Magnus Stifter | Das Liebes-ABC (The ABC of Love) / 1916

how to be a man

by Douglas Messerli

 

Martin Jørgensen and Louis Levy (screenplay), Magnus Stifter (director) Das Liebes-ABC (The ABC of Love) / 1916

 

By the time Asta Nielsen made the German film, Das Liebes-ABC (The ABC of Love) she had already starred in some of her greatest films—including a couple I have reviewed in these pages, Jugend und Tollheit and Zapata’s Gang—many others of which have been lost. She had already ceased working with her director husband Urban Gad and would divorce him in 1919. And she was now an international superstar with a salary of $80,000 per film, this work being financed primarily by family money through Freddy Wingardh, whom she would marry in 1919.

 

     Like so many of her films, in which she played a gender fluid individual, the script by Martin Jørgensen and Louis Levy required her to appear in two different drag roles, involving other characters in drag as well. But more important than simple crossdressing, this film asked serious questions about male and female roles in courtship and in marriage, and questioned the notion of male superiority.

      Nielsen’s character Lis is a somewhat spoiled daughter of a wealthy Danish businessman, who evidently has arranged her marriage with another well-to-do family, the von Dobberns, represented by two elderly sisters who equally dote on their beloved charge, Philip.

      Philip, however—played by Ludwig Trautmann, a man whom critic Pamelia Hutchinson describes as and openly “gay German film star and matinee idol”—although eager to meet Lis, is timid and terribly proper in his manners. If nothing else is the antithesis of what the romantically inclined Lis—who has gleaned many of her notions of love through the pictures of a dance publication—imagines in a fiancée. He arrives at her house draped in a riding blanket and two large scarves as if to protect himself not only from the cold, but from any waft of a sweet scent that might reach his obviously allergic nose.

      Although outwardly she is polite, when he’s looking in the other direction, she comically sticks out her tongue at him, grimaces, cringes, and inwardly groans. How could her father (played by director Magnus Stifter) have chosen such a man for her? While she is passionate and impetuous—intensely kissing her dog and soldier doll when not putting her mouth to the lips of her picture book images of the dancing males—Philip, put simply, is a good-looking priss, if not a sissy.

      She begins, with simple tasks, to make him over, teaching him first how to smoke a cigarette and, a bit more coyly but no less insistent, how to kiss. To demonstrate how very backward this young man is, the first time she gives him permission to kiss her, he grabs her hand. Immediately, she shows him to her lips!

       She further determines to indoctrinate through a more careful schooling process. She takes him to Paris, secretly ordering up a shared train carriage—not something a young unmarried girl could be imagined to do, and which almost scandalizes Philip—and more nefariously arranges for them to have adjoining hotel suites. His passivity is the only thing that allows this unthinkable behavior to proceed.

       And just as quickly, she orders up a male formal tuxedo which she intends to wear, with the help of her servant, who is forced to explain how to put the articles of clothing on, one by one. Evidently, she feels that if she can take him on the town as a male companion, she can put him at ease and demonstrate how the male of her dreams should behave.

      But before that even, she plops a woman’s bonnet on her fiancé’s head and proceeds to play the male role, providing him in lessons in how to attract a woman, how to flirt, and even seduce her, Philip almost giggling in the pleasure of being able to play the bashful woman who is the recipient of the attentions paid.

      Even more interesting is the sense of his immediate delight when he first sees her as the male counterpoint of himself. First of all, Nielsen, as she has made clear previously and will again in her Hamlet, presents herself as an absolutely stunningly beautiful male. But we also sense, in Trautmann’s smiles and sudden openness, that he much happier to be able to accompany a male to dinner and opera than a female.

       Within moments of their arrival, something even more startling happens as Lis entrances two females in the next box so successfully that they suddenly are enthused to join their neighbors for drinks, both women quickly choosing to sit on Lis’ knees as opposed to Philip’s. She is more successful as a male than he could ever be, and he perceives it, as does she, quickly asking one of the women to attend to her friend. She does so, but comes back quickly to join her friend on Lis’ lap.

