Ben McCormack | Family Outing / 2001

a true story

by Douglas Messerli

Ben McCormack (screenwriter and director) Family Outing / 2001 [5 minutes]

 

Australian director Ben McCormack’s 5-minute short in black-and-white condenses a story about a young boy (Michael Curven), obviously having realized he was gay, determining to visit the baths for sex for the first time in his life.

     Like so many people who find bathhouse activity intimidating, this kid finds the showering, cruising, sweating bodies of mostly elder men attractive, but is clearly uncomfortable with the public and voyeuristic aspects of most of the sex others try to illicit in the showers, the steam rooms, and the open doors to cubicles which invite him in.

     Finally, he selects to the most common and least public form of sexual intercourse, putting his penis through a glory hole in the wall between his booth and the next, thoroughly enjoying the cunnilingual sensations provided by man a within the next cubicle (Leo Bradley) while imagining the juxtaposition of images, like snapshots, we have witnessed as he stalked the Brisbane spa upon arrival.

     Satisfied, he leaves the cubicle only to encounter the man who sucked him off on leaving his own room. As he looks up into the man’s face, he gasps out the words, “Dad?”

     The film stops there, forcing us to imagine all the resultant difficulties of his sudden revelation. Fear, hatred, disgust, horror are all possible emotions, as well as a possible understanding comprehension of things previously unexplained at home, acceptance, and maybe even love—of whatever kind is possible given the situation.

      Porn films have tread this territory; it is after all one the most severe of cultural restrictions, and accordingly an inevitable pornographic attraction. Yet this small film takes it on with all seriousness with no comfortable prurient readings encouraged since the sex itself is never represented and only hands and facial gestures are put to screen, the fingers of the father seen as he invites the boy to put his cock through the hole, and the face of the boy in obvious ecstasy of his sexual release.

      Some of these same issues have been explored in feature films such as Tanuj Bhrama’s Dear Dad (2016) and Álvaro Delgado-Aparicio’s Retablo (2017), although in both these cases the son is not gay and we witness a resolution that is missing in McCormack’s work.

      The film, however, takes its subject into even more serious territory by declaring at film’s end a documentary-like admission: “This is a true story.” which forces us to put it into the context of actual speculation of what might happen to the two individuals when such a thing occurs? No one was at fault, no abuse intended. Yet deep secrets, we are certain, have now been revealed, and they always leave spaces in the realities we have created, sometimes simply to cover over the gaps we sense in our knowledge of one another. There may be release, there may be hate; there may be anger even violence, or reconciliation, a new secret to be shared out of familial love—possibly an ever greater rupture in family life. But the notion of family will surely never again be the same.

 

Los Angeles, September 17, 2021

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (September 2021).

Douglas Messerli | Family Secrets [essay]

family secrets

by Douglas Messerli

 

I think we can safely say that other than one’s innate sexual inclination and personal desires, the greatest impact on one’s sexuality comes from the family into which one was born and raised, even if that is not a truly unified experience. Parents, however one defines them, and siblings help determine one’s sexuality and the ability to develop relationships that one either readily accepts or works against if contrary to a person’s innate sexual feelings. It is no accident that throughout LGBTQ cinema, families play an essential role, often helping or thwarting the coming out process or the simple maturation of the individual. Sisters and brothers, older and younger, moreover, can help either be models to emulate or hindrances, in some cases actually helping to shape and define one’s sexual orientation.

       Sexual attraction to siblings, while often natural given that the close relationships with brothers and sisters are some of the earliest connections we make with other human beings, and can also terribly effect and delimit one’s own sexual identities. Parental sexual abuse can obviously destroy one’s faith in sexual relationships or confuse a child to such a degree that he or she finds it difficult to maintain healthy and effective relationships later in life, although it does affect all individuals in the same ways.

       And abuse can also consist of simply being narrow-minded about the varieties of sexual possibilities or unaccepting of those possibilities when manifested in one’s own children. And the greatest fears and devastation of self-worth can arise from lack of parental acceptance. Although we generally tend to think of community as being one of the most central reasons why young men and women prefer to stay closeted, it is generally the fear of confronting parental disdain and even hate and rejection that keeps many youths from being able to fully come to terms with their sexual feelings. While those issues most often are centered around a young person identifying as part of the LGBTQ community facing strongly heterosexual parents, it can exist in reverse and, just as devastatingly, effect young men and women whose mother or father are themselves secretly closeted when their children face similar feelings.

      These issues can extend, moreover, to other family members beyond siblings, including uncles, aunts, grandparents, and even