Yuan Yuan | 雁南飞 Heading South / 2020

the birthday party

by Douglas Messerli

 

Yuan Yuan (screenwriter and director) 雁南飞 Heading South / 2020

 

Yuan Yuan’s 2020 short film Heading South, which I watched today along with several other shorts chosen from among 3,000 entered in competition for the AFI Film Festival, might appear to some as conveying little more than an 8-year-old Mongolian girl’s overnight visit to her estranged father in China.

 

    Indeed, the film begins with precisely that journey. But it is so much more complex when one considers its events in hindsight that one hardly can believe that such a complex work might be told in such a minimalist manner (with a running time of 13 minutes). The director speaks of her inspiration for this film as coming out of vague childhood memories that she could call up only with colors, shapes, and sounds, and it is through those sensory elements that this film is mostly conveyed.

      This movie features very few words, but when the central figure, Chasuna does speak she is required to say everything in both Mongolian and Mandarin, which might lead to confusion even for the most skillful adult linguist. While the film never focuses on the multi-cultural differences between the colder, more isolated world just to the north, and the Chinese city to which she travels, we are nonetheless totally made aware of them.

      At home the child is free to ride her horse or simply run on foot across the semi-barren flatlands, once her mother calls her into the prefabricated hut in which they live, she is dressed, her hair brushed, and her body cleaned as she were about to enter an alien planet.

      Her mother sets her astride her motorbike and the two go speeding off on a seemingly endless blacktop road to a mysterious elsewhere that apparently takes several hours given the fact that as they leave the sun is still high in the sky and by the time they arrive in the urban space where she will stay the night, it is already dark.

       The girl is handed a package containing a leg of lamb, her mother reminding her to get the payment for it, before she sets her daughter down and speeds off into the dark.

        Chasuna enters in medias res where a group of mostly older men are nearing the end of a  celebration with a younger woman. The men, we quickly comprehend, are all brothers of her father (Tongela) attending his birthday party.  The girl is forced to sit on the knee of her father who asks her to recite their names and relationships in both languages of the people in attendance. She hesitantly does so, but is also somewhat abashed for their behaviors, most of them already having become drunk and insistent that the woman at the table quickly down several shots of liquor.

        The woman returns to the table with a surprise birthday cake, the male participants laughing that only children’s birthdays are celebrated with cakes without even seeming to realize that the father’s child now sits in a chair beside him. One might imagine they might at least offer the girl the first slice.

        Instead the father, as if introducing his wife to Chasuna informs her that she must now call the stranger, “mother.” The girl refuses, and in one of the very few moments of the film says something so significant that she is scolded for it: “She is not my mother.”

         Obviously, the father has divorced Chasuna’s mother and married a different woman (Fala Chen), but for the innocent child is almost as if she were hearing of these marital changes for the first time in her life.

         Distressed by the demands of her elders and perhaps embarrassed for her own outspokenness, she leaves the table, watching their constantly running television set as if it were some sort new sort of torture device.

         As her father chides her for her refusal, others suggest that it will take time. But we know that Chasuna has no time in this world, just as the people in that world lives of semi-permanence. Unlike her mother’s hut, a communal space which the entire family shares, this urban environment consists of small closed-off rooms which even the inhabitants do not share with one another. The stepmother, after trying to entire the girl into eating a piece of the cake which Chasuna seems to refuse, disappears, while the girl’s father lays down upon the couch to spend the night. The child is given a small space elsewhere where she spends what appears to be a rather sleepless night.

      She awakens to the sound of the horn from her real mother’s motorbike and quietly dresses, preparing for the journey home. As she is about to leave, her father, still on the couch, calls her over, attempts to kiss her and, without her having to ask, takes out a small wad of money, peeling away some of the bills which he hands her, as if, instead of representing a joyful visitant, he were paying her for appearance at his festivities somewhat like she were a prostitute instead a child of his own flesh-and-blood.

      Reluctantly taking the money, Chasuna rushes out to meet her mother to return to her beloved home. In the last scene we watch her joyfully kissing and mounting her horse to ride again across the steppes.