        One of these women is apparently spoken for, a man arriving to reclaim his girlfriend or even wife, and inviting Philip to join them as the other woman’s partner. For a moment Lis is left alone. And she realizes that now she is, in fact, quite drunk; and that she hasn’t actually enjoyed the role-playing she’s taken on. For all of her excellent lessons, she is the one now left alone. Somehow, she stumbles back to the hotel.

       Philip soon returns to reclaim Lis, the others with him trying to pull him back into their cultural orb. Seeing her gone, however, he cries out, “Where is my fiancée?” not only confusing his new friends but convincing them that their friend is not quite well, confused most certainly, calling another man his fiancée like that. They comfort him and try to calm him down.

       Finding her back in the room, he is relieved and finally is able to proffer her some advice about how to rid herself of a hangover. But before they can even accommodate to the new shift in their relationship, they receive a message that her father is in town, planning to immediately make a visit. How can she explain the fact that they are sharing a hotel room? It would be more than a scandal and would certainly result in a cancellation of their marriage plans.

        Quick thinking Lis demands that Philip receive her father, telling him that she has gone for a visit with her aunts. She quickly sends out for another male garb, a wig and different clothes in order become Philip’s male friend staying in the next room on a visit.

 

       At first, the crossdressing Lis convinces even her father. But because of his dog’s attention to the young man’s room, as if he knows his beloved Lis is within, and through subtle clues, her father begins to suspect something, entering into the young man’s chamber and peeking into the bedroom to see his own daughter rearranging her male clothing for her next encounter with him and Philip.

        Demanding an explanation, and perceiving how his daughter has arranged everything, the father now plans to take Philip under his wing and show him how to properly train a woman to behave. He demands Philip write a letter pretending that he will be meeting another woman in the restaurant that evening in a private booth. Dropping in on the floor where Lis will surely see it, the two await her reaction.

        She is now angered, hurt, and more than a little distressed. Dressing up this time as a waiter, she plans to catch Philip in his dinner tête-à-tête. Philip and her father, meanwhile, dress up the butler as the woman Philip will meet. With some glitches, this new plan works perfectly, Lis growing angry and scolding Philip in his female companion’s presence before coming to her father in tears and despair—a situation easily corrected when Philip’s female friend pulls off his wig. 

       Philip and Lis are married, and this time on their honeymoon get-away he takes back his male priority by purchasing the train tickets himself and booking the hotel room, making sure they are both to be double occupancy.

        The numerous crossdressing incidents and the farce-like moments of this comic work, particularly given Nielsen’s energized performance, are wonderful. Those who have seen Ernst Lubitsch’s I Don’t Want to Be a Man of a couple of years later, moreover, will recognize the influence of Danish director Stifter’s work.

        But Lubitsch’s film is far more radical and profound in the fact that it does end with the normative paternal lesson to females who attempt to question their gender roles and marital relationships, and even more importantly, truly explores not only gender pretense but the possibility of same-sex love, just as previously Nielsen’s Zapata’s Band had.

 

Los Angeles, May 10, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (May 2023).

Clarence G. Badger | The Danger Girl / 1916

going off track

by Douglas Messerli

 

Clarence G. Badger (director) The Danger Girl / 1916

 

 The Mack Sennett-produced silent film The Danger Girl of 1916 is of interest to the LGBTQ community primarily because it contains incidents of cross-dressing. But in this case, the film directed by Clarence G Badger is a little bit more interesting because Gloria (Swanson) dons male attire not simply to confuse others or escape her female identity but to change the lives of both her and her newfound boyfriends by forcing them to recognize that the dangerous woman to whom seem to be attracted is a heartless vamp who will give them up the moment a more attractive man enters her orbit.

      Her decision also requires that “the danger girl” (Helen Bray) fall in love with her while she is in male attire, resulting, at one point, in a kiss, bringing the incident far closer to lesbian desire than in most of the comedic films before it.

