André Leão | Nesta Data Querida (Many Happy Returns) / 2025

how to survive living

by Douglas Messerli

 

André Leão and Vitor Rocha (screenplay), André Leão (director) Nesta Data Querida (Many Happy Returns) / 2025 [27 minutes]

 

A young 25-year old man, André (co-screenplay writer Victor Rocha) suddenly turning 25, is under a Peter Pan-like syndrome, terrified and frustrated that suddenly he has gone beyond the age when he might be described any longer as a prodigy, or a young genius. As he sings in a brief ditty in this Brazilian comical-fantasy musical film, he has now entered the world of politics and elections. His youth has been squandered, and he is depressed. His best friend’s visit with a cake and his mother’s call wishing him the happiest of birthdays does nothing to qualm his apprehensions.

    The film begins with a view of him lying on bed, ass up, not at all a truly beautiful odalisque.

   Others arrive with joyful greetings, but all André can do is sing “From here on, it’s all downhill.”  “No room to be rebellious, No time to discover myself.” We all feel that way, of course, when we are young—although I admit at that age I was perhaps still too busy in discovering myself to worry.

     “Next year it will be worse,” he sings, “Just like each and every day.”

     His good friend Sofia (Leticia Helena) suggests they can start paying for his coffin tomorrow, but today they’re going to celebrate!

     André argues that he doesn’t want to be “real,” “I want to be Peter Pan. I want to believe that the boogeyman’s coming to get me if I’m not a good boy.”

     His friend João (Lucas Drummond) reassures him that it most definitely won’t happen since he’s gay.

      Sofia, on the other hand, can’t wait for things the change, to be married, have her own house, a daughter. She believes she was born to be a mother.

      André argues that society simply put it into her head.

      João dreams of leaving his agency and starting his own.

    But none of these comments help André, who has no intentions of adopting a family or starting a company. João suggests that as a gay man he can simply adopt a cat a be happy.

     And André asserts that nobody with a cat is happy. And moreover, Leo, his boyfriend, is allergic to cats. The others can’t comprehend what he sees in Leo.

    So this clever conversation goes on until suddenly the party goes into full swing with dozens of friends drinking and partying in that boozy haze of screened blue and red lights that we know well from dozens of such movies. Everybody is drunk or drugged out. The younger Leo (Caio Mutai) shows up, wondering how does it feel for André to turn 25.

      “Wouldn’t Leo like everyday to be like today?” queries André. No, suggests Leo as he moves to ward André, what he would really like….André holds his breath…is “a gin and tonic.”

      They all sing happy birthday, and André, like all children throughout history, wishes before he blows up the candles.

       We know what André’s wish is, and almost like Dorian Gray, this wish turns out to come true.

     In the very same position as he was in the first scene, André hears his doorbell ring. João returns, bearing cake that he jokes he found in the hallway. Once again his mother calls to wish him a happy 25th birthday. Suddenly, all the others return to again wish him a 25th birthday. All seems to be repeating. They are disturbed by his memory of the year before and his repetition of the events. They still wish for many of the same things, but something has changed. They are a year older, although he is not. He again attends the party, remembering almost everything from before, including Leo’s order of a “gin and tonic,” which when André beats him to his request of “gin and tonic” he ascribes to déjà vu. But yet again, nothing happens between the two of them.

       And suddenly as everything repeats itself, André discovers, quite to his pleasure, that his wish of the previous year has come true. He is still 25. Nothing has changed.

        As he now sings, waking up the following year, everything as changed. He is no longer afraid: time can’t get to him anymore. “Every day is a party, and we’re just gonna have fun.”

      Again, as he sings in a dark dance with his friends, he no longer has to worry about the past. “No more wrinkles, no distress.” Imagine the possibility of “living without having to thank about the future?”

      But things have changed. João leaves the party early because it’s going to be a big day at the agency, particularly as the boss. André has no idea about what he is talking.

