Paul Oremland | Like It Is / 1998

recognizing the real

by Douglas Messerli

 

Robert Gray (screenplay), Paul Oremland (director) recognizing the real

by Douglas Messerli

 

Like It Is appears today as a very under-estimated view of the British worlds of the dark record-making days of the 80s and 90s in London that meets up strangely but inevitably with the even darker and violent world of bareknuckle fighting in Blackpool. Yet despite the fact that neither of its leads, Craig (Steve Bell) who plays a bareknuckle fighter (which was his true profession before making this movie), nor Matt (Ian Rose) are happy with their careers, they are locked in nearly as slaves by finances and the forceful men behind the money, Minto (Paul Broughton), the fight promoter in Craig’s case, and the sleazy, openly gay manipulative record producer Kelvin (Roger Daltrey), the co-founder and lead singer for The Who, one of the greats of rock ‘n roll, who later also performed as Tommy in Ken Russell’s film production of the Who’s musical opera (1975)— whom I saw like-in-concert in suburban New York in 1969—and later as Franz Liszt in Russell’s Lisztomania (1975), making it clear from the beginning, despite some commentators' wonderment, that he was perfectly willing to take on gay roles such as the campy queen he enacts in Like It Is.

      The other evil force in Matt’s life is his roommate, Paula (Dani Behr), the singer whom he has personally molded into a popular star. Theres is a non-sexual relationship with nonetheless, all the jealous protectiveness of an intense straight relationship that both she and her manager Kelvin want to maintain.

    Accompanying Paula on her appearance at a gay club in Blackpool, Matt meets the young fighter Craig. They hook up and go home, Craig demanding that Matt fuck him. Yet we also quickly perceive that this is Craig’s first sexual encounter, and his still very much a confused young man, clearly attracted to men, but not at all sure that he wants to go through with the sexual action and its implications. He suddenly leaps up, proclaiming that he cannot continue, pounding the wall in frustration, demanding Matt leave. Matt does so, leaving his London calling card behind.

     In the meantime, Craig wins his fight, leaving his opponent for what appears to be something close to dead. Craig’s older brother, Tony (Chris Hargreaves), trying to look after Craig, attempts to dissuade him from his role as a fighter, but the uncommunicative, obviously resentful young brother refuses to fully engage with him. But when his manager (Minto) suggests his next opponent, Craig insists he is a maniac whom he refuses to fight and immediately decamps to London, showing up with expectation that Matt will take him in.

   In many ways, a troublesome and still hot-headed fighter showing up suddenly on a London street, couldn’t have come at a worse time for Matt, who has just been promised by the manipulative Kelvin the possibility of running his own club if he only first helps edit and promote a new pop group ZKC (which reminds me of the group Milli Vanilli, who dancer/choreographer Karole Armitage once somewhat frustratedly told us over the dinner table, she was helping to learn how to dance) and still helping to keep the decaying career of Paula alive. Yet Matt invites Craig into his and Paula's apartment and to share his bed. The two now finally do have sex and Matt falls desperately in love, which the possessive Paula fully resents.

      Still naïve and totally trusting of a world he should be more than a little wary off, Craig is convinced to become a waiter in a gay club since he is desperate to get off of Matt’s couch all day long and bring in some money of his own. But it is a disaster when he meets up with homophobic customers who call him a queer and demean the scene they have willingly entered into, forcing the short-fused Craig to put his fighter skills to use by beating up the thug, but losing him his job as he is tossed into the streets. Despite the fact that Matt is in the midst of an important cutting session for the ZKC tape, he rushes to Craig’s side, while angrily scolding him for his actions.

      A furious Kelvin dresses Matt down for running to his “boyfriend,” but pretends a great deal of graciousness by inviting both to his party that weekend, meanwhile demanding that Matt bring him the completed tape by 9:00 the next morning.