      The problem with this film’s rather interesting and complex plot is that moving at the speed of a Sennett comedy, particularly given the fuzzy quality of the images we have today, it’s sometimes nearly impossible to differentiate the characters, particularly since the relationships seem so frivolously determined that they might as well be out of Mozart’s Cosi fan tutti, also a work in which characters dress up as someone other than themselves and ends, accordingly, without our truly knowing to which of the men the two women have ended up being wed.

       As the regular contributor to The Century Project, a site devoted to silent films, who goes by the computer handle of popegrutch summarizes:

 

“This movie is a bit hard to keep up with, in part because the prints I was able to find were of poor quality, so it’s hard to tell actors apart, but in part because the characters don’t have enough personality or back story to identify with. The danger girl is distinctive, and once Gloria’s in her masculine attire, she’s easy to track, but the others seem quite interchangeable. I’m still not 100% sure I kept the division between Myrtle and Gloria straight before the “drag” sequence, and I gave up even trying to tell Reggie from Last Year’s Suitor, although Bobby Vernon is generally recognizable.”

 

 

      At the beginning of Badger’s film Myrtle (Myrtle Lind) is Bobby’s (Bobby Vernon) sweetheart, but before we can even get to know them they have a fight, and she tosses him out of her suite.

       Naturally, at that very moment the worldly Helen (Bray) shows up in riding attire, about to take a horse ride into the countryside. Bobby grabs the nearest horse, evidently not a very trusty nag, and joins her, she happy to have the handsome young man at her side having just given up the character titled Last Season’s Suitor (A. Edward Sutherland), who throughout this film attempts to woo her back.

       Off they go, with the skilled horsewoman Helen, naturally, taking the lead as Bobby’s horse not only lags behind but soon loses its shoe and can go no further.

       By chance on the same road, Reggie, better known as Honey Boy for reasons unexplained, is taking his sister Gloria (Swanson), who is at wheel of his sporty motor car, on a visit to her old school-chum Myrtle. He’s written ahead to Helen to tell her the news since he, like everyone else, can’t wait to meet up with her.

       Like Reggie’s horse the car goes off track, sending Reggie and his suitcase hurling into space, soon after resulting in a flat tire. Evidently cars have the very same problem in this world as do horses.

       Suddenly Helen rides into view, and Reggie hopes that he might reunite and even catch a ride with her back to the hotel where everyone is staying; but having quickly changed her interest to Bobby, she gives him a chilly greeting and rides off without him, forcing him to walk to the hotel.         

       Bobby, horse by the rope, discovers the car in middle of the road a short way ahead. By this time Gloria has thrown on a pair of overalls over clothes and is proceeding to change the tire. Bobby ties up the reins to the front of the car and attempts to help the “damsel in distress,” but finds she has everything in hand, almost driving away with the horse leading. She backs up, discovering her brother trying to create a spark of friendliness from the cold Helen. He throws his suitcase into the car and off Gloria drives.

        Clearly she has taken an immediate liking to Bobby, despite the fact he still has eyes for the Thea Bara vamp. Like Reggie, he is forced to walk back to the Beverly Hotel, but he has won the heart evidently of “the danger woman.”

       In any event, they make it back, Gloria and Myrtle meeting up and Reggie finally being introduced to her best friend. Myrtle, having noticed Bobby going off with Helen who is still in a fragile state of mind; but meeting up with the Honey Boy at least distracts her from her sorrow.

       Having also heard of the siren she immediately determines to do something about it. At a societal event being thrown at the hotel, she dresses in a tuxedo like most of the other men, and gains the vamp’s attention just long enough to keep Bobby and Last Year’s Suitor away from the bench in which she quite successfully courts Helen while playing a male suitor.  

        When Bobby complains and is about to shove her off—the method apparently appropriate in this film for the male species to get rid of competing suitors—she draws him as an old comrade into the nearby bar, where she has to undergo some of the spirited and drunken camaraderie of other male-on-male behavior, a difficult task for the more “refined” sex, just as Viktoria learned in Reinhold Schümzel’s Viktor und Viktoria (1933).

