow for his mother, while knowing that he will have a difficult time paying it back and realizing that it is several days from his next paycheck.

     In order to entertain his mother, he takes her to a movie (also a talkie), the first she has ever seen, and together they visit several public shrines. But she, tired from activities, seems disinterested in the film, and quickly falls asleep. The next day, they together visit his former teacher, now running a tonkatsu restaurant, his own dreams of becoming a professor also having been dashed.

     That evening, with little money left, Ryōsuke and his wife introduce the older woman to the Chinese-style Ramen noodles which the poor eat.

     While touring with her in the neighborhood the next morning, he sits sin a field with her, admitting his own sense of disappointment and defeat. It is very difficult, he explains, to survive in such a large environment. For the first time during her visit, she chides him, angry for his being a defeatist (while openly expressing what we know, that part of her anger surely is that she has herself given up so much for her son). She admits that she has been forced to sell their home, and has for years been living in a factory tenement.

     Out of money, the married couple try to imagine how they continue to entertain Tsume; but Ryōsuke’s wife reveals that they have some little money since she has just sold her kimono, and the family plans to spend the day together enjoying city life.

    In their neighborhood, however, a young boy playing under and around a horse, is kicked and must have immediate medical attention. The family cancels their plans and help rush the neighbor’s boy to the hospital. Tsume observes her son quietly hand over the envelop of money Ryōsuke has planned to use for their outing to the boy’s father to help with the child’s medical bills. She later tells him what she has see and praises his kind act.

     Now, having seen, so to speak, “how things are,” she is ready to return to her village and job. Before she leaves, Ryōsuke promises her that he will find a way to return to school in order to find a better job as a teacher.

     And back in Shinshū we see her gossiping with a friend about how proud she is of her successful son, so pleased with him that she can now die happy.

     Yet Ozu’s last shot of her, alone during a break, we see her gazing into the future. And we can only wonder whether Ryōsuke will be able to keep his promise or ever find a better job.

      Many of Ozu’s works are bittersweet, just as in the film I mentioned earlier, Tokyo Story. But The Only Son, made by Ozu returned to filmmaking after the Japanese-Sino War, seems particularly bitter. For all the “good” people of this film cannot find the lives that they deserve and suffer for, so it seems; while others have somehow found a way to get ahead. If nothing else, the unjust society in which they find themselves is unable to reward all their hard work. It now sounds so familiar.

 

Los Angeles, December 2016

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (December 2016).