Casper Andreas | Mormor’s Visit / 2005

demanding her freedoms

by Douglas Messerli

 

Casper Andreas (screenwriter and director) Mormor’s Visit / 2005 [16.25 minutes]

 

Swedish photographer Simon (Daniele Teodoro), living in New York City, is in bed engaging in a morning bed wrestle with his black lover Justin (Dexfurth Houston) when the apartment buzzer rings. As he peeks out through peep-hole he’s shocked by what he sees: his Swedish grandmother, Mormor (Ingrid Söderblom), age 82, has suddenly arrived on his doorstep from the Swedish nursing center in which she’s been living.

      He quickly throws on a shirt, picks up her suitcase and steers her into his kitchen, stunned by her arrival, but also a bit perplexed in knowing how to explain the boy in his bed. No matter; once she catches her breath from walking up all the stairs and explains that she has flown in from Sweden with the help of another resident, Lars-Gunnar, who has a computer and the nursing home, Mormor suggests that she’s always warned his mother that he might be queer, and is curious whether the two, Justin and he, might be in a “partnership” with one another, by which presumably she means are they planning to marry. He has a difficult time explaining to her that it’s not that kind of “relationship,” but rather one that just involves “sex.” “Not much of a relationship,” she declares.

      She isn’t disturbed over the fact that her beloved grandson is gay—after all she recognizes that he has escaped to New York for the freedoms he has sought—but explains that she has “run away” because Nurse Annette took her phonograph away and, and with it, all her cassettes sent to her by Simon.

     We soon discover even worse news, that Annette has described her as a senile old lady simply because she chose arise earlier than the standard time—after all the sun was shining almost as it does at Midsommer—and had begun to dance.

       Even after Simon’s mother calls expressing her worry over Mormor’s sudden escape, she refuses to even think about going back. Simon’s mother seldom comes to visit her and when she does she only sits around with the others who are told when to rise, to eat, to sleep, even when to shit. She wants the same freedoms that Simon has found.

       In Casper Andreas’ tender and moving portrait of a woman who has suffered—as so many countless such nursing home and assisted living center individuals do—elder abuse, the AARP generation are drawn to LGBTQ figures for the freedoms they have won and now their elders demand is their right as well.

       She is fascinated by his so very “black” friend. Is it true, she asks, that black men have....? Simon quickly puts away his photographs, which she’s spotted, and gently suggests they needn’t talk about such things nor, when she soon brings up the subject, will he explain how gay men “do it.”

       Nothing much happens in this film; we know the inevitable outcome, that Marmor will eventually be shipped back home to live either with her daughter or, even worse, locked away again in the nursing home. But the rapport between the grandson and grandmother, as she begins to try on some of the costumes he keeps for his photography sessions and he is moved to photograph her, is so endearing and actors Teodoro and Söderblom are so very convincing, that we enjoy the few moments they have together during which the muscles of our faces battle in different directions between laughter and tears.

     He promises her that we will take her out dancing later that evening, probably to gay bar since, as he hints it has to be “someplace where everyone can go and do whatever they absolutely want.” And he even suggests that she may be able to stay with him for a few days and he will later return back with her and deal with Nurse Annette.

       She explains that he’s always been her favorite and she just needed to see him one more time before “they do away with me.” Simon tells her that he loves her as well. And she promises that if he believes in love he will find someone who whom he can be find a “true” relationship.

        Mormor’s Visit, it turns out, is a gift Simon might never have imagined waking up that morning in his Harlem apartment, and she will have memories and the pictures to prove it to share her upstairs friend, Lars-Gunnar, who with his computer can also perhaps explain how two men “do it.”

 

Los Angeles, April 20, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (April 2022).

Babak Anvari | What's Up with Adam? / 2005

a moment of wonderment, a kiss, and a dance

by Douglas Messerli

 

Håvard Rydning (screenplay), Babak Anvari (director) What's Up with Adam? / 2005 [24 minutes]

 

Adam (Paul Stocker) is dumped of with his numerous bags and suitcases in the local parking lot of the university he is attending, almost dismissed by his arguing parents who drive off with hardly a word of good wishes. They wave him off mid-argument.