      At the party, filled with young women and men desperate to remain in Kelvin’s corrupt music circle, all about drinking, while the still highly clueless Craig is corralled by Kelvin, who promises him a job, in a purposeful attempt to split up him and Matt, traveling in a sporty blue car in northern England to buy up, along with other young men he's hired, Paula’s records to increase her ratings. Even more evilly-minded, he arranges that the now quite drunk boy be taken home by Jamie (P.J. Nicholas), one of the members of ZKC, with whom Matt has previously had a brief fling. Craig wakes up confused to find himself in bed with Jamie, without even remembering any sexual encounter with him.

     But still blindly, he moves forward, driving off in his lovely new car to Northern England, calling on a cellphone (that I don’t quite remember existing in 1998). He and the others succeed quite nicely in their job, helping to promote the mediocre Paula, who knows her career is nearly over.

     When Craig attempts to call on other occasions, Paula simply reports that Matt is out or unavailable, and fails even to pass the messages on to him, much to his own worry and disconcertion about what has happened to his lover.

      Finally, he is challenged with one more major project arranging the music awards show with ZKC and Paula both singing. At that very moment, Craig returns, himself desperate to see Matt again and enjoy his company, this time with fresh money in his pocket. But Paula locks herself away in the bathroom, refusing to come out to sing; Matt wins her over and gently leads her to perform; while also discovering that Jamie has slept with Craig before leaving on his travels.

     In a sense, it is all too much for either man to deal with in one fell swoop, particularly when Craig discovers Jamie and Matt in a locklip with table a of cocaine spread out before them. Finally, recognizing that it has all been a delusion, Craig rushes back to Blackpool while Matt finesses the performances which will continue for a short while to feed Kelvin’s empire. It’s enough to make any emphatic viewer break down in tears.

     But New Zealand born director Oremland, does not go the route of sentimentality, having already shown in his 1986 short film Andy the Furniture Maker just how able he was to deal with rough and tumble characters such as Craig. Craig takes his crooked boxing manager’s advice, and agrees to the match.

     Meanwhile, Matt also learns from his trusted assistant Gloria (Jude Alderson) just how duplicitous Paula has been, and breaks with her. On the very night that his dream-club is about to open, he suddenly perceives what he truly wants, saying goodbye to Kelvin, who once again attempts to convince him how much they are alike and how Matt needs this club to sustain his life. But Matt too has changed in all of this, as difficult as Craig has been to care for, now realizing what really matters.

     Letterboxd commentator Zachary Binx quite humorously summarizes the problem:

 

“What is one to do when an in-the-closet, bare(back) knuckled fighter arrives at your door? I mean besides the obvious. You've got to teach him and raise him and culture him, but of course he's young and full of internalized homophobia and has a very strong fight or flight response. It's a conundrum many an older guy has dealt with, but it's still a lot of work even for really hot bussy.”

 

     Yet, he finally gets up the nerve to tell Kelvin to “Go fuck yourself,” to which the endlessly campy and now a bit over-the-top Daltrey loudly replies: “I frequently do, and fucking enjoy it!”

     Eventually Matt gets in touch with Craig’s brother Tony, who upon seeing and talking with Matt finally puts the facts together, angry with himself for not earlier recognizing that the real problems with his brother and his perpetual distancing had to do with his being gay. He shouts out, “He could have told me,” but, of course, in such a society that have been an impossibility. Fortunately, Tony is completely sympathetic and attempts to arrange a reunion with Craig with Matt. But the now bitter and angry young man refuses, not even permitting Matt entry to the match, as he waits outside in a car to perhaps make contact with his former lover.

      The fight is a brutal one for both men, but Craig loses after a bloody and brutal beating, as Tony and Matt struggle to simply get him back on his feet so that they can carry him off to the hospital. The truly evil Minto reappears with large pile of money, with irony proclaiming that this was Craig’s best fight, since apparently he had invested all of his money he’s earned from Kelvin betting against himself and has now won big time.

      The two, Tony and Matt, carry him off to the doctors and it appears Craig is now read to try out a new relationship with Matt, free perhaps at last from all of his previous demons. Both men surely realize they will have to make new lives for themselves, but for the first time they will be utterly free to do so, without the restraints of men who love to control just such talented boys as they are.