       Sofia, now quite drunk, explains that he has indeed opened up his own agency. She, it turns out has discovered that she cannot get pregnant, and has become quite an alcoholic. Women best friends of gay boys often do not turn out well in gay movies. She is now 38, too late for children, while our Dorian Gray hero has remained 25 years of age. Leo introduces André to his fiancé Denis.

      Things have changed for everyone else, while André has remained a young 25-year-old ready to party every night.

       Time and again he blows out the candles celebrating his 25th birthday while everyone around him changes and grows older.

    The new 25th birthday begins with a now much older João arriving with his annual cake, complaining of André’s usual grumpiness. But what André has now wished for, than things return to normal, has not been granted.

      Like the Harold Ramis’ 1993 movie Groundhog Day every day since his magical wish, André wakes up to celebrate his 25th birthday, which by this time is no longer a matter at all to celebrate. João announces that he is now 39. “Time flies, doesn’t it?”

       His mother calls again to wish him a happy birthday, but reports that his father in now well. “He woke up confused the morning.”

      Life and death are going on around this Peter Pan that no longer includes him. Has his own life traveled to a closet of old memories? Suddenly André realizes that he must break the cycle, only to have his best friends, Sophia and João sing an old song-and-dance number about how whatever the problem is “it will pass in no time.”

 

      Another call from his mother reveals his father has died. No, time is not kind to others, and suddenly André realizes he is losing out to the experiences that, for better or worse, all his friends are suffering. It takes an old man to realize that despite the pain each death of a close friend tortures you, you comprehend the meaning of their death which the young cannot even imagine.

       He discovers yet another cake, this one actually lying in the hallway, suggesting through a note that it might indeed grant all his wishes. But this year, on his actual 52nd birthday anniversary, he realizes something has gone terribly wrong. His whole life has passed and he didn’t even notice. He is stuck in the same year forever, the curse of many a gay fictional figure like Dorian Gray and Peter Pan. How to escape?

      The real question, of course, is whether any of us really notice how quickly our lives pass. Is it truly possible to perceive that each time we blow out our birthday candles we are suddenly wishing ourselves, without us imaging it, into a future which will suddenly haunts us as old men and women in just a matter of what seems like moments later?

      This film makes those young boys desperate to turn of age for gay sex at 17 or younger that I commented on in in my 2000 essay, “Crossing the Divide,” about young teenagers who couldn’t wait to grow to age of permission in order to engage in gay sex to be absolute fools. But, no, they are not. They are young and eager without any possibility of knowing their beauty, their desires, as passing by at the very moment when they recognize their possibilities. Perhaps their very eagerness suggests that they are only too aware, without actually knowing what that actually means. Time is beyond human comprehension.

       André explains to his invisible god that “I just…liked my life. And I wanted to be the way it was forever. I didn’t want anything to change. I didn’t want anything to threaten or ruin it.”

       The gods tell him that he can’t go back, he cannot change his decision. The secret, so the cellphone god reveals, is always to look forward.

       I realize now that perhaps that has been what made be a proselytizer of change, even if along the way that role has not always been so very comfortable and has been mocked often by those around me.

       André once again, this time all alone, lights the candles on his cake, this time inverting the 25 to read 52. He lights the candles and blows them out, wishing for another future.

       Suddenly, he has become so appears, a pianist playing the melodious song we hear at film’s end while the credits scroll up a quote by Mario Quintana:

 

        “And if one day I were given another chance, I wouldn’t even look at the clock. I would just

keep moving forward. And I would toss along the way the golden and useless shell of time.”

 

         Time and again we are told by the sages, presentism, the moment of the now, is the only way to move through life. Life is survived only by living it. There is no other possible solution.

         If André Leão’s comic short film Many Happy Returns is not a particularly profound work, it certainly offers something close to it.

 

Los Angeles, June 28, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (June 2026).