 

Los Angeles, October 17, 2020

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (October 2020).

Chris Derek Van | Julian / 2023

the sound of silence

by Douglas Messerli

 

Chris Derek Van (screenwriter and director) Julian / 2023 [4.30 minutes]

 

Although not specifically an LGBTQ film, in Julian rather experimental filmmaker Chris Derek Van once more explores issues of loss and leaving, also with a somewhat homoerotic sensibility.

     This film begins, like several of his works with an action of appropriation, in this case with quotes the from the Spanish artist Diego Velázquez, in French: “Velázquez, past the age of 50 no longer painted specific objects. He drifted around things like the air, like twilight, catching unawares the shimmering nuance of color that he transformed into the invisible core of his silent symphony.”

     The screen images are of a young handsome man sitting at a pool, as the director shifts his color lens and at one point even presents the image of the young boy upside down.

      The narrative continues: “Henceforth, he captured only those mysterious interpenetrations that united shape and tone by means of a secret but unceasing progression that no convulsion or cataclysm could interrupt or impede. Space reigns. It’s as if some ethereal wave skimming over surfaces soaked up their visible emanations to shape them, give form and then spread them like a perfume, like an echo of themselves, like some imperceptible dust over every surrounding surface.”

       The boy, meanwhile, strips off his jersey and jumps into the pool, swimming and leaping back into the water again and again. But in the midst of this, while the narrator continues to describe how sad the world was in which he lived, filled with a “degenerate king, sickly infants, idiots, depressed, cripples,” we glimpse a poster showing the boy, named Julian.

 

       Are we to presume that this seemingly large picture posted outside the Chicago theater, with a danger sign below it suggests that he is now one of the thousands of missing children throughout the country?

      The rest of the film is basically a dirge, as the director borrows Simon and Garfunkel’s song “The Sound of Silence,” while a car drives down a long road in the rain. The images and song declare that somehow Julian either lost touch with his world or that world with him. He has moved outside the “gates” that Velázquez describes where the Auto-da-fé controls life, and the boy may have been forced to suffer it demands.

     We cannot but imagine the details about the young handsome swimmer’s life, but once more director Derek Van has presented us a great sense of loss and a nostalgic feeling of longing.

 

Los Angeles, July 20, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (July 2024).

 

Chris Derek Van | Dreams of a Man / 2023

the knock at the door

by Douglas Messerli

 

Chris Derek Van (screenwriter and director) Dreams of a Man / 2023 [5 minutes]

 

The short films of the young filmmaker Chris Derek Van, produced by Glenbard East Fine Arts, use extant film images to create a narrative about gay love missing and mostly permanently lost. His 5-minute short of 2023, Dreams of a Man concern what at first might be seen as a missing lover, who left 20-years earlier.

    Yet we as quickly discover that in the small French apartment to which the narrator Paul returns, evidently on a visit from Los Angeles where he now currently resides, is not his former lover’s apartment but perhaps his family home, and that the “knock on the door” of which he hallucinates is not that of some former lover, but his own German father which obviously represented the nightly visits he paid to his son in bed.

      Yet unlike most films of child abuse, even if the walls have stories to tell and the ceiling pockmarked with buckshot, his memories are hauntingly nostalgic, as if he has truly lost a lover. He wonders if his father even remembers him and what he might do if he met him now as an adult. Would they go out for breakfast?

      Paul has returned to Paris evidently as part of a book tour, but refuses even to attend the events, waiting the time holed up in the apartment, nightly hallucinating the knocks and the calls out to him of “Paul,” followed by his response, “Pappa.”

      The images of this film, only a couple in Paris streets, alternate with loving images of fathers and sons and mostly washed-out scenes of Los Angeles, obviously filmed in the 1950s. We must make the connections, that presumably when his father left, perhaps because of accusations of child abuse, he must have moved with the mother to the California city and grew up there.

    In this film, the night-time meet ups with his father, although obviously still psychologically haunting and seemingly torturing him, are basically positive ones, a lover still waiting for the man he has lost. Although he admits, he will now never open the door.

