Araz Eleyasian | The Paper Rose / 2018

tutoring the teacher

by Douglas Messerli

 

Talin Agon and Araz Eleyasian (screenplay), Araz Eleyasian (director) The Paper Rose / 2018 [9 minutes]

 

A very frustrated English teacher, Toni (Bronte Pearce) is nervous about her day in school. She’s teaching Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations, a book she clearly loves. But when we see the antics of her students, each spending the classroom time sending text messages to the others when they’re not taunting the quiet Johnny (Damian Hempstead), we comprehend her trepidation. Her lesbian lover, Maggie, has given her a red paper rose, which remains as a book marker in her book to help remind her that she’s loved at home.

    When a bullying student throws Johnny’s book the floor as he leaves the classroom, the teacher finally has had enough, taking away the student’s cellphone and telling him he can pick it up at the end of the day. But he even challenges her, coming at her and pulling her copy of Great Expectations from her arms and tossing the paper rose to the floor, and stopping on the paper flower as he storms out of the room.

      As Johnny bends down to pick up the objects, the occasion of the rose, moments of joy, and more importantly, moments of extreme tension between the couple quickly reel through the teacher’s mind. The rose has clearly come to represent a great many events in her life. As Johnny hands back the book and rose, he suggests that he might be able to make another one, but Toni observes that it was a gift, and irreplaceable for that very reason.

      Still, he argues that she might be able to make another one that can’t be destroyed unless she takes into rooms where angry 14-year-old boys can stomp on them.

      A short while later, Toni passes by the same boy with another like him, asking “where’s the fruit,” presumably referring to Johnny, the other replying, “Probably at home in bed crying.” The teacher stops for a moment to glare at them before moving on.

 

      She pulls opens a locker door—presumably inspecting it as she may have forced to in the past—to witness a calendar marked up with the word “fag,” a glob of what looks like cum, and a picture of a naked man marked up with the words, “Lick if off Johnny.” In a split second she recalls her own youth when someone threw a soccer ball at her head, screaming out “Hey dyke.”

 

      As she leaves the building, she discovers Johnny sitting reading the Dickens book, she responding, “I just want to make sure you’re okay.”

      “They screwed up my locker again, didn’t they?” he half laughs. “I don’t care if they think I’m gay.”

     She assures him that they won’t get away with it. But he is more interested in the book she has assigned, telling her how “awesome” he finds the novel. She’s clearly pleased that at least one student is enjoying the book. But she quickly returns to what she perceives as his dilemma. “You have it tough, don’t you?”

      But his response is again amazingly aloof: “Shit happens. I like to come here with Pip and….”

      She finishes his sentence, “…disappear.”

      “No, just read.”

     Toni argues that she always identified more with Stella, Johnny arguing “But she’s so damaged. You’re not like that.”

       She confides, in a round-about way, that the reason she stays late at school is because she doesn’t want to go home. “Teaching is one of the only things I’m good at.”

       “Don’t get lost in stories, Johnny,” she advises her new confidant.

       Johnny’s answer is surprisingly mature. “But I’m not lost. I know who I am.”

      What we observe here for one of the first occasions in queer cinema is a young man, perhaps gay and certainly bullied, revealing a greater sense of self possession, knowledge, and maturity than both the kids around him and the troubled adult teacher. He even dares to go further, asking Toni if she knows who she is. A strange half-smile registers on her face as she hands him back his book and wishes him happy Valentine’s Day.

       In it, is a white paper rose. Johnny smiles with joy.

       We see Toni knocking at her lover’s door, having apparently previously left or broken up with her. The two greet one another with reluctant smiles, which we know will certainly shift to fuller expressions of love given that behind Toni’s back she holds a whole bouquet of paper roses.

     Australian director Araz Eleyasian has provided us with a film that quickly pulls its LGBTQ characters out of their usual hurt and passive positions, giving them a self-awareness that makes it clear they are not simply survivors but are whole beings who will prevail.

      I have to admit that basically through the days I my teaching experiences I was blessed with multiple good students, and these, being college kids, did not behave like high school thugs. But there was always one special student to change your day. 