 

Vuslat Karan and Burcu Melekoğlu | Mavi kimlik (Blue ID) / 2022

yes, i’m blue

by Douglas Messerli

 

Vuslat Karan and Burcu Melekoğlu (directors) Mavi kimlik (Blue ID) / 2022

 

It is one thing be a famous cis-gender actor in Nigeria such as Bisi Alimi who comes out on the air—putting him in a such a life-threatening position that he was forced to escape the country—but it is quite another, as this wonderful documentary reveals, to be a noted, sexually desired female actor in Turkey who has just received her first testosterone shot on October 4, 2012 in order  to become the male he has long felt himself to be.

   Having just made that important first step in gender affirmation, Rüzgar Erkoçlar had already attempted to escape from public life by leaving his acting job and finding employment in a small bakery. But family, friends, and even his doctor will not let him smoothly move into the important transition, one which demands not only enormous physical but psychological changes as well.

  Vuslat Karan’s and Burcu Melekoğlu’s documentary, revealing the intense homophobia and transphobia of Turkey, stays focused on the incredible good-looking young man into who the female star has already disappeared. But the Turkish public, traditionally bound through religion and social tradition, intrude at every possible moment, swarming and photographing Erkoçlar whenever he attempts to leave the house, losing him his employment, and threatening his life. Even his sister and to a certain degree his mother plays into the public curiosity and sense of outrage.

     Erkoçlar is forced, just to protect himself and give him some time to adjust to the situation to become an indoor recluse, going out only in disguise and walking short distances in known neighborhoods.

   Simply trying to adjust to his new life, attempting to assimilate to the new feelings that the testosterone shots create results both in doubts, fears, and a strong sense of his new strength and emotional release; but if that doesn’t make life complex enough, Erkoçlar must go through the process in public as well.

     The symbolic event of his full transformation arrives when he attempts to confirm his new identity by changing his pink identity card for a blue one—the sexist Turkish society defining people’s gender even by the color of their official identification. The court, perversely refuses since he has not gone through the entire operation, meaning he has not had an operation to transform his vagina into a penis-like configuration. The society that disdains transgenderism legally requires the individual to make a decision to completely alter his or her gender in what might be described as a nearly absurd catch-22. Their illogical argument seems to suggest that “Now that you have shamed yourself half way, you must allow yourself to proceed in the full gender change before we will recognize you for who you’ve become.” Presumably males undergoing a gender change must equally have their penises removed before being allowed to call themselves women. Or maybe not: being benighted males by birth, do they have more power to describe themselves as they wish? This documentary doesn’t pursue that issue, which I wish it had. But it’s clear that this society has no conception of gender fluidity except perhaps for Zenne dancers.*

     Erkoçlar finally chooses to undergo the operation. But even then his new life is constantly put in jeopardy by public attention and threats. What is absolutely amazing about all of this is just how the truly handsome male, former actor, has become as he moves little by little through all of the mazes of Turkish society with sanity, grace, and a great deal of levity.

     If you’re a cis-gender individual who still has negative feelings about transgender individuals, you should meet Rüzgar Erkoçlar in this documentary masterpiece. He makes it all so human that you want to cry. Finally, in the illogic of the world in which we live, this lovely man can openly declare “Yes, I’m blue.”

 

*See my discussion of Caner Alper and Mehmet Binay’s 2011 film Zenne Dancer.

 

Los Angeles, November 1, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (November 2023).

Alexander Kluge | Abschied von gestern (Anita G.) (Yesterday Girl) / 1966

on a binge

by Douglas Messerli

 

Alexander Kluge (screenwriter, based on his story, and director) Abschied von gestern (Anita G.) (Yesterday Girl) / 1966

 

Alexander Kluge’s film Yesterday Girl begins with what appears to be a kind of refrigerator binge by the heroine, Antia G (played by Luge’s sister, Alexandra); soon discerning her near complete displacement in the world in which she finds herself, one so perceives what Anita’s whole life is somewhat similar, a world in which for a few days she finds herself enveloped in West Germany’s economic miracle, only the very next day to discover herself once more on the streets without anything to eat. For this woman, who has managed to escape from East German hardships and, what she herself describes as a life of fear, she has not yet been able to find a place in the new society.