    But he quickly finds a friend in the helpful fellow student, obviously his senior, who helps him with his bags and suggests next time he go the back entrance which is not so difficult to navigate.

    He meets up with the friendly guy, Toby (Jason Ebelthite), who first appears to be a kind of jock who’s dating Beth (Henriette Faye-Schjøll), both of whom are also in his French class.

     But Adam also does seem to have a friend from his old high school days, Janet (Sheena Irving), who seems more interested in dating and the upcoming ball than any academic achievement. She suddenly becomes determined to find someone whom Adam might date for the college ball, which seems to be, at least for her, the big event of the year.

     When the early exams for the French class are reported, Adam does quite nicely, while he discovers that Toby has failed it and can’t afford to fail the final exams which he feels are coming up far too soon.

     This film from 2005 is a rather old-fashioned gay film when boys actually fall in love. So it is no surprise that we soon get the set up. After one of the classes, we see Adam sitting with the handsome Toby attempting to explain some of the French lessons that they have been taught.

      Toby’s response—"it sounds so easy when you explain it!”—results in the obvious next step, Toby asking if the academic-minded Adam can give him some help, with the form of lessons, so that he might possibly pass the final exam.

      Adam sees it as utterly no problem, and the boys begin to study closely together.

     But meanwhile, Janet is the kind of girl who plows through her friendships without even bothering to ask whether what she’s doing is helpful or annoying. She reminds me more of the kind of marriage-determined woman who I experienced in the 1960s who were so centered upon their own and their friend’s martial futures that they literally pushed and pulled the shy boys into female relationships that the boy’s themselves may not have truly wanted. She is convinced, in this case, that her friend Beth truly likes Adam and that they would make a perfect couple, plotting a meetup for the two at a local bar.

     Meanwhile, Toby and Adam meet up in Adam’s dorm room to study, Adam making quite sure that it focuses on the academic studies.

     His first meeting with Beth does not go well. He’s clear he’s not interested. But she, being another formidable female of this not so after-all liberated school, knowing that he’s helping Toby with lessons, wonders, if he has enough time, might he not like to meet with her for help in French as well.

     At this point, even the passive Adam expresses the fact that he really doesn’t have that kind of time.

     Her answer, as she takes his hand literally shaking upon his knee, is “yeh, perhaps some other time.” But she knows just how to handle shy boys who are simply afraid of getting involved with girls, asking him if he’s going to the ball. At that very moment, however, Toby shows up, further complicating the confusing feelings that Adam is having. He immediately asks Toby to sit down, a smile returning to his face.

     Toby is slowly learning but doesn’t quite get the meaning of what he’s reading, wondering what the machine they keep talking about regarding the deus ex machina, with Adam explaining that it is Latin, Greek actually about the sudden end of theatrical events in which the gods appeared ending the plays with “the voice of god.” But we now see that Toby is not stupid. He suggests that basically it is a crappy out when they can’t come up with a proper ending like Superman 3; Adam has to agree. And finally, we get a laugh out of Adam.

    In the very next scene, they finally meet out of doors, Adam suggesting he’s doing really well. The are now sitting, and Adam positing that if he keeps up with his reading and grammar—Toby interrupting him to say, “You think of that all the time, don’t you?”

     Suddenly Toby introduces a new subject: “It’s changing, the sunset in the sky. It’s big.”

   Adam admits “big” is too small a word to describe it, Toby showing that he too has a secret profundity: “Infinite,” a word choice that even makes Adam turn to him in respect. The scene is a kind of secret moment between the two when Toby has finally brought all of Adam’s learning to a moment of silence. If for nothing else, this and a couple of other scenes make this work a true joy to watch.

     Exam day, a 2-hour test, has finally arrived. Adam signs Toby good luck.

     A short while later, Adam is in bed sleeping when he hears a knock at his dorm window. It is Toby to tell him that he has passed the French exam, but as he leans forward in the window, their faces moving closer and closer together, either he kisses Adam or Adam kisses him. Surely for Adam it is the first time that he has ever paused in his studies to perceive that he might be gay and in love with Toby. British director Anvari does not present it as a sudden realization, but in that beautiful moment of intimacy, we know everything has changed between the two of them, and that Adam has been transformed. This is what is up with Adam.