         Still on the chase for the wrong women, however, Reggie and Bobby must face off in the local Café. But Last Year’s Suitor is still ready to fight off any male who gets close to Helen, and Bobbie and Gloria in drag are his least favorite people at the moment. At the café he attempts to duke it out with Gloria until, with Bobby’s help, she locks him for a while in a telephone booth. But it takes Reggie aboard a bus which he crashes through the restaurant window in order to square things up, Bobby attempting to do battle with the manly Gloria until her hair comes pouring out from under her cap and he realizes finally that he is in love with the female under disguise. Reggie equally discovers he really loves Myrtle.

     At least I think that’s the way it ends. But Gloria suddenly appears to have Myrtle’s long hair, so I can’t be certain. And perhaps Reggie is still on the loose, since we never actually see him hook up with Myrtle. The only thing of which I’m certain is that “the danger woman” has flown the coup, running anywhere she might never again encounter her Last Year’s Suitor, who appears to be still on the chase.

 

Los Angeles, May 17, 20021

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog and World Cinema Review (May 2021).

Robert Wiene | Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari) / 1920

a great big beautiful doll

by Douglas Messerli

 

Hans Janowitz and Carl Mayer (writers), Robert Wiene (director) Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari) / 1920

 

As anyone who has seen Robert Wiene’s strange German Expressionist film of 1920 will remember, the first half of the film deals with a mad doctor, Caligari, who, it is later revealed, runs the local lunatic asylum. The “cabinet” of Dr. Caligari (Werner Krauss) reveals, through his journal and revered book, that he has become obsessed with a story about another doctor and his somnambulant subject whom he uses to destroy those who cross him or even question his power. Repeating the historical doctor’s experiments, Caligari becomes the mad doctor of history, creating havoc in the small town of Holstenwall as first the town registrar and, later, another young man are murdered.

  

   As the film critic Siegfried Kracauer argues, the script was originally an indictment of the war-time German government and their lust for power, to which the director added a framing device—in which his character, Francis, tells a horror story that, it is revealed late in the film, is one of his own imagining. In fact, the man he believes is Caligari is simply the head of the asylum in which Francis is incarcerated, argues the critic, along with the very figures he has described, the woman he characterizes as his fiancée Jane and the somnambulant Cesare (Conrad Veidt)—all of which, so Kracauer argues, obliterates Mayer’s and Janowitz’s more subversive script.

      Frankly, I don’t read this film as Kracauer did. Indeed, I see it even more frightening that our “hero” has apparently been locked away under the control of the man he believes to be the evil Caligari; and the doctor’s proclamation at the end of the film, “Now I know how to cure him,” seems to me less of a rational announcement than a threat that Francis may soon also become one of the living dead. But then, at the beginning of the 21st century, it may be that we find it harder to believe in even normal-seeming systems.

     This is, however, quite obviously a matter of interpretation: in either case, the core story is a horrific tale of mad power and perverted love. For it is clear that, like the creators of other monstrous figures (Frankenstein, for example), Caligari seeks through his acolyte, Cesare, control over those about him, and that Cesare serves him as a kind of passive son-lover, whose intense beauty covers for the ugliness of Caligari’s own aspect.

 

    It is these concerns which lead the devious doctor to want to show off his “creation” at the fair, and like all such other power-seekers, to bring attention to his own evil acts. It is never enough that the creator control the surrounding world, he necessarily must show that embodiment of power to the world, demonstrating his mad desires become flesh.

     The real cabinet of Dr. Caligari, accordingly, is not the closed shelf in which lies the evidence of his crimes, but the small tent and coffin-like container wherein he keeps the sleeping beauty over whom he has such power. In short, Caligari is willing to risk everything simply to show off his achievement: the encapsulation of all that others may desire—beauty and knowledge.

     The important question of this film, accordingly, does not seem to me to be about whether or not the doctor is actually Caligari, or if Francis is sane or mad, but why Caligari—real or imaginary—is willing to risk everything by putting his “doll”—one must remember that when he sends Cesare out to do his evil murders, he replaces his sleeping friend with a dummy—on such obvious display.

     Why do so very many successful heterosexual businessmen trot out beautiful wives at every possible social event and occasion when others of equal power are gathered. Obviously they see their wives not as individual beings with whom they have equally joined in marriage but as extensions of themselves which through marriage, a contract of supposed desire, proves their value.