       To some audiences, however, the obvious homoerotic nature of this film might simply be perceived as those of a child whose father has gone missing. And in that sense, Derek Van’s film might be described as a highly coded movie. Yet some of the images, one in particular from Marlon Riggs’ Tongues Untied, along with the pleading knock on the door from the father and the suggestion of the walls hide wounds, all suggest something far deeper than parental abandonment has happened in this young man’s life. One has to imagine that his successful book speaks to these very concerns.

 

Los Angeles, July 20, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (July 2024).

António Lopes Ribeiro and Max Nosseck | Gado Bravo (Wild Cattle) / 1934 [in Portuguese only]

the state of male behavior

by Douglas Messerli

 

Erich Philippi (screenplay), António Lopes Ribeiro and Max Nosseck (directors) Gado Bravo (Wild Cattle) / 1934 [in Portuguese only]

 

The other evening, I watched Wild Cattle, a film in which many of the crew and cast were Austrians and Germans who had recently escaped the Nazi’s by moving to Portugal. Portugal itself, now under the dictatorship of conservative and autocratic ideologies created by António de Oliveira Salazar, President of the Council of Ministers from 1932 until 1968, was undergoing radical national agricultural reform under the Estado Novo (the “New State”), and this film makes some mild bows to the countryside agricultural workers.

     But the film is primarily set in Lisbon and when it moves to the countryside it is to the cattle country of the Ribatcio province, with its own romantic history of caballeros, the Portuguese version of cowboys and bullfighters, a world brilliantly recreated in this film by the director of photography, Heinrich Gärtner and by the set designer, Herbert Lippschitz.

     Before I begin to describe the heart of this film, I must mention that what little Portuguese I know was picked up on my couple of visits to Brazil in the early years of the millennium, and I cannot claim any linguistic fluency. Yet it doesn’t take a deep understanding of the language to follow the story of the famed landowner and bullfighter Manuel Garrido (Raul de Carvalho), who after winning a major bullfight attends the nightclub where Nina (Olly Gebauer) is performing.

     As she begins her song, Garrido enters, the entire audience suddenly turning to toast him and sing an alternate song to him in celebration. Furious with the lack of attention, she stomps offstage, much to the consternation of her companion “impresario,” Jackson (Sig Arno). He attempts, without much success, to lure her back on stage, realizing that if she refuses to perform they will again lose their jobs. Failing, he begins packing all her dresses into their luggage trunk, at one point even joining them.

     But at the last moment, she decides to return to stage, this time carrying an armful of long-stemmed roses which she tosses out to the desirous men, managing to make a small cut on Garrido’s face with a thorn in punishment for his upstaging of her act.

      So begins a comic romance in which Garrido becomes enchanted with Nina even while he is locally committed to the love of Branca (Nita Brandao).

      Set against this romantic story is Arno’s character of Jackson who is represented in this work as everything Garrido and his kind are not—a feminized, impotent, and quite apparently gay figure who throughout jumps, leaps, and is propelled through the air as if he were a jack-in-the-box, who dances in a mix of Groucho Marx and a hoochie coochie performer, and ends up continually doing women’s work, eventually winding up in drag to escape a man who mistakenly believes he is attempting to seduce his wife.

 

    Jackson, strangely enough, is at the center of this otherwise quite macho tale, if for no other reason than Arno is such a brilliant comedian. Indeed when he is not onstage, driving wildly through a cattle ranch that doesn’t even permit autos or drinking himself into a stupor, the film drags. After all, Nina, as we soon discover, is a true bitch, a would-be seductress of our macho patron, and ends up murdered by another lover in the movie’s last moments. Strangely, even Nina seems to be unable to put Jackson out of her mind. After arriving at Garrido’s estate, even though by this time romantically attracted to the bullfighter, she dreams of Jackson’s hilariously daring deeds which brought her to Garrido’s mansion.