   But his indefatigable female friends move forward with forcing him to date Beth for the school dance, as suddenly, seeing Adam continually with Beth and Janet, Toby moodily backs off. Adam sees it to his distress, but his attempts at being a nice boy get in the way of telling his two female friends to simply back off, Beth and Janet managing to get him drunk with Beth dragging him home. She sleeps the night on in the couch, despite his memories of vomiting and discomfort, bragging to others that she had sexual intercourse with him, which he cannot even remember.

     And just as suddenly he finds himself at the school ball, a moody Toby in the background, while Beth pulls him, quite unwillingly on the dance floor. The discomfort of their dance is apparent, but Beth refuses to even accept it when the unsmiling Adam will barely move his body across the room. She pushes forward to kiss him.

  Fortunately, it the films own version of a deus ex machina, a fire alarm suddenly goes off, and everyone is forced momentarily outside, where once again, Adam spots Toby in the distance.

     But even then these British monsters insist they go back in, but this for the first time in his life, Adam, apologizing of course, refuses to join them. They are shocked but return inside nonetheless without any comprehension.

     Adam rushes to the side of Toby. He begs a drag of Toby’s cigarette, perhaps his first time ever, trying to understand why anyone attends such events.

      Toby, now somewhat frustrated, suggests that perhaps people go there to dance.

      Adam: “You like dancing?”

      Toby: “No.”

      Suddenly Adam holds out his hand, encouraging Toby with the word: “Come.”

      “Are you serious?”

     And there outside the school ball for anyone to see, the two boys begin to dance, actually truly enjoying the process for the first time of their lives, a bit clumsy but still serious, not quick moves, but the old kind of dancing which I used to do in the 1950s and 60s at high school dance afternoons. These boys enjoy the moment of actually being able to put their hands upon one another and move, perhaps what dance is truly about.

      This movie is, by most standards, retardé, cheaply made, with no truly profound dialogue; but I found it one of the most delicious film moments I have experienced in a long while. Here is an old fashioned love story that for both its male characters has taken a long while to get to. But as for so many of us in college who remember just such moments, suddenly the world cracked open and life changed forever.

 

Los Angeles, August 29, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (August 2026).

Frank Borzage | Seventh Heaven / 1927

blind love

by Douglas Messerli

 

H.H. Caldwell, Benjamin Glaser, and Katherine Hilliker (titles, based on a play by Austin Strong), Frank Borzage (director) Seventh Heaven / 1927

Long before Alfred Hitchcok's Rebecca and Leo McCarey's An Affair to Remember, Frank Borzage revealed that a tear-jerking melodrama can be converted into memorable cinema. All three are centered upon a sensitive and dreamy heroes and weak—or at least in the case of Deborah Kerr's character—debilitated heroines in need of the heroes' love and support. Chico (a ridiculous name for the French sewer worker), played by Charles Farrell, is, as he declares, "an optimist," always looking up toward the stars, beautifully reiterated in the film by the camera's floor by floor perspective as he returns to his "penthouse" garret. The far moodier, but just as hopeful Max de Winter of Rebecca, is looking for a life free of the past and a return to his youthful purity. Playboy Nickie Ferrante in An Affair to Remember is seeking to settle down and to engage in a creative endeavor, in his case painting. 

     On the distaff side (and I purposely use that old-fashioned word here, since all three films portray women in need of male love and nurture), poor Diane (Janet Gaynor) of Borzage's Seventh Heaven, unable to stand up to the tortures of her drunken sister, spends much of the early part of the film prone upon the Paris streets, unable to even move. In Rebecca the second Mrs. De Winter is so inconsequential, ill-at-ease in the world, and outright clumsy that she is not even given a name. Although in An Affair to Remember, Terry McKay begins as a successful night club singer, her accident renders her unable to walk, and for the rest of the film, she sits upon a wheelchair or couch, tethered by fears that her lover, if he discovers her condition, will grow to pity her and become entrapped in an unwanted relationship.

