Oskar Rosetti | Je crie ton nom (I Scream Your Name) / 2015

escape into a future that does exist

by Douglas Messerli

 

Oskar Rosetti (screenwriter and director) Je crie ton nom (I Scream Your Name) / 2015 [26 minutes]

 

Nicholas lives in a retirement home where, when he daily looks around, everyone seems to be sleeping or near death, and the nurses come around checking up on their drugs and basically watching over the behavior.

   Nicolas (Jean Winger) is not at all dead and scrutinizes the local newspapers for gay call chatlines, when the nurses are momentarily distracted, to keep him alive in this hellhole of death in which he is entrapped.

     I know the feeling, only because I spent the most horrible week of my life in a rehabilitation facility, where the greatest joy of most of the citizens was nightly bingo, and where my roommate, who’d I grown rather fond of, chose, after suffering from a bout double-pneumonia, for a family-supported decision for euthanasia with drugs, even though it is not even legal in California, although medical aid in dying, chosen by the patient, is permitted. Trapped in the next bed, I became witness to his death, sharing with the family their sorrow and waiting out the arrival of the coroner so the body, my former friend, might be wheeled away.

     He makes the nightly calls, but the idea of golden showers and “banging” the other into eternity does not satisfy his far more romantic concerns.

      Eventually he calls the telephonic Kevin (the voice of director Oscar Rosetti), who he as obviously sought out before since he even knows the name of his supposed psychotherapist, Gabriel, Kevin suggests he simply grab his butt to see how he responds.

      And the next day in therapy, there seem plenty of moments in which he might have done so. Nicholas is suffering from pain in his right leg, yet the therapist cannot see anything wrong and wonders if it is psychosomatic, but the patient rightfully argues that isn’t going the help him walk.

    He suggests he does the proper exercises and he will be able to dance at the next party, asking him if there’s some one he prefers. The long straight look Nicholas gives Gabriel makes it clear that he himself is the focus of Nicolas’ love: “It’s not possible Nicolas! We’re not even of the same age!” He wonders if he isn’t interested in someone in the home itself.

     Nicolas’ answer if quite emphatic: Of course not, they’re just old here!”

     Yes, whether we like to think it or not, older men and women still love youth, a time that reminds them of their own beauty and possibilities. No, it is not perverse but actually quite natural. The elders remind them of their own impending death.

      Weren’t you married? the young man implores. “Emily died a few years ago.”

      Suddenly, from his window, Nicolas observes a newcomer arriving in a lovely blue convertible with his angry daughter.

      With a mud plaster on his face, and cucumbers in his eyes, Nicolas is suddenly visited by the slightly deaf Daniel (Pierre-André Sand), who stops by simply to introduce himself, bringing a small present. And immediately a rapport is established with the energetic new patient.

      In a call again to Kevin, he admits he has never felt like this before. The new fellow patient beings sudden life to Nicolas, who has felt for so long loneliness and isolation.

      “Just feeling like it’s possible…like I’m desirable again, at last!”

     They meet again with Daniel working on his car, asking about Nicolas’ cucumbers, which he explains keep his fresh. He admits he no longer has a driver’s license, but the director of the retirement home allow him to work on it from time to time. It’s a Mustang Cabriolet from 1967.

     At lunch, he discovers that one of his few sentient friends, Bridgette (Danny Rossel) has also met Daniel and enjoyed his company, with perhaps just a little jealousy.

     Later that night, as his passes a room on his first floor, Daniel, housed on the third floor, calls him in for help. He’s naked and doesn’t quite recall how he got into the situation. Evidently, soon after, Nicohlas is able to provide him with a bathrobe, and the two go wheeling down the hall together. He thanks Nicolas for his help, and he wonders what time Nicolas goes to bed. When he explains about midnight, Daniel admits he is unable to stay up that late at night—a man of my own heart.