     And although our dashing bullfighting hero is torn between the love of two women, he is still also controlled by his clearly loving male friend, who at several points in the film steers him away from a female romantic involvement. Moreover, Garrido is himself quite attracted to the rough-hewn local singer who performs local songs for him, Nina, and Jackson when they first arrive.

     Throughout the film, except for a couple of deep clinches with Nina, Garrido seems much more comfortable with his hands on his male compatriots and obviously feels more comfortable around his own cowboys and the other bullfighters in the ring who challenge the bulls with cape and sword as he rides around on a horse as a rejoneo, tossing his rejones de castigo and banderillas into the animal’s neck and shoulders. And it is his close friend who quite literally grabs, hugs, pulls, and redresses his now drunken friend in order to bring him into the ring.

      By the end of the film, as Nina is murdered and Jackson slips out of the picture, the focus shifts, in fact, to a marvelous bullfighting sequence as the police stand by, waiting to arrest Garrido for his possible murder of the woman. He’s not guilty and can now return to his country estate to marry the local girl while daily hanging out with his male companions.

       Although made mostly by men and women “in transit,” so to speak, this film, as Portuguese critic Paulo Cunha observes, was one of early full realizations of Portuguese culture: “Despite the significant presence of foreigners and the clear attempt to internationalize this project, producer Hamilcar da Costa clarified that this film was “resolutely and unmistakably” Portuguese, as it was “conceived by a Portuguese mentality, filmed in the same country, focusing on parts of our life, carried out exclusively in Portuguese locations, manages to have and give an indispensable unity to a spectator to recognize in it as a national work.”

 

Los Angeles, July 19, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (July 2024).

Mickaël Weber | Nos sens (Our Senses) 2024

love too late

by Douglas Messerli

 

Lilian Duché and Mickaël Weber (screenplay), Mickaël Weber (director) Nos sens (Our Senses) 2024 [27 minutes]

 

French-language director Mickaël Weber’s Our Senses is a true tear-jerker about the issues I discuss in my 2011 collection of films gathered as a small omnibus in “How to Lose Your Best Friend.”

      Poor Arthur (Jean-Baptiste Lamour) is already quite aware that he is about to lose his best friend simply because Tony (Morgan Malet) is going off to school in Canada for a year. But, in the meantime he has not only become aware that he is deeply in love with Tony, but has even announced his being gay to his father.

      Meeting up with an openly gay friend, who truly might be a better match for him, he admits how he has fallen so deeply in love with Tony, and is troubled by how to tell Tony before he leaves. Tony, apparently a straight man, is convinced that Arthur is also straight, assuring himself that his friend has fallen in love with a new woman.

      The society in which these individuals live seems quite tolerant, everyone agreeing that if you love someone you ought to express it. And in long drunken party night with Tony, Arthur finally admits he is in love with a straight man without naming him. Again, all seem comfortable with the fact that their friend has just come out to them.

        When soon after, however, Arthur admits to Tony that the unnamed straight man is himself, at first  if a bit taken aback, Tony still seems comfortable with the situation. But later when they attend a movie, Tony suddenly turns to Arthur and kisses him, before escaping in rejection of the situation.

 

        What quickly becomes apparent is that Tony is himself attracted to Arthur and is a closeted gay man. But back at the university they attend, he cannot admit that anything happened in the movie theater, denouncing his friend suddenly as a faggot.

         The underlying hate of contemporary society once more reveals that the fears of homosexuality are still quite near the surface, and admitting anything about oneself in a world in which you still feel as a rejected outsider is not an easy decision.

         Arthur is obviously distraught about the situation, losing his friend and secret lover in the very same moment. Yet Tony visits him, not to apologize but to finally admit that the love suddenly showered upon him is something he actually desires but is still fearful to accept.

         After a quite powerful lecture about even in these times how difficult to is to accept what society basically doesn’t want to accept, the two kiss, realizing their love for each other, even though it is utterly fleeting since Tony is about to leave for a year. In the very last moments of this film, at least, his father calls, perhaps with a positive response to his email announcement of being gay.