    For the ugly Caligari the attractive asexual-looking Cesare, with his heavily made-up eyes, his rouged lips and cheeks, and his lean body represents his own kind of trophy wife, which also perhaps reveals his obvious homosexuality. Yet the true horror here is that he behaves toward his male lover just as would the worst heteronormative patriarch. Like so many wives of the day, Cesare does what he has told as if under a hypnotic trance, not even pausing to question the murderous actions with which he’s also been charged. But by enacting those wishes, Cesare proves time and again, in Caligari’s thinking, his love for and devotion to his master. To hide the fact that Dr. Caligari is capable of keeping such an attractive obedient robot-like human near would be to reject all evidence his own masculinity and virility, even it appears to the community as something outside the heteronormative husband-wife relationship and, therefore, perverse, worthy of showing off only in a carnival-like atmosphere.

     Cesare, whatever else he represents to others, however, is for Caligari a kind of great big, beautiful doll who has been brought under the spell of this otherwise unlikeable, physically unattractive pretender. And if he is unable to display his “beauty” to others then it has no purpose. There obviously are other, possibly even easier ways to get rid of one’s foes. His ability to use Cesare for that purpose is simply another secret benefit. The true importance of Cesare is that he appears completely under Caligari’s control which, for a man who does not really know love, is his definition of being loved and loving.

   Critic Harry M. Benshoof in his Monsters in the Closet: Homosexuality and the Horror Film describes Caligari’s “puppet” as a homoerotic figure, but I go further in arguing that he is a perverted sexual representation of the Doctor’s desires, a lover who transcends simple representation, even if he may only keep him like a doll in a box, acting out no sexual performances upon him. Carrying him about, touching him, displaying him are all the sensual stimulations that Caligari needs for his satisfaction.  And in that sense Wiene’s 1920 film is perhaps the first full exploration of queer sexual desire represented as a thing of horror.

      Whether or not Cesare, Caligari, and others are simply manifestations of Francis’ imagination, they exist as a true representation of sexual horror within the context of the traditional German values of the small city in which this story takes place. Fantasy becomes reality in Wiene’s oddly warped and misshapen universe as presented through the set and costume decorations of Walter Reimann, Walter Röhrig, and Hermann Warm. And like so very many images of fantasy, they can quickly be perceived in their mad singular or even collective actuation as horrific.

 

Los Angeles, August 12, 2002, revised November 17, 2021

Reprinted from Green Integer Blog (October 2008).

Dylan Mascis and Natalya Micic | Screwdriver / 2018

keeping hold of your man

by Douglas Messerli

 

Dylan Mascis and Natalya Micic (screenwriters and directors) Screwdriver / 2018 [30 minutes]

 

The half-hour long British film, Screwdriver is yet another work on young gay men being severely bullied in schools, ending tragically—as far too many of these films do—in the central character’s suicide.

    Clearly the young 17-year-old Michael (Kent Ibe) has tried hard to adjust to his gay life. Living alone with his mother (Norma Dixit), as the movie begins they have moved to yet another school in order escape Michael’s being bullied.

      Somehow despite the bullying and their moves, the mother seems to remain clueless about her son’s sexuality, somehow imagining perhaps that he might have something to do with his being black (she is white). Michael, still fearful about coming out to her, records a sort of verbal blog about what being a gay black man in his late teens is like and how painful it is. She, however, can only repeat her desire that he bring him a nice girlfriend from the school. And speaks at one moment about a neighborhood that is “sadly” filled with too many gays.

      In his new school, however, Michael quickly meets a gentle young man, Josef (Matt Blin), who not only seems to take a liking to Michael, quickly trying to teach him to play the piano, but also develops a close relationship that seems to accept his sexuality.     

     So close do the boys become that Michael feels comfortable sharing with Josef his voice- recorded diary. The boys seem to be developing sexual feelings for each other. And finally, Michael seems to have found some of the acceptance he has so long been missing, determining to hunker down and finish out his school days without major suffering.