      In part, the problem is simply that the new society she has joined defines itself almost entirely upon possessions, while she has nothing but her face and figure. Since she has not tested high enough, she can no longer continue her education, and almost all of the jobs Anita is offered—such as a hotel cleaning woman—put her on the level of an immigrant. Is it any wonder that this intelligent, good-looking girl might wish to steal a bag, a sweater, a coat, in order to share in the Western “benefits?”

     What’s more, her beauty obviously breeds jealousy from other employees and often encourages her employers to engage her in temporary trysts, all at little benefit to her in the end. Even in her relationship with a government minister, Pichota (Günter Mack), during which she is treated to champagne, good food, and a temporary bed. She is forced to live in bombed-out buildings and to wash her clothes in a nearby stream. The sex-driven minister can give her no money, since his wife controls the checking accounts!

     Throughout, the authorities—although pretending to concern themselves with figures such as Anita—is absurdly incompetent, completely unable to deal even with her straight-forward answers and questions. Even her school advisor (although she is not legally registered) is unable to or refuses to deal with her pleas for help in her simple daily survival.

     Had Kluge been a different kind of director, the film might have turned into a deeply disturbing sociological portrait of the post-War II German society. But, the director, influenced by Godard and other figures of the French New Wave—and positioning himself in the forefront of the New German Cinema, which would soon after come to be dominated by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders, and others—treats his character’s serious dilemmas as satire.

     More importantly, his remarkable sister actress, dressed nearly always stylishly despite living in hovels, sems almost impervious from the endless series of rejections she daily faces. Not so very differently from Fassbinder’s tragic-comic Franz Bieberkopf, Anita G is determined that somehow things will get better, as she hunkers down in order to try to penetrate the gobbledygook of her professor’s lectures, the lame assurances of love Pichota and others with whom she beds offer, and the attacks by those to whom she owes money.

     At times Kluge, influenced by some of the simplistic tropes of the early 1960s filming—the speeding up frame, the long circling of camera around the oddly positioned heroine (at one point, suitcase in hand, Anita sits alone in a past pasture simply too exhausted to go on), and the use of toy soldiers to represent the larger forces at work—distract from the more cleverly executed scenes of city life. But, for the most part, Kluge brings a freshness to the entire project that allows him to say everything he wants to say without sentimentalizing or strangling his central figure in sociological significance. If Antia represents any number of displaced migrants, she is also exceptional, which allows us to remain engaged in her story and permits us to hope for her betterment.

     Sadly, for this young girl, there is no choice but to abandon her youth to imprisonment—a place where at least she can sleep comfortably and be fed three times a day, and not so very different, after all from her parents and she suffered in East Germany.

     The final scenes of this film are played out with rules of prison being carefully explained to her by more efficient than caring, but nonetheless nonjudgmental matrons, representing many strict mothers who may help birth the lost child into the new society in which she has chosen to live. Too bad she has had to institutionalize herself to get the help she asked from those “Good Germans” she had previously encountered.

 

Los Angeles, September 6, 2016

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (September 2016).

Victor Luvi | e aí, partiu? (So He Left?) / 2022

the thieving magpies

by Douglas Messerli

 

Victor Luvi (screenwriter and director) e aí, partiu? (So He Left?) / 2022 [15.40 minutes]

 

Brazilian Telemílênio’s 2022 production of e aí, partiu reads like a delicious screen test for an upcoming adult gay soap opera filled with various versions of incest, generational warfare, and gay sexual intrigue that one would seldom encounter on US screens.

     This short film written and directed by Victor Luv, bills itself only for what it currently is, a short; but it’s so stuffed with other matter that can see its aspirations. Hardly have we begun the film, for example, than the film’s stud hero, Daniel (Theo Negueíra), dressing himself for his day’s outing, looks at his image in a mirror and kisses it in delight. He is young and pretty, and he certainly knows it.