        In some respects, Our Senses is pure soap opera; yet there is enough truth in it, and the acting is so powerful that we realize despite all the surface acceptance of LGBTQ+ individuals in contemporary society, it is nearly impossible for the general heterosexual world to comprehend the sense of shame and separateness gay men and others still feel every day of their lives. If such issues have been hammered home in hundreds of such LGBTQ works, they are still superficially felt by the general populace, the gay movies themselves seldom seen except but by those who suffer such consequences. How to bridge the gap—particularly when inexplicably you fall in love with someone who has difficulties with excepting his sexuality or simply is straight—is nearly impossible. How to explain the centuries of isolation, dismissal, and hate that have layered themselves upon our consciousness.

         This may not be a truly profound film, but it is another important retelling, so well performed and filmed, that we appreciate what it argues, and we can even still drop a few tears for the characters who suffer such experiences, particularly at a time in their life when they should most be enjoying the sexual entry into the adult world.

       Lamour is such a beautiful long-haired boy, one wants to put one's arms around his neck, brush back his bangs, and award him a long kiss. But that is what such romances, which this most certainly is, are all about. And as usual in such works, love is fully realized far too late.

 

Los Angeles, July 18, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (July 2024).

Unknown filmmaker | Come As You Are / 2010 [commercial advertisement]

strike out

by Douglas Messerli

 

Unknown filmmaker Come As You Are / 2010 [commercial advertisement]

 

Perhaps the lamest of all gay ads was the 2010 McDonald’s commercial touting the line: “Come As You Are.”

     A young teen is sitting at a McDonald’s booth waiting as his father purchases their order. In front of him is his class graduation picture, and soon after he gets a call from what appears to be his boyfriend, the cute boy almost stroking the figure on the picture as he speaks.

    He quickly announces he has to hang up as his father returns with their food. His father, seeing the school photo, asks if it’s his class graduation photo, to which the boy responds positively handing over the photo for his dad to glance at.

      His response is a young gay boy’s nightmare. “You look just like me at your age. Let me tell you, I was quite the ladies’ man! Too bad your class is all boys…you could get all the girls.”

      These words, obviously, are just what a 17-year-old who might be on the brink of coming out would love to hear on an outing with father to the local hamburger joint. Perhaps you can come to McDonald’s “as you are,” as long as you don’t let your dad know of your true sexual interests. This is truly the “don’t ask, don’t tell” theory of life.

 

      The cute kid smirks, knowing that he’ll have to put off talking about the issue with Pappa for while longer.

 

Los Angeles, July 18, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (July 2024).

Unknown filmmaker | Sometimes, It's More Than Just a Ride / 2017 [commercial advertisement]

drop me off second

by Douglas Messerli

 

Unknown filmmaker Sometimes, It’s More Than Just a Ride / 2017 [2 minutes] [commercial advertisement]

 

In this short gay commercial made in The Philippines, a cute young gay boy is sitting in the backseat of an Uber car when the smiling and quite aware drive suggests he stop off to pick up another customer.

 

     There is some slight resentment by the young man as he sends up text messages on his cellphone, but when he gets a look at the rider who soon joins him, everything changes, as he quickly messages of just how good-looking the second Uber rider is, unsure that he can even keep his hands off of him. Afterall, as he texts, the boy has been a long-time crush.

       Almost sweating the encounter, he asks the Uber driver to turn up the air-conditioning.

      Whereas previously he’s told the driver to drop him off at his destination first, he now suggests that he’s in no hurry, and the he can be dropped off second.

      But the bemused driver reminds him that it’s against policy to do so.

      Why is there so little traffic, he ponders, as they speed toward his end of the ride, reaching it soon after. As he begins to get out of the car, however, his fellow rider puts hand on his shoulder, startling and delighting the cute boy. He’s simply told, however, that he should get out on the left-hand side of the auto, as the second rider opens his door and exits for a moment, as the boy thanks him for the few more seconds of pleasure.

      The final credit suggests “Sometimes, it’s more than just a ride.”

 

Los Angeles, July 18, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (July 2024).