 

Los Angeles, October 11, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (October 2023).

Michael Pearce | Rite / 2010

the man without a clue

by Douglas Messerli

 

Michael Pearce (screenwriter and director) Rite / 2010 [14 minutes]

 

Mike (Martin Herdman) picks up his estranged son, Gary (Bradley Hall) whom he has not seen in a long while, to take him out for the for his 17th birthday. Even as he arrives and leaves the car, he realizes that he has locked his keys without the car. Picking up a brick he smashes the car window, finally walking up to pick up his boy in one of the near brick row houses of so many British suburban areas.

     As he begins driving down the freeway, Gary asks, as any child might, where they are going. His father suggests he open the compartment, where he finds nothing. A thorough search of the of the cars contents provides nothing. He has evidently lost the tickets he’s purchased for an important soccer game.

     Even worse, Mike decides to now stop along the way at a local roadside pub, sneaking in to get a few pints. The manager finally invites the boy himself to leave the car and join his father. His father is also attempting, unsuccessfully, to get more tickets.

     Meanwhile Gary attempts to bring over for glasses, but drops them before they can even reach the table, Mike reassuring him, as others around them makes gestures about the boys lips piercing.

It is a loud, noisy, and hostile atmosphere.

     The bargoers are now gathering abound the tele for the soccer game to begin. Although the father has brought his son a new drink, the boy admits he does not imbibe, the father wondering what it is he does in his life. The boy suggests exhibitions, gigs…his father summarizing his activities as culture. Spotting a fairly good looking slightly older girl, his father says, “I bet you wouldn’t say know to that kind of culture.”

      Gary takes a quick look, and replies simply: “Not my type.”

      His type, he explains, is “black,” but says nothing about their sex.

      Finally, they ready to move on without obtaining any tickets to the next match.

    But before they leave, he is offended by what he perceives to be a gay man in the bathroom and whether actually or in fantasy, knows his head up again the wall, and leaves him for dead.

     They move forward to god knows where, by this time the son having totally missed out in any possible joys which might have even been imagined, the father having no longer any comprehension of who is son is.

     Finally, at the stadium, he desperately scrambles to see if he can obtain tickets, trying to find someone ready to sell, again without success. He finally attempts to bull his way through a guard into the stadium, as the guard, terrified for his life, closes the door, locking himself in. If nothing else, Mike has certainly made a great case for why he wife has long-ago divorced him. This is a violent man of narrow values and opinions, a drunkard, and a bully. Gary finally walks away, unable to observe his father’s actions anymore.

      Gary decides to finally explain to him that “he doesn’t give a shit.” He hates football. And for a moment Mike is again about to act with violence, while Gary responds “Well, you gonna hit me Dad?” If ever things are broken down, this film reveals the condition of so many father/son relationships.

       Mike backs off, turns away, and walks off knowing that he and his son do not share the same world. It is a sad moment of self-revelation, particularly for a drunken bully, whose life, we perceive, is no longer ever truly joyful.

       His father drives him back home, and suggests he will see him in a couple of weeks. “Maybe we can do something else,” Gary reacting, “Like what?”

      When his son walks off, Mike gets out of the car, only to observe Gary, now in a nearby park with a young black boy of his age, his had laying on his shoulder. We now know the sex he prefers as well.

     Mike, now clearly in crisis, pauses for a few moments, his had across his brow is recognition perhaps of how much he has misunderstood his son.

      Beyond all belief, by this time, he walks up to the park where he son sits, calling out his name. The boys freeze, surely afraid of the consequences.

      Instead, Mike simply introduces himself to Tristan (Aaron Gordon) as Gary’s day, Tristan reaching out to shake his hand to say “nice to meet you.” “I’ve just come to say, maybe next time we can go to the coast or something.”

      “Sure.”

      “And if Tristan wants to come….”

      Mike walks off, if not a new man, certainly a chastised one for his thoughtless presumptions.

As he drives off, he notices his son has left the device upon which he was listening to his music. Mike puts on the headphones, and drives off.

 

Los Angeles, September 30, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (September 2026).