     Yet Daniel admits that he has some really good weed, if his friend wishes to join him. Nicolas merely laughs, but Daniel takes that as a yes, and suggests they meet when the lights go out. On the roof of the residency, the two smoke, giggling a bit like young boys truly enjoying themselves, with Nicholas admitting that he scream’s his name while Daniel argues that it is actually, “I scream you name, liberty.” But that is, after all, what Daniel has suddenly come to mean for him.

     The next day the psychotherapist is encouraging Nicolas to walk, suggesting that he will become the “dancing queen” of the party, but finally he can take no more and demands him to shut up. Stop treating me as a child. “Yes, I can walk!”: “Bring me my chair, I’ve had enough of this bullshit.” Aging and the pain that comes with it cannot be dismissed by those who suffer it.

     Nicolas’ begs Gabriel’s forgiveness for having yelled at him, but there is deep suffering and depression clearly behind it.

     Finally, on the night of the party, Daniel knocks on his door and asks if he’s coming or not to the party. Nicolas, returning quickly to his wheelchair, Daniel bending to ask: “What’s wrong my friend, are we unhappy today?”

     Nicholas responds that it is nothing at all like that, Daniel arguing that for once he should find some fun in this house. Nicolas admitting, that it’s really horrible. Daniel sits down on a nearby chair and admits that he too finds it really horrible. Nicolas wonders does he have any weed left.

     And suddenly, hearing some music, Daniel stands and begins to dance, claiming that he loves the song. And suddenly he grabs up Nicolas, demanding he too dance, and as the two engage in a dance, suddenly Nicolas breaks out into a laugh not unlike his previous weed-induced giggles. He is again a young man in love.

   Without being able to control himself, Nicolas suddenly kisses his dancing partner, Daniel quickly pushing him away with total disgust. “Seriously? You’re a fag!” and he rushes out of the room, leaving poor Nicolas to try to imagine how he might redeem what has now become an impossible situation. Love is not possible at his age, particularly of the bisexual urges that Nicolas has begun to experience.

    But Daniel, in the violence, has dropped his beloved car keys. Nicolas suddenly rises and walks his way through the horrors of the resident hallways, and, keys in hand, leaves the building. Staggering outdoors, he enters Daniel’s blue Mustang Cabriolet and drives off, escaping the closed world behind him.

     This Swiss film is one of the most beautiful, stunning, and amazing coming out movies that I have ever seen. It is a true escape from everything in Nicolas’ endlessly delimiting past. It represents a desperate escape into a future that does not truly exist.

 

Los Angeles, September 5, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (September 2026).

        

Brendon McDonall | The Dam / 2016

living the never

by Douglas Messerli

 

Brendon McDonall (screenwriter and director) The Dam / 2016 [16 minutes]

 

Australian director Brendon McDonall’s short film, The Dam, is an elegy to the lost love of now two elderly men, Jack (Chris Haywood) and John (Martin Vaughan) who as young men helped to build a dam in Australia, swam in its waters, and clearly fell in love.

      For at least 10 years John, who has remained in Australia, has not even seen Jack, and before that time, as he later makes quite clear, Jack has left him “in the lurch” again and again for 50 years. John, come now from Cape Town, South Africa, cannot even fully explain his inability to maintain a relationship, describing it merely as being “unsure of his feelings.”

     John is dying of lung cancer with about a year to live, and Jack who has heard of his condition from a relative Pippa—sister, ex-wife, or daughter, we do not know—of his condition, and has returned to “help” him out of blue, shocking John who doesn’t at all know what to make of the situation.

     He does offer the “stranger” a bed, and scrubs up the best he can, but the years, all those years when apparently he still loved the man of his youth, have slightly embittered him.

     Jack is still in fairly good health. We see him swimming in the damn waters in the first scene, robust, as he recalls one of their earlier loving encounters.

     And the next morning he is eager to take his friend, now on a respirator, back to the dam for a look. But once there, John becomes angry, stating quite boldly “I don’t want to be here,” blaming his friend for all his betrayals, even though we don’t quite know what they consisted of.