    The fly in the ointment in this case is that Josef also has a girlfriend, a rather dominant figure who, like many young women who fear their male partner’s may be straying over to the opposite sex, keeps a close watch on him, attempting to reign him away from the new student.

      I’ve seen such behavior up close, meeting up at one point with an old college friend who was clearly close to coming out or perhaps to recognizing that he might be bisexual back in our college days. At lunch, years later, despite the fact by that time I had been in a relationship with my partner for a couple of years and represented no possible threat to his sexuality, he immediately reported that his now wife would have been horrified if she’d known he was having lunch with me. It is a vision of homophobia at its worse, stemming from of fear that she might lose her man if he even rub shoulders with a gay man. Popular culture used to describe this as “keeping hold of your man.”

      Certainly, Josef’s female friend, whom he claims to love, is precisely this kind of controlling woman, a woman not unlike Michael’s own bigoted mother. And when Josef tells him that despite his growing love for him, he “cannot” leave his girlfriend, Michael perceives it for the kind of homophobia it is, realizing that any hopes of getting closer to Josef are impossible and that, in fact, his only real friend may soon also be forced to keep a distance from him as well.

      The two meet up in Josef’s truck to talk it out, Michael breaking down into tears as his implores Josef to become man enough to stand up to such a controlling woman. But such young men as Josef seldom are able themselves to fully admit to their sexuality and look to the societal norms of behavior in order to survive. Some of these men often awaken later in their lives to discover themselves sexually entrapped and wreak havoc as they attempt to correct the situation.

       Almost broken, Michael almost angrily leaves his would-be mate. But he soon discovers than other schoolboys have observed them in the truck and are now ready to take revenge on the intruder who might be trying to sexually sway their classmate. They beat him brutally, first emptying out his bookbag and discovering his voice recording which talks about his difficulties with being gay. They not only destroy his books, the record of his life, but almost the man himself in slugging and kicking him into submission.

 

      Michael staggers home to pass his sleeping mother on his way to his room, where in complete confusion and hopelessness he attempts to wash away the blood on his face.

       Josepf meanwhile does not immediately return to his girlfriend, realizing perhaps that much of what Michael has argued is right and that he too has fallen in love with the new student. He rushes to Michael’s home to tell him, presumably, that he does love him. But when he awakens the mother who goes to upstairs to bring down her son, discovers that Michael has hung himself. The love proffered Michael has come too late from everyone who might have washed away the hate.

       Mascis’ and Micic’s short work is extremely powerful. They have attempted to even further experiment with the numerous viewpoints being expressed by presenting the entire film in split screen so that we might watch two different individuals at the same moment and perceive their interactions.

       Two problems, however, weaken the effect. First—at least in the print of the film I saw—the lighting is so dark that we cannot actually observe the faces of the characters as they express their viewpoints, particularly in the important scenes in Josef’s truck.

       Secondly, as critic Jack Cameron argues in his LGBT Film review: “The writing over-labours the drama and the split screen begins to rely too heavily on effects created by the framing rather than by the content that’s in the frame.”

       Nonetheless, the young directors have created another powerful statement about the terrible effects of bullying and homophobia that seems never to end, even in societies that proclaim to have come to accept LGBTQ differences.

 

Los Angeles, March 10, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (March 2024).

 

Benjamin-Shalom Rodriguez | Bettas / 2017

fighting fish

by Douglas Messerli

 

Benjamin-Shalom Rodriguez (screenwriter and director) Bettas / 2017 [9 minutes]

 

This dark and violent short film, Bettas, begins almost comically as two lovers, Francisco “Frank” (Jose Diaz-Oldenburg) and David (Nick Ley) meet up in the bathroom of the house they are renting while on vacation for a friend’s wedding.

     It’s hard to even believe the dark, handsome Latin-looking Frank and the fussy, boyish David might even attempt a relationship, particularly since the first subject involves the sensual Frank being taken to task by David for having demanded they have sex by the pool, apparently an encounter public enough that he is not ready for it. He insists upon Frank’s apology, which finally comes, if a bit begrudgingly, David finally joining Frank in the shower for a kissing encounter that might have quickly turned into sex were it not that in the background a radio booms out a techno song, “Come Closer,” sung by Octo Octa. Suddenly David wants to dance, getting out of the shower to show Frank the robotic moves.

