Sami Kali | Dream Burger / 2024

not all gay stories end badly

by Douglas Messerli

 

Sami Kali (screenwriter and director) Dream Burger / 2024 [9 minutes]

 

In this quite charming Swiss gay film made in England, two young boys, Luke (Matthew Rainsberry) and Simon (David Mullenger) have for a long while now been joining one another at their favorite burger joints after tennis.

     But Like, for quite a long time, has been having other feelings about Simon. He has fantasies, realizing that not only he is gay but is attracted to his tennis partner. Among the diners are an elderly couple (Rosanna Preston and Peter Trott) who play voyeurs to Luke’s fantasy confrontations with Simon about his feelings.

     Moreover, it is quite clear that the waitress Mylène is desperately in love with Luke, and keeps reappearing with simply the hope of his paying her a little attention.

      The film begins, early on, with Simon talking about Luke’s backhand being the problem why he can’t release the tension he appears to be feeling. He stands up behind Luke and takes him through the movements to release the tension, a true hands on body action which delights Luke and doesn’t appear to even gain the attention of the others in the room.

      But then Simon is off to the bathroom, while Luke begins to imagine how he might bring up the subject of his infatuation to his friend. How do you tell someone whose friendship you don’t want to lose but who may be terribly homophobic that you feel more for him that just being a burger shop regular?

      When Simon returns, Luke attempts to explain that he has been thinking about a lot of things; he hasn’t been sleeping very well. Simon assures him that thinking is dangerous; he simply needs to act. So Luke responds: “Well, when I think about you, I feel good. And I think we have a good connection.” Simon responds: “I think we have a really good connection,” and before you know it the two are passionately kissing, breaking for a moment only to start it up again.

      The elderly couple are momentarily shocked but truly intrigued, and watch closely as the boys pull down their pants with Luke fucking his friend Simon. For a second, it’s as if this little burger shop has suddenly become a hot sex club.

      Mylène drops a glass and begins to sweep up the broken pieces, wondering if good luck is coming her way. Luke awakens from his reverie.

      Finally, Simon does reappear and in a similar discussion Luke reveals his feelings for his friend. But this time Simon, at first, simply believes it’s all a joke, a routine to shake him up and amuse him, but when Luke makes clear he’s serious, Simon is horrified by having spent all this time with a friend who is actually a fag. A moment later, he slugs Luke and stalks out, blood pouring from Luke’s nose.

             

     But when Simon actually returns, a moment later, from the bathroom, the blood is gone; this too has been a fantasy. Again Luke, this much time much shaken, tries to breach the subject, but much more carefully and hidden. Once more, Simon repeats his mother’s favorite lesson: to act instead of thinking, this time Luke even repeating it along with him.

     This time, however, it is Simon he does most of the talking. “In the toilets I was thinking about something. But it’s stupid, so don’t judge. I was thinking they’re all sorts of burgers on this menu and I always order the same one. And then I was thinking I like coming here, with you. We eat, and it’s like a tradition, and traditions get lost. And I realize—but honestly don’t laugh cause it’s—well, basically…I say to myself it’s not the burgers that I like. [Pause] It’s you.”

     Luke is so flabbergasted that he can only blurt out “Me,” and mumble something like “that’s nice.” By this time Simon is so tongue-tied that he can only say he will meet his friend outside.

    For a second Luke takes in all he has just heard, stands, and hurries off, giving Mylène the kiss she has been so long been waiting for and from which will clearly never wash from her face, as he scurries off to the lovely future, the pop group Moloco/Pond 5 singing “Waiting Line.”

     This film belongs fully to the realm of one of the favorites of the year, the queer series Heartstopper. If this short doesn’t have that series’ depth of the subject, it certainly has caught its spirit. And Luke is almost as charming as Joe Locke.

 

Los Angeles, July 7, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (July 2026).

 

Neil Fennell | I Don't Believe in That / 2015

coming to an agreement

by Douglas Messerli

 

Guy Olivieri (screenplay), Neil Fennell (director) I Don't Believe in That / 2015 [10 minutes]

 

This rather silly comedy seems to have absolutely delighted a long list of YouTube commentators, but I just couldn’t get up much excitement for a highly contentious debate between two men, Derrick (Rob Maitner) and Keith (Guy Olivieri) who claim to love one another but cannot seem to agree with anything that really matters to each of them.

      Derrick, raised Catholic has become not only someone who disbelieves in all things spiritual that cannot be rationally explained by science, but is frankly cynical also about many so-called moral values. Somehow, despite his insistence on rationality, he does seem to believe in the death penalty, and doesn’t even seem to mind the notion of gas chambers. His lover, on the other hand, has a vague notion of something larger than himself, and finds it comforting to imagine a great being taking of us. Keith, moreover, finds the very idea of a man taking another man’s life as horrific and barbaric.

     When Keith asks Derrick what would happen if he were suddenly to see a ghost come out of the toilet, Derrick argues he would call an ambulance and check himself into a mental hospital for schizophrenia.

       Yet Derrick is apparently so happy with Keith as a lover that he soon after proposed marriage.

     But “marriage” is something that Keith doesn’t believe in. All the straight and gay couples he knows who are married are in unhappy relationships or have broken up. He also loves Derrick, he admits, but he cannot say that in the future things might change, and do so would be a lie.

     So, it seems, this “perfect” couple have directly opposed views on nearly everything; not, I might suggest, a good basis for a long term relationship especially when it might come to a split in political views, which seems inevitable given Derrick’s cynical attitudes compared with Keith’s various moral commitments.

      As the two lie in bed later than night, still arguing and commiserating over their lack of agreement, a toilet ghost does did appear, one that both them can see, suggesting it is not a single delusion. The ghost intends to kill the couple until he realizes that he is been asked to murder a straight couple, and that these two men a gay. “My bad,” he admits, realizing that he has visited the wrong apartment.

 

    The minute the ghost has gone back into their boudoir, Derrick and Keith agree immediately to marriage—in a Catholic Cathedral moreover.

      As a non-believer with a great deal of moral commitment, I can’t quite find either of these figures very compatible, and certainly don’t find the trick of a bathroom ghost as being a very clever ruse to bring them together. It’s clear that writer Guy Olivieri doesn’t have much respect for either of his character’s point-of-view and that everything is simply a comedic device.

     Finally, there doesn’t seem to be much of anything to make this a particularly gay movie, expect that the two men in the bed and living with one another are of the same sex. They might equally have been that straight couple in the other apartment to where the ghost escaped to murder his prey. Am I the only one who doesn’t find this film very funny?

 

Los Angeles, July 7, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (July 2026).