      Only a short while later in an upscale grocery he runs into his aunt (Anne de Conte) who delights in finding her nephew working as a delivery boy, working his way up the money ladder (the only stairway to success with which she’s acquainted) and is willing to put in a good word with her husband, Daniel’s uncle, for a possible job with him.

      Daniel has lied. In fact, he’s on his way to his uncle at that very moment with a different kind of delivery, of bodily love. Evidently the two have had sex previously, but now the uncle has taken over an apartment that his wife only occasionally uses instead of the usual motel. It’s safer that way.

     The boy’s uncle Roni (Abiu José), unlike so many fictional uncles, is a handsome man in great shape, just the kind of uncle a horny gay boy who hints that work as a male prostitute might want. Presumably with such a fox of a relative, he’s performing gratis or at least cut rate. And the way to go at it it’s clear they boy enjoy the familial canoodling (it’s noted that he’s an uncle only through marriage, and that his aunt is the blood relative).

      But just as we suspected—watching Daniel’s entry to the building (and kissing himself again  in the glass doorway of the upscale escape) from the viewpoint, obviously, of another—auntie, long suspecting his husband of naughty goings-on since their sexual life has long been empty, has hired a detective, who reports back that it is not a woman, but a young man who has entered and left the apartment.

     Auntie has no idea what to make of that until he shows her a photo of the boy, which immediately resolves everything: her husband has hired her nephew to help him in the heavy research of his work. How wonderful, she proclaims, as she admits and explains her betrayal to her hubby.

    Roni doesn’t waste any time, meeting up with Danny boy once more, this time arguing that they should run away together for a few weeks, having had such a good time together. Daniel pauses with second thoughts; but when Roni explains that, because money is no limit, he will provide well for their time together, his nephew quickly warms up to the idea. Roni tells his wife that he has to complete a deal in Milan that may take up two weeks or more, and promising her another new ring, hurries off with Daniel to paradise.

      Since both actors declare amidst the credits that we can keep up with them on Instagram, I presume that the creators are attempting to drum up enough support to create that longer soap opera. I’d love to see the fireworks and more lovemaking between the handsome uncle and the self-indulgent nephew, one so mendacious and other so self-centered that they truly deserve one another as they play out their affair behind their money-grubbing wife and aunt’s back.

      Once more, however, I plead for better English translation. This film was titled in the written credits, for example, as “So, Left” instead the actual meaning of the title, “Then He Left.” I have little idea of what the self-given title might mean except, presumably, “So He Left?.”

 

Los Angeles, September 28, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (September 2022).

Victor Luvi | Longe de Cuidade (Far from the City) / 2022

the return of the prince

by Douglas Messerli

 

Victor Luvi (screenwriter and director) Longe de Cuidade (Far from the City) / 2022 [24 minutes]

 

Telemílênio’s production of Brazilian director Victor Luvi’s Far from the City is a soap-opera fairy tale about a gay man Sávio (Zeck Allves) who has been almost imprisoned in his own father’s home by an evil step-mother Sandra (Bela Lima) who has not only claimed the house after the father’s death, but taken the son’s money left to him by his father.  

     We know the young boy is gay because he sports pink hair and pink shorts, His mean step-mom has just ordered him to clean the floors and dust the walls of their country home, jobs for which he has no time since her central role in life, so she believes, is to attract all the straight men she meets. Sandra challenges him for questioning why he’s never before heard of this new relative of hers? And he expresses his longing for his dead father, which further arouses her anger. She was never meant to be a mother to replace what he has lost!

      She’s expecting a nephew from a wealthy brother or sister of whom she’s never mentioned to  her step-son. And she wants things to be perfect for his arrival. The boy cleans house, but then quickly runs off to his best female friend Fernanda (Elaine Dias)—all troubled gay boys in LGBTQ movies have a best female friend, the species of which once was brutally described as “fag hags”—to whom he tells everything in return for her support. She’s about to leave on her way to a school, having won a scholarship, but she’s worried about leaving him alone with the monstrous Sandra. While they’re talking about the situation, a hunky young man with a suitcase comes by asking for the location of the very property in which Sávio lives, Riacho Grande.

