Guy Maddin | Night Mayor (2009)

 imagined history

by Douglas Messerli

 

Guy Maddin (screenwriter and director) Night Mayor (2009)

 

With his tongue planted firmly in cheek, genius Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin documents in 14 memorable moments how Bosnian immigrant Nihad Ademi found a way to harness the power of the Aurora Borealis so that he and his family members, Allan, Selma, Dado, Alma, Sasha, and Bojanna (Mike Bell, Timna Ben Ari, Darcy Fehr, Audrey Neale, Brent Neale, and Shalini Sharma) might broadcast historical moments from the vast landscape of his beloved new adopted home, Canada.

     The major irony, one of many, is that the most colorful show of lights in the earth’s atmosphere is represented here in black-and-white.

     The method itself is a true madness, and it takes no time at all before Canadian authorities show up at his door to close his idealistic operation down, the way art generally is always silenced since it has not paid its proper dues to commerce.

      But for a short time, Ademi has become the “night mayor” of the underground TV broadcasts, creating a network of his own that circumvents all the foreground noise to present the truth of what’s happening in his world in the background and underground.

      Maddin’s work is about mad originality and creativity, always perceived as a danger to society. And in that respect perhaps the highly metaphoric description of this film by a commentator by the name of “brotherdeacon” that appeared on the Letterboxd site, is appropriate:

 

“Somewhere alongside Paracelsus, Nikola Tesla and Nokomis (Daughter of the Moon), Guy Maddin's inventor Nihad Ademi and his immigrant family create mechanical poetry to harness rhizome sap from the knees of wolverine kitts, as well as images from the Aurora Borealis' ticker-tape parade cake-walking the sky route above Peguis, Manitoba. Mostly it looks as it sounds, which is like titanium grass being mowed before dawn. Similarly to most false truths, Nihad Ademi runs afoul of the more judicial population (ones with uniforms and coronation sashes) of his adopted land-locked Province, leaving him and his family to practice a more clandestine method so as to amaze their new brothers and sisters of the Robertson Davies laboratory subscription base. But, don't you fret. Maddin's Telemelodium becomes buried so deeply into Man Ray's limpid black and white glands that it swells sweetly into pre-world-war II sonatinas dedicated to Nihad's naked-breasted daughters of Bosnian-Boreal lore. It intones, even grates, generally well enough to be compatible with kilowatts and megahertz, those twins to whom preachers pay the rent and eulogies bid ghastly recaps. It's a tidy film. It was plainly made for you and me. It hopes and dreams as it must. . . being assiduously Canadian.”

 

Los Angeles, March 5, 2023

Reprinted in My Queer Cinema (March 2023

Shang-Sing Guo | Swingin' / 2020

trumpeting their love

by Douglas Messerli

 

Shang-Sing Guo (screenwriter and director) Swingin' / 2020 [23 minutes]

 

Taiwanese writer and director Guo explores the world of a child, Qiu Qui, growing up with two gay fathers in the chaotic, often sad, but nonetheless utterly charming short film Singin’ from 2020.

     11-year-old Qui Qiu (Po-Hao Juan), who attacks a young girl attempting to lift up her dress in his school, is thoroughly slapped and pushed off by the child, and then chastised by his school teacher Miss Zhu (Ling Qiu), as well as his male friend Yi-Hong, who denounces him as a pervert. It’s all been an attempt to prove that he too is manly and not gay as his peers tease him for being just because he has two gay fathers.

       Mr. Hu (Steven Chiang) is called to the school; and even he is teased by the children for being a faggot as he passes through the halls on his way to Miss Zhu’s room. She attempts to explain the situation, but is overly anxious concerning Qiu’s behavior. She suggests that it might have been better if the boy’s father showed up, but Hu explains he is the boy’s father since he recently married Mr. Li (Mountain Kao), and he prefers to be called Mr. Li also. Qui is also addressed as Li Wei-Zhong by the father who severely reprimands him and asks what he would feel if someone pulled down his pants, which he proceeds to immediately do, Qui pulling them up and running off into the streets with Hu/Li on the chase.

    When he finally catches up to Qui, via auto and on foot, the child splashes water on Hu’s expensive red lace outfit sending Hu into a kind of childlike fury before leaving his son to find his own way home.

      Li wonders where the child is, Hu suggesting he’s gone to visit a friend. Meanwhile, he takes up his trumpet and joins a small jazz combo for an incredibly lovely jazz number* which he performs with echoes of the words, “faggot” and “sissy boy” rustling in the background. One can never get those words out of one’s head, thrust into the air by uncomprehending children, even as an adult.