      True, this film was made on a miniscule budget and netted hardly anything at the box office. But it doesn’t look or seem like a cheaply made feature, and, as most critics of the day agreed, Bell, a newcomer, was quite excellent in his role.

     I loved this film, and think it is now one of the near-lost greats of that wonderful last decade of the 20th century that openly explored so many tough subjects that later got lost in the sudden conviction that all of gay life had changed. Somethings had changed, but not sufficiently that we should have lost sight of the major problems the LGBTQ+ community was still facing. Fortunately, several directors did not buy in totally to the new buoyant optimism, and explored just those problems in the 21st century as well. And we now witness some of the possible conservative backlash, particularly within the transgender community. Alas, we must soldier on with our recognition not only of where we are just alike the straight world in which we live, but how we remain so very different, how, as this film’s title suggests, it really is.

 

Los Angeles, October 21, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (October 2026). / 1998

 

Rafael Jardim | Conflitos (Conflicts) / 2021

standoff

by Douglas Messerli

 

Rafael Jardim (screenwriter and director) Conflitos (Conflicts) / 2021 [12 minutes]

 

Another Telemilênio offering from Brazil, Rafael Jardim’s 2021 film Conflicts, is a rather heavy-handed short that suggests that all gay men are hysterics or simply bad news to their women friends.

     Yuri (Gustavo Cesca) has just recovered from a suicide attempt over a boyfriend who has apparently cheated on him or simply left him. He tells his best female friend, Natalia (Bella Russo) that he’s recovered, which as his roommate, she’s happy to hear.

    She too has broken up with her boyfriend and already met a new guy who she’s just begun to date, suggesting that Yuri join them at the local amusement park the next day.

     In a very short episode in the next scene, we observe a guy being razzed by his friends for being a “faggot,” which he denies and tries to laugh off. We have to assume this is Natalia’s new friend.

      At the park, the three of them collide in bumper cars and the boys enter the gate to the Ferris Wheel, Nathalia holding back to make a telephone call. Yuri takes the ride together with her boyfriend, Daniel (Nicholas Garanhani), staring away most of the time from Yuri as if the dare not make close contact; clearly there is little communication between the two. Back on ground, Dani’s homophobic friends stop by to hint that they’ve seen him alone with yet another boy, while he simply pushes them off.

       Dani, with Nathalia and Yuri are back in the latter’s shared apartment watching TV and eating popcorn. When the two boys accidentally touch hands in the popcorn canister which sits on Nathalia’s lap, Yuri senses something is amiss and declares that he’s off to bed. Dani suggests to Nathalia that her friend is “strange.”

        By this time, we fully recognize that the boyfriend is the kind of guy who finds it so very difficult to accept his own sexuality that he puts all of his energy into kissing and hugging the woman he is currently with, using her almost as a life raft. The “strangeness” of which he speaks, is a perfect description of his own behavior.

     And only a day or so later, as Nathalia goes off to shop, leaving Yuri alone, Dani shows up, declaring it’s really Yuri to whom he wants to talk. Suddenly he shoves Yuri up against the wall and commands him: “Look, I want you as far away from me as far you can get, got it?” Startled and not knowing what he even means, Yuri agrees at the very same moment that the boyfriend kisses him intensely, pulling away only to return to a deeper kiss.

      Nathalia returns a moment of so later, as the two pull away, Yuri disappearing into another room while she is surprised by Dani’s unannounced visit. She enters her room to shower and dress for their evening together. But a tear running down her eye suggests she suspects something that she doesn’t want to admit.

       At the bar, the three get drunk, particularly Dani who professes his love for both of them. Later that night we see Nathalia and Dani laying together in bed. He awakens, carefully moves her hand from where it had been around him, before slowly rising and entering Yuri’s bedroom.

       By the time that Nathalia gets there, the two are already making love. Her anger seems to be bent mostly on her friend Yuri, as he attempts to explain that her boyfriend entered his room while he was sleeping.

       We see Yuri in the shower suffering for his non-complicit crime, attempting to eat the soap with which he is cleansing his body. In the very next shot, Nathalia arrives back in the apartment to see Yuri’s body on the floor where he has fallen after overdosing on pills.