       He points out the direction as if he might be some other house than the one in which lives, although after the young Prince moves on, Fernanda sighs, claiming she has found the man she has been looking for all her life—even though a moment before she was describing her new boyfriend. And finally, even Sávio admits he is most attracted to the newcomer.

       Renan makes his way to the gate where Sandra greets him, more interested in how he’s changed and grown up, evidently, than in letting him in or, despite his several mentions that he’s sweaty, suggesting a drink or even a shower. Renan must finally ask to be invited in.

       Finally, when Renan returns, Sandra orders him to make dinner, but they’re out of gas for which she blames him.

        Renan sits outside in a pout with bare chested Renan coming to his side to ask if he’s okay, but Sávio dare not complain. Renan tells him that Sandra was not spoken of well in his house, and was seen as a slacker. But Sávio is afraid she might hear. And indeed, Sandra is watching, wondering what the two boys have found in common and determining almost immediately to rectify the situation. The two hug, and Renan assures him that at least while he’s there he has a friend.

       Renan finally gets his shower, but Sandra stands nearby, a voyeur, stroking her stomach in obvious desire.

       Later that evening, Renan enters Sávio’s bedroom to continue their conversation of earlier on. Sávio admits that she makes his life hell, but is afraid that if she discovers Renan in his room she will throw a tantrum. As if to further allow his friend room to breathe, he tells him that in his family her nickname is “fast panties,” which delights the both of them. Renan asks if she’s ever attempted to “come on” to him, but Sávio only laughs saying that she hates him and besides…he pauses, Renan filling in the words, “What? Don’t you like women?” He admits but suggests that no one needs to know it, and Renan promises to keep his secret, adding “I can tell you a secret: me too!”  But they realize she may be listening in (she is in fact), and they quietly plan to meet a short time later outdoors.

     I’m so glad that that Luvi included this scene so that we truly know these boys were gay. I can’t imagine how we might have even suspected it previously!

     Renan waits on the nearby park bench but Sávio does not show up, Sandra having locked him in. Instead, Sandra herself appears, at first simply praising his looks, but quickly attempting to seduce him. When Renan finally reveals he not at all interested in her and that he has been waiting for Sávio, she suddenly opens her purse, pulls out a knife and goes after him. Doesn’t every evil stepmother carry a knife in her purse?

       In the next scene we see a discussion between Sávio and Fernanda in which he reports that Sandra attacked Renan and has confessed to having done something similar to his father. Renan is in the hospital, his family having come to take him home when he’s better. He admits that he has not seen Renan since and doesn’t even know what hospital or in what city Renan is. Fernanda admits that she is sad about leaving at this very time, but Sávio admits he’s just obtained a job and will work to save up enough money in order to escape.

      Sometime later, Sávio is working at his new job behind the counter when Renan suddenly appears. The two greet and talk, Sávio taking his break. The two continue their conversation, Sávio amazed that Renan came back, hardly able to resist asking why, in the first place was Renan was sent to his aunt. Renan admits that his mother found out he was gay and sent him away from the city. After a great deal of hesitation, Sávio finally admits that he had imagined, in his times of deepest loneliness somehow living with Renan.

       Renan claims he wished he too have been there to take away Sávio’s fears. The two kiss intensely, Renan suggesting that his friend will now be late for his lunch break. Sávio wonders where he is now going, and Renan says while they were kissing he stole the key to his house and will be waiting there when Sávio finishes work. The pink-haired boy, it seems, has found his Prince.

       This work is so negligible that I can’t suggest you rush out to see it, but since it’s fairly difficult to find I don’t imagine that many will be seeking it out. IMDb doesn’t even list it. I have kept my promise to try to be as thorough as I can.

 

Los Angeles, September 4, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (September 2022).