      Meanwhile, Qui spotting Yi-Hong (Jasper Wu) from his class, follows the boy and another friend, perhaps in envy or just curious to observe their more “manly” activities, whatever those may be. He observes them break dancing together while Yi-Hong’s girlfriend looks on. Later the couple visit a pet shot, looking at the various aquariums of fish, and Qiu follows, checking out the fish for himself. Finally, Qui catches up with Yi-Hong and begins to fight him for his having told on him.

 

      The gentle jazz tones, as the night arrives, continue in the small club where Hu plays, now filled with customers. The film now alternates between shots of Hu playing his horn and poor Qui taking a beating from his friend. We know, without saying, that some of the blues intonations that come from that horn, have probably been borne from just such beatings in Hu’s own childhood. Hu finally stops mid-note, puts down the horn and rushes out, Li behind him.

        We discover the full truth of the morning’s incident, after the beating, as Qui screams out to his aggressor, “I did what you told me to do. And you betrayed me. What am I to you?” Finally, Qui tells him to go away.

        The fathers, meanwhile, now on the street, are desperately trying to spot the location of the son via cellphone, Hu the more dramatically affected. When Li tells him to calm down, he declaims, “Now I am the Drama Queen!” Just what we suspected, the fuller situation is now voiced by the grown man, who himself tells his husband that when he was a child the boys called him a faggot and a sissy, and now going to the school to help Qui, the boy’s classmates called him the same thing. Miss Zhu, every time he sees her, gives him that same look: “Fag!” The continuity of the experience through the years, the cycle of what may be happening to their own son, is almost too painful to accept. They spot the boy on the internet connection as being nearby, and Li promises the next time there is a “Mother’s Meeting,” he will join him. Hu suggests he’s demeaning himself; they’re called “Parent-Teacher” conferences.

         The boys, now friends again, spot the girl Zhen, who Qiu Qiu has attacked that morning, and Qiu wants to go over to her to apologize, only the manly thing to do.

         At the same moment, a man next to her at the arcade begins to hassle her, finally exposing himself; the boys rush to help, but she kicks him in the exposed balls and all three take off on a run. Both Qui and Yi-Hong apologize, Yi-Hong admitting that he put Qui up to it in order to prove he wasn’t a fag like his Dads. The harasser reappears, now attempting to kidnap the girl in revenge, but Qui takes out his key and jabs it up his ass at the very moment that Hu and Li appear, sweeping up the boy in their arms, Hu apologizing to his own son.

       Back at the club, Hu plays up a storm, as the two boys watch with joy, Yi-Hong discovering that his friend’s dads are rather remarkable, particularly when after the jazz set, Li sweeps up Hu and plants a kiss on his lips in front of the crowd. Yi-Hong is amazed, while Qui tells him that they do it every night: he’s used to it.

      Later, we see Qui attempting to play the trumpet in their upstairs apartment, told by both his Dads to stop so that the neighbors won’t complain. They tease him about having a crush on the girl who’s been at the center of the day’s activities, and he turns away, a slight smile on his face as he complains of their teasing.

        Guo presents this domestic tale in bright neon-like colors, larger than life and filled with the wonderment of a child’s eyes. And it is, after all, a kind of wondrous tale that could never have been told just a few decades ago. What I realized in watching this excellent short was how remarkable it is that every year there are hundreds of such short LGBTQ films produced through universities, government subsidies, and independent support all over the world, representing as many different views of what it means to be lesbian, gay, bisexual, transexual, and transgender. It’s too bad that heterosexual audiences aren’t seeing most of these films in the same way that LGBTQ individuals watch heterosexual movies. They’re missing so very much that would open their minds to what love truly means.

 

*The jazz numbers were composed by Minyan Hsieh, with Steven Ma on drums, Alan Wang playing the trumpet, Yeh Cheng Ting on piano, and Chun-Ting Wang on double bass.

 

Los Angeles, March 10, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (March 2023).

 

 

Michael Guillod | Pastel / 2020

maniacal deceptions

by Douglas Messerli

 

Michael Guillod (screenwriter and director) Pastel / 2020 [15 minutes]

 

The highly religious mother Elisabeth (Nathalie Sabato) in Swiss filmmaker Michael Guillod’s Pastel looks out her window one evening and suddenly catches her son James (Yann Philipona) kissing another boy in the backyard during a rainstorm.

     Before he can even explain the situation, she has packed him off for weekly visits to a psychiatrist for conversion therapy. Although these sessions, which Elisabeth also attends, do not seem to be of the same sort that we hear about in the US, where children are shipped off to isolated camps where they are psychologically tortured into hating themselves as homosexuals, Guillod himself has suggested in an interview that he was shocked to read that such therapy was still permitted in his home country. And there is no question that the central character of this film, James, totally resents the situation and finally refuses to attend the sessions.