        Once more Yuri comes through, and we observe the two of them sitting on the beach. Dani walks by with a new girlfriend in hand. Both Nathalia and Yuri look at him after he has passed, while he looks back to the two of them, all frozen in a permanent standoff as long as the one of them insists on living in his world of lies.

        Gay males in this world are clearly unstable, and both perhaps unworthy of Nathalia’s love.

      This film belongs mostly to the genre of the gay male who, unable to admit to himself who he is, attempts to smother his same-sex feelings with love and often marriage to a female, which generally ends in disaster for the both the male and his girlfriend/wife. But why director Jardim felt he had to combine that with a gay man who punishes himself for the failures of other gay men is rather inexplicable. Unfortunately, both types do indeed exist in the otherwise fairly rational gay community.

 

Los Angeles, December 13, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (December 2022). 

 

Wiktor Grodecki | Andělé nejsou andělé (Not Angels but Angels) / 1994

heart of darkness

by Douglas Messerli

 

Wiktor Grodecki (writer and director) Andělé nejsou andělé (Not Angels but Angels) / 1994

 

According to The Venerable Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People Pope Gregory I sent Augustine on his famous “Gregorian mission” to Britannia because of an encounter in the Roman market place where he saw fair-haired, fair-skinned Saxon slaves being sold. Asking about their origin, he was told they were Angles, upon which, punning in Latin, he responded, “Not Angles, but angels.” Even if the reason he sent Augustine on his mission was for various other reasons, it is still commonly regarded that this encounter is behind his decision to bring Christianity to the Angles, or the angels.

      Wiktor Grodecki’s first film in his Czech boy prostitution trilogy takes this title in part to describe the beautiful faces—in a Prague filled will sculptures of saints and angels—of the boys who, in the manner he will use again in his second film, Body without Soul, introduce themselves by name and age before revealing that they work as prostitutes or, as some describe themselves, as hustlers. In this documentary, Grodecki introduces us to 15 boys in all (Joseph Gregori, Honza, Jarda, Joseph, Lada, Libor, Marcel, Marek, Michael, Mirek, Pepa, Peter, Radek, Robert, and Roman) who range in age from 14-19, most of them older than the boys in his second documentary.  

      Having not quite mastered his documentary approach, the director here intercuts between the boy’s answers to several stock questions, not all of which we hear, but which we can clearly discern: “What’s your name and what do you do?”; “How did you become a  male prostitute?”: “Who are your customers and where do you meet them?” “What kind of sexual acts do you perform with them and how much do they pay you?”; “What is the best and worst thing that has happened to you as a boy prostitute?” “Do you fear for AIDS or other diseases?” “What are you dreams for your life?” and “Do you fear for your futures?”

     As if we needed further explanation of the rather straightforward, if varied answers the boys provide, Grodecki also interviews a Pimp who works in the central  Prague hot spot for homosexual pickups, the main train station, where the director receives rather clear cut and seemingly honest answers from a man named Ondra.

      If the format works in general in providing us with an introduction into the primarily Eastern Europe world of boy prostitution—although as we discover in  Body without Soul this film fails to discuss one of the greatest sources of these boy’s incomes in the making of porno films and skirts the fact that a great many of the boys are as young as 12-15 or even younger—the work finally does feel, as Variety reviewer Dennis Harvey describes it, “watchable but unenlightening, with glossy presentation adding shock-value tenor that leaves a sour aftertaste.”

       Although the answers vary somewhat, most of these boys, as we discover in the second installment as well, come from outside of Prague, dissatisfied or rejected with and from their families, arriving in the Czech capital hungry and with no money. Most often they are first approached in the train station in which they arrive, or are later encouraged by other boys of their age in the several major Prague gay clubs, Peter Volk, Vladek, Mercury, Riviera, and the T-Club to seek out a living by sleeping with paying men. Some pick up men at the swimming arena at Polidí Park in the summers. Their johns are mostly Germans or other Czechs, but Germans are definitely preferred since they pay better, up to 1,000 Czech crowns, but the payment varies greatly. One boy admits to have only charged 35 crowns his first time out, knowing no better, but many describe the going rate at 300 or 500. Some travel to Hamburg, Berlin, and Amsterdam to increase their income, Hamburg apparently being the favorite of those who travel. One boy describes how in Amsterdam he was forced to remain in a room with others until called to perform sex acts with men in another room in which all terms had been previously agreed upon without his involvement. Sometimes I was forced to be fucked by 3 or 4 men in a single day. He claims he will never return to Amsterdam.