     What do you want, why are you here? are his major questions, Jack simply answering again, I want to help. He says he will stay another day, fix him breakfast. We have all the time in the world.

      It’s clear he’s returned to stay, but he has missed out of their life altogether. They clearly do not have a long time at this point in their lives. He has missed out simply because, apparently, of his unsurety about their gay relationship.

      This film quietly depicts what has happened in so many men’s lives of their generation; fear, doubt, the inability to except their sexuality deprives them of a full life. Who, except for Edith Wharton and Henry James could even imagine such resistance to a relationship if he had been a straight man attracted to a woman?  At this point, John is not even bitter, disappointed surely, unsure of what possible relationship they can now offer one another, and more than anything saddened by what might have been when the young Jack (Felix Haywood) and the young John (Blake Bowden) were beautiful boys in love with one another and their lives.

      What might their lives have been like? How very different their lives might have been if they were together for all those 50 years. I speak from experience: as difficult as any gay relationship might be, living together with someone else, as I have for now 56 years, provides a sense of deep joy and peace even as we both see one another aging. Does the phrase “better late than never” even mean anything to those who have already lived the never?

 

Los Angeles, July 19, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (July 2026).

Giorgio Besc | Cité capable d’aimer (Suburb Able to Love) / 2022

coming to terms

by Douglas Messerli

 

Giorgio Besc (screenwriter and director) Cité capable d’aimer (Suburb Able to Love) / 2022 [14 minutes]

 

This short film from France begins in a small playground where Jordan (played by director/writer Giogio Besc) and several of is friends are playing a rather argumentative game of soccer. As with jocks, the world over, each talk about their experiences with women and girlfriends.

     But when they begin to talk about accosting women, and finally, disliking a man (whom we never see) dressed as a trans, their conversations begin to fade out, as Jordan seems particularly disturbed when they suggest “slapping” the trans man.

     Later, he speaks at length via cellphone with is girlfriend, who appears to have left with their baby to visit her mother, and doesn’t apparently know when she might return.

     Both express their love for one another, but almost before she has hung up, Jordan has made a date to meet up with a man, Tom (Alexandre Laugier) to have sex.

   Jordan is still slightly paranoid, but once the curtains are closed he seems to have more than satisfactory sex with his new partner.

     Asked to stay the night, however, he almost goes into a harangue, reiterating that he has a girlfriend and finally repeating to Tom that he has a girlfriend, he’s not fag like him.

     In his hurry to leave, however, he forgets his cellphone, and Tom accosts him this time in his own neighborhood to simply return the phone.

     Jordon has just delivered up a bag of weed on a friend, who just quickly appears to move off, but, however, has stayed behind and noticing him in animated conversation with the stranger, begins filming the scene, catching, at one point, when the unreluctant gay man briefly gives him a kiss, which Jordan cannot resist in returning despite his utter paranoia for the visit on his own turf.

     By the time he reaches his football-playing friends they have seen the film, and now punch, beat, and kick him. His horrific secret is now public knowledge in these mean, homophobic suburbs.

    Hardly able to walk, he returns to Tom’s apartment, and when his friend asks what happened, he can only whisper out, “I lost everything.” “They saw us,” he admits, “they beat me up.”

    Yet finally, Jordan admits in his statement, “You see what they do to people like us,” that he is “one of the fags,” that he is a homosexual.

    His friend suggests he stay at his place and they’ll get a lawyer and file a lawsuit.

     “Why are you doing this?” Jordan asks, Tom explaining, he was the one who knocked at his door.

     It’s all a little to pat, of course, and the idea it with put to rest the local harassment is more than idealistic, particularly when the closing frames fast forward to the two in marriage with a young daughter.

     This film is pretty much a two-man movie, with Laugier serving as editor and Besc himself writing some of the music. And, unfortunately, this short, despite its important message, shows no signs of brilliance. Yet, surely it deserves our respect and appreciation for what it attempts to document, a man so unable to admit his sexuality that it takes a brutal outing to help him reassess his life.

 

Los Angeles, September 5, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (September 2026).