     Of course, in all three, being romances, the lovers ultimately come together, and, presumably, live happily ever after, even if they cannot return, as in the case of Rebecca, to Manderley. The one big difference in Borzage's film from the other two, is that Chico and Diane, having nothing with which to support themselves, face a most uncertain ending. Although Diane, just happy to see that her husband has returned from war alive, declares that she will become the eyes for him in his blindness; the film does not explain how they will eat—unless the uncle who once promised his nieces a fortune if they could declare that they had been "good" girls, miraculously returns

    That seemingly small difference between the three melodramas represents a world of consequence, and transforms Borzage's weepy love tale into something far more dramatic and possibly horrific than even Judith Anderson as Mrs. Danvers can conjure up in Rebecca. Based more on stock character types of the 19th century than the later two films, Seventh Heaven presents a far more ruptured and depraved world than the other two. Like scenes out of Zola, the early sequences of Seventh Heaven manage to touch on drunkenness, prostitution, torture (by whipping and beating), starvation, suicide, and lying to the police, as well as the smug complacency of the better off. Borzage's film begins in the sewers with Chico and his partner literally raking the shit from the polluted waters near which they stand and, occasionally, fall into. Chico's great achievement is to become a street cleaner, an important step up in his brutal society. And it is that rise that brings him into contact with the suffering Diane.

     While the later two films are ritualistically centered upon marriage, in Chico's world—far ahead of the moral conventions of mid-century—the two live together without marriage, and cannot find enough time to conventionally marry when war is declared and Chico is called upon to serve. They symbolically marry by exchanging religious necklaces given them by a passing priest.

 The war, as presented by Borzage, is nearly as horrific as that represented in All Quiet on the Western Front, and the viewer is convinced that the hero dies at the front. In the meantime, Diane has had to ward off further attacks by her sister and the sexual advances of an officer. As the movie comes to a close, it appears that she will have no choice but to give in to the officer if she wants to survive.

     The deus ex machina return of her Chico, blind but still living, may temporarily fulfill all the expectations of a romantic melodrama, but we can only recognize that in the world in which this couple lives, it is truly a "blind love" that cannot help them from their near-certain fates. There is only the possibility of a miracle given Chico's claim that he is "a remarkable fellow," who looks to the stars.

     It is this paradox, as you might describe it, that gives Borzage's silent film a much flintier and more powerful edge than the others. 

 

Los Angeles, August 27, 2011

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (August 2011) and Reading Films: My International Cinema (Los Angeles: Green Integer, 2012).

Buster Keaton and Clyde Bruckman | The General / 1927

the uniform

by Douglas Messerli

 

Al Boasberg, Clyde Bruckman, Buster Keaton, Charles Henry Smith, and Paul Girard Smith (screenplay, based on the book The Great Locomotive Chase by William Pittenger), Buster Keaton and Clyde Bruckman (directors) The General / 1927

 

Recognized as the greatest of silent films and as one of the best US films of all time, Keaton's The General has often been written about. My viewing it for a second time recently in conjunction with The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences "Summer of Silents," perhaps for the knowledgeable reader will offer few new insights. But I do feel it necessary to make some observations.

    I believe I could write an entire essay on the face of Buston Keaton, or at least on his entire physique. The thin, lean body of Keaton's moves with such absolute grace as he spins, bends, twirls, rolls, and jumps in an out of each frame more like a dancer than a clown. He has a kind of dancer's body, and with his long face, accentuated by his large, heavily made-up eyes, his equine nose and his thin, clearly painted lips all framed by long, curly waves of hair, he has the look of a Nureyev or a Baryshnikov (at least in Keaton’s early days). Keaton's trademark straight face reiterates this feeling, as if dancing with a swan or, in Keaton's case, a large mechanical monster, were the most natural thing in the world.

     Despite The General’s infectious humor, there is something consistently fragile about Keaton's world. It is not just, as in Chaplin, that everything has the potential to go wrong, but that Keaton (and fate) convert even the most absurd and wrong-headed actions to slightly heroically human achievements. He is, most definitely, not a born hero, and yet as the final title card announces, he is among the "Heroes of the Day."