      Almost all the boys declare themselves to be heterosexual or, at the very least, bisexual, many claiming to have girlfriends. A few admit to being exclusively gay. And one young boy, Radek, adamantly declares his difference as being a true bisexual who has the advantage on all the others because he divides his time equally between male and female customers, although he doesn’t give any specific evidence of his female audience and provides no real financial figures.

       Some are even married with children, but often they describe their girlfriends as being unhappy with their selling their body to men, some of their female lovers having left them in disgust. Few of these insistently self-defined heterosexuals see the inconsistency of their having sex with males three to four times a week, and almost all the boys seem to believe that receiving anal sex is a perversion, despite the fact that if paid enough they will provide that sexual pleasure to demanding homosexuals. It appears that only a few have been able to totally resist being fucked.

      Although several admit to robbing their clients, most state that they are honest when it comes to their johns, Joseph even offering up his identification card to be held by his client until they finish their sexual encounter. Several boys describe their worst experiences as centering around their encounters with Sado-masochists, one evidently being almost beaten, and others finding the requests to whip, shit, and piss upon their customers as disgusting, although one boy rather enjoyed the latter acts.

      Almost all the boys insist they primarily wear condoms, but all almost equally admit that when specifically requested by Germans, Swiss, or Austrians to go without, they have acquiesced.

      Several, of course, are frightened about AIDS, but almost all seem to have come to a sort of acceptance of the fact that providing the services they do they are always facing the possibility of death, and some play a kind of bluffing game about the disease as if that will keep it away from their own bodies. One talks of losing a friend to AIDS.

      Strangely, when it comes to their future dreams, presumably when they reach the age that they will no longer be desirable, their aspirations are quite abstract, most of them simply defining themselves as finally working in an office, or creating fantasies that they might find a rich man someday who will take them away and keep them for the rest of their lives. One insists someone he met from California will one day return to take him there. At present, all insist that they are either unable to find jobs  without previous experience, but also that they could never make the kind of money they do as prostitutes in regular employment. As I mentioned above, most of these boys describe their standard rates as being between 500 to 1,000 Czech crowns. Grodecki gives us some sense of proportion by beginning the second work of his series with the fact that 1,000 Czech crowns amounts to about 35 US dollars. And the boys reveal at one point that much of the money they do make is spent on slot machines and games at the clubs. A great number of boys seem to use the trains station as their nightly bedrooms.

      Although Grodecki appears to be non-judgmental in gathering up this information, in fact the way his camera hovers upon their often flinching and confused faces or cranes in for a closer look when what one of the boys says sounds suspicious or unconvincing, which almost has the effect of seeming to stare-down  his subjects for a truth they are not providing, made even worse by his occasional but regularized insertion of pixelated porno images of boys, the smug and fatuous faces of older johns, and an entire scene when, inexplicably, he runs footage of a tattoo-covered tramp who finally undresses and walks outside naked.

     His use, moreover, of carefully chosen music of Bach’s St. Matthew’s Passion, Mozart’s Requiem, and the Aria from Villa Lobos’ Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5—all surely meant to underline the saintly beauty these working boys—somehow sentimentalizes their chiseled but often pimpled visages.

     These boys often do seem all at angles instead of simply appearing as angels, the angles shot by cinematographer Vladimír Holomek becoming distorted in the process.

     Perhaps some of the best shots of these young hustlers are of the same teenagers taken out of the dark shadows and the bubble-bath tub wherein they are interviewed onto the dance floor of one of the many clubs they regularly visit where they seem to be just a bunch of kids trying to have some fun.

 

Los Angeles, November 4, 2021

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (November 2021).