      In fact, the major focus of this film is not upon the suspected “criminal” James, but on his mother, outraged by the fact that he has not told her that he had a problem, although she should have guessed it since he once wore her heels as a child to perform as a singer. And she is horrified by the possibility that he has now determined to accept his gay tendencies. Although he attempts to tell her that she is on the wrong tract, she insists that now Dr. Lambert has become involved everything will be for the better.

      When he walks out of their first sessions, she sees him as aggressive without comprehending that the entire situation is based upon her own aggression and her inability to even talk to him significantly about the “problem.” Indeed, the conversation in which she brings these issues up, we discover, is spoken in the car during her drive back—alone, she speaking aloud as if he were in the car with her.

       When a running buddy stops by a day or so later, she watches her son and the other boy move off, her son momentarily putting his hand upon the other’s shoulder. Later, on the run, when he turns to watch a woman who has just run past in the other direction, stopping for a moment, his friend teases him as being a “sissy” for not continuing in the male competition between the two of them, and even we are now further convinced that, despite what we have just observed, James is perhaps gay.

       So distraught by the situation is Elisabeth that several times we see her popping a number of pills, presumably to calm her worries. James, most certainly, does not help relieve her tension. When she invites a couple of young women and their parents from her church to dinner—both presumably to be presented as perfect companions for her son—James excuses himself from the table and returns in full drag.

       When he returns to the table dressed “normally,” even the girls describe him as a “delicate man” when he refuses to speak with his mouth full.

        Obviously, the dinner does go well, particularly when the mother of the girls suggests that she has heard he likes to dress in high heels. In retaliation, James over to the two girls and whispers, “If you are interested, we could have a threesome.”

       The moment the meal is over, Elisabeth is back to her pill bottle.

        It is Elisabeth alone now in therapy, as the doctor suggests they move on to a new level. And we realize suddenly that perhaps James has never truly been involved in these therapy sessions. That it is Elisabeth alone who is having hallucinations. At one point, she looks out the window and sees her son and the boy again kissing, but this time when she turns back she sees the other “boy” pull down his rain hood revealing the long hair of a beautiful young woman. In her mania, it is she who has misunderstood what we she has seen.

       And perhaps, and of course with the directors help, we ourselves have bought into her mania, believing that James was gay, that her “worries” were indeed credible. If there was ever an example of a mother “turning” her mother gay, it is represented fully in this movie.

       If nothing else, Guillod has made us question even our own assumptions. But I feel somewhat resentful in his manipulation and almost angry that he helped lead us through the mother’s maniacal deceptions to imagine that a straight boy was in fact gay. And the fact that I might have preferred him to be gay may obviously suggest another kind of mania.

 

Los Angeles, February 27, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (February 2023).

Pierre Verquin | AMO / 2020

pick a hand: love or hate

by Douglas Messerli

 

Pierre Verquin (screenwriter and director) AMO / 2020 [9 minutes]

 

I frankly have little patience at this point in my life with this little French film in which a seemingly shy young man, Milosz (played by the handsome Verquin) stands in a back alley waiting to be picked up. Another good-looking boy his age (Arthur Morey) finally comes along, and despite the appearance of an intrusive older man, Milosz does finally go home with the cute boy. They appear to have passionate sex.

    But a moment later, we realize that the same Milosz is now in bed with his girlfriend or wife, Kalina (Elina Piette), who reminds him that they are attending a party, with a sickly green color of the frame, instead of the previously scarlet red.

    Off to the party they go, where, lo and behold, Milosz meets up with the boy of the other night. While Kalina seems to be busy kissing another man, Milosz enters the kitchen where his former lover waits for him with a drink, and proceeds to beat him and possibly even kill him, before gathering up his little miss, kissing her and whisking her off home.

    Obviously, Milosz is a terribly confused young homo with such self-hatred and fear of being discovered as being queer that he is ready to kill to protect himself from the knowledge.

     There are such people, obviously, stalking the streets and gay bars since time immemorial, and plenty of violent films in the past have reminded gay men and women of their existence. But this film appears to have not even the littlest of intention of suggesting that something may be wrong with this. It presumes our disgust, or maybe it presumes our comprehension of why Milosz would react in this manner.

       It’s a dramatic film, with stark colors and interesting poses; but it is an empty vessel really of hate, describing itself quite simply as “An all-in-one love and hate story between two young men, between a young man and a young girl, between a young man and himself.”

       Enough said. This film has no real purpose in its empty head. Do we really need to return to the days of William Friedkin's Cruising?

 

Los Angeles, June 20, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (June 2026).