      Frank, however, in the mood for love, finds the entire situation absurd and wants to part of it, David basically throwing a hissy-fit over the fact that he’s not been able to share the silly event, and that Frank has made him feel silly simply for requesting it.

      Even as Frank attempts to explain and, once more, apologize, David grows moment by moment more violent, eventually throwing a glass bottle into the show with Frank, who cuts himself seriously on the glass. Mirrors and other bathroom fixtures soon follow as both attempt to punish the other for their behavior, finally ending in what appears to be Frank, on the floor, perhaps so seriously cut he cannot get up.

      David hurries to the phone, but when he returns finds Frank standing in wait in a large shard of glass which uses, in turn, to cut David. It appears that, as the song repeats the lyrics “I want you, I want you,” the two may even kill one another, since bloods is already dripping down face and neck. Both declare they are sorry as they move into kiss one another’s bloody face.

 

       Surely, if they survive, the relationship cannot.

      Bettas are also known as Siamese fighting fish, the males being extremely territorial. If two males are placed into a fish tank together they will likely battle each other to the death.

      US director Benjamin-Shalom Rodriguez’s film is violent and bloody enough to make even the strongest of horror aficionados wince; and I not a horror fan. Although I am well aware that two males living in a gay relationship might certainly have such violent battles. I have only to recall the very early days of my own relationship with Howard, when we too were very different individuals, not ready to give up our separate personalities for the other. Although nothing quite this violent occurred between the bettas we were back then.

     Yet one has to wonder to what end did the director make this film: as a warning? a simple declaration that such things can happen? or just out of a desire to make an odd thriller.

 

Los Angeles, March 9, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (March 2024).

 

 

Alejandro Galdón | Me quiere, no me quiere (He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not) / 2022

love at first sight

by Douglas Messerli

 

Alejandro Galdón (screenwriter and director) Me quiere, no me quiere (He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not) / 2022 [16 minutes]

 

One day Arnau (Alejandro Serrano) accompanies his mother to the wealthy home where she works as a cleaning woman, where Arnau meets up with the family son, Javier (Daniel García). It is love at first sight for the young Arnau, and Javier seems receptive, beginning to teach him how to play the piano. The lesson is almost immediately interrupted by his mother’s insistence that he stop playing and help her clean the house.

     Years later, both boys have grown of age, and run into each other at an unchaperoned party at a private home. Javier (now played by Jaime Antón) seems to have a girlfriend, who is so possessive of him that when they play spin the bottle and he is asked to kiss another boy, she will not permit it, and leaves in protest.

     Javier also leaves the room in some embarrassment that his girlfriend does not even trust him to remain faithful to her gender. Arnau (now played by Pablo Royo) follows, the two boys almost immediately taking up their friendship again after all of these years.

     By the time the night is over—after having to escape along with the other partyers when security arrives—the boys forge a true relationship, kiss, and seem to have fallen in love with one another.

    The plan is to communicate the very next day, but when Javier doesn’t answer Arnau’s messages, the latter fears he’s been ghosted and that Javier may have returned to his girlfriend. He tells his best female friend of his fears. And when he mother reports that she’s going to their wealthy home again to do the cleaning, Javier begs if he might join her, wandering around the vast home and pondering whether Javier—whom he discovers is now vacationing Paris with his family—truly loves him or not, hence Spanish director Alejandro Galdón’s simple title.

      A call from Arnau, explaining that he left his cellphone in the taxi the boys took home, which is the reason he hadn’t called, corrects everything, both boys planning to resume their relationship with Javier returns home.

       This is a simple, short romantic comedy about first love, coming of age, and, in some senses, coming out. And there is nothing profound about it. Yet the film is still charming and worth the devotion of 16 minutes to watch the well-filmed scenes play out.

 

Los Angeles, March 9, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (March 2024).