     What makes The General so exceptional is that Keaton's character Johnnie Gray is "wrong- headed" on almost all accounts. His beloved Annabelle (Marion Mack), we gradually discover, is a petulant and slightly empty-headed woman who cannot even comprehend how to toss wood into the train's boiler. The only act she seems to be acquainted with is the housewifery task of sweeping, which she attempts to accomplish as the train roars madly forward into mayhem.

     Even more terribly, it is she who causes the series of events that poor Johnnie must undergo. Once war is declared between the North and the South, she insists that her lover join up with the Confederacy as immediately as do her brother and father. But Johnnie, valued more for his train-conducting skills than for any potential fighting ability, is passed over, as time and again he attempts to move into the line—even at one point lying—to enlist. Like all empty-headed women, Annabelle is a Romantic, who believes in the heroism of war, and when she (mistakenly) is told by her kin that Johnnie "didn't even get in line," she agrees that he is a disgrace to the South, and refuses to ever talk with him again unless he appear in uniform.

     It is the uniform, accordingly, not a commitment to Southern principles or ideals, that generates Johnnie's actions. Indeed, rejected from the line for the last time, Johnnie hilariously predicts "Well, don't blame me if you lose the War!"

   His struggles with the North, accordingly, are almost all personal. He is outraged by the robbery of his train and desperate to prove himself worthy of Annabelle's love. The General, unlike D. W. Griffith's glamorization of the South and Civil War, is a satire of war, and is saved, accordingly, from taking a position precisely because of Gray's personal quests. The tactics of war and the ineptitude of warriors is split nicely in this film between the North and the South. Johnnie finds himself first wearing a uniform of the opposite side before he is awarded his Southern military dress. And that costume presents further problems as the platoon parades past, requiring him to salute each man while simultaneously trying to embrace and kiss his girlfriend. It appears that once again, the war will seriously impede his life. But as in all past situations, Johnnie quickly comes to a solution: sitting on the other side of Annabelle, he salutes automatically while continuing with his kisses.

     One might almost think that Keaton had read F. T. Marinetti in his praise of war and the machine, since it is often the machine that controls his own and others' actions. The most particular example of this is when Johnnie attempts to fire cannon balls on the enemy's train, twice without success, before the cannon, rattled by the tracks, falls into range aimed directly at him. A swerve in the tracks saves the day, as the cannon hits near its target, missing its aim that might obviously have killed Johnnie Gray. At other times the train pulls ahead as Johnnie is attempting to gather firewood, and when Annabelle later joins him, she too moves the train into positions, back and forth, that make his attempts to rejoin her nearly impossible. The General and the other trains he attempts to conduct seem to play as active of roles as the engineer himself.

     The vicissitudes of war also support in The General a sense of absurdity that one might almost describe as being close to Dada. Particularly, in his attempts to rescue Annabelle, the two stumble over and away from each other in the dark night, as in a stuporously crazed dance, nature offering up a bear, rain, and endless trees that impede any forward motion, until they are finally forced, like one of Beckett's characters, to stay put upon the ground. The title card reads: "After a nice, quiet, refreshing night's rest."

    Even in the scene before that, in which the action, in hindsight, seems less improvised than their embracement of nature, is delightfully absurd. Seeking to escape the forces of nature, Johnnie climbs through a window to steal some food, only to discover he has entered into the Union General's headquarters. Just as characters in later movies (one thinks immediately of Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis hidden under the banquet table of the mob in Some Like It Hot) Johnnie is forced to hide beneath the table where the General is making plans to invade the South. But even here, in the throes of intrigue and possible death, Keaton takes the story in an absurd direction as one of the listening soldiers inadvertently burns a hole in the tablecloth with his cigar. The act seems pointless, until a few minutes later, as they bring in their captive, Annabelle, Johnnie glimpses his lover through the same hole.

    That scene seems nearly a perfect metaphor for Keaton's vision. All mistakes, bad judgments, errors in logic, and plain human frailties, have the potential in his world to be redeemed, to be transformed into something good—or at least something else. At film's end, the fact that Johnnie has now been made a Lieutenant means little, we suspect, since the insanity of love is at the heart of the achievement. Johnnie (with Keaton's impeccable poise) will continue to dance through life with the grace of an unintentional acrobat.

 

Los Angeles, August 20, 2011

Reprinted from International Cinema Review (August 2011) and Reading Films: My International Cinema (Los Angeles: Green Integer, 2012).

Wes Anderson | The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou / 2004

voyage to the bottom

by Douglas Messerli

 

Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach (writers), Wes Anderson (director), The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou / 2004

 

In a theater which might well double for an opera house, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou gets underway with a raising of the curtain upon a proscenium stage, announcing its presentation as Part I, a hint of the theatricality of the film that will follow. Indeed, the events of this movie might almost be described as operatic: in the manner of sea-going hero Jacques Cousteau, oceanographer and filmmaker Steve Zissou (Bill Murray) has just returned from a voyage where he has lost his best friend and exploring companion to a jaguar shark. His wife, Eleanor (Anjelica Huston) is clearly bored by their relationship, and Zissou is having difficulty raising the money for his next voyage, on which he hopes to seek out the shark and, in revenge, blow it up—his announcement of which clearly offends his audience. As if these problems were not enough, a young man, Ned Plimpton (Owen Wilson), shows up at the after-event party, suggesting to Zissou that he may be his illegitimate son! (Later in the film, however, Eleanor notes that “Zissou shoots blanks”). As he admits at another point the picture, “I know I haven’t been at my best this past decade.”

     But the misadventures are just beginning. Production designer Mark Friedberg, set decorator Gretchen Rau, and cinematographer Robert Yeoman stir up a visually stunning catalogue of images as they take us on a tour of Zissou’s ship the Belafonte (a 50-year old minesweeper much like Costeau’s Calypso). It seems like something out of a coloring book rather than a sea-going vessel. As Zissou observes, the kitchen is the most technologically advanced spot on board.

    Moreover, the crazy mix of crew and fellow voyagers—a sentimental German, a music-playing Brazilian, an Indian cameraman, several inexperienced interns, a very pregnant reporter (Cate Blanchett), as well as Zissou’s newfound son (“How long have you been working on team Zissou,” the reporter asks of Ned; “Not very long. About ten minutes,” he replies)—further arouses our suspicions that this voyage will be doomed. When Eleanor Zissou—the brains behind the team—refuses to participate, one recognizes that the ship is left in the incapable hands of a comic Ahab.

     As the voyage progresses, things go further downhill; indeed, this will be a voyage to the very bottom of Zissou’s and his friend’s lives. Computers refuse to function, forcing the team to break into an offshore facility of Zissou’s nemesis and his wife’s former husband Alistair Hennessey (Jeff Goldblum). Steering his ship across unprotected waters, Zissou suddenly finds himself in the hands of brutal Filipino pirates. Amazingly, he snaps into heroic action, saving all but the on-board accountant from certain death. The ship, however, has been damaged, and as Hennessey catches up to it, there is no choice but to put into port, where they are abandoned by their interns.

    Eleanor, sharing Hennessey’s villa, is implored to return to Zissou and sustain the voyage with her family’s money. Her refusal quickly dooms any salvageable portion of the red-hatted Zissou team’s “adventure.” As Zissou admits, “I don’t have any status anymore.”

     The discovery of Hennessey’s huge vessel about to sink, however, reanimates the team as they head to the once populated island upon which sits a now-deserted hotel, where, ultimately, they discover Hennessey’s crew buried and Hennessey himself along with their company accountant playing cards with their captors. Springing into action, Zissou and his accomplices save the day, but soon after Ned is killed by his “father’s” negligence, as the onboard helicopter crashes into the ocean.

    As Eleanor finally rejoins the team, sonar picks up the presence of the giant shark, and the remaining adventurers explore rock bottom in their underwater vessel. Once again, the world portrayed here is a magical one, made up of cartoon-like day-glo colored creatures and bejeweled puppets. Despite the artificiality of this world—one should say because of the theatricality of it—the magical beast they all finally get to glimpse is truly awe-inspiring, and the ship of fools can finally resurface with a renewed sense of wonderment, having shared in the adventures worthy of any childhood romance.

 

Los Angeles, May 5, 2006

Reprinted in Reading Films: My International Cinema (Los Angeles: Green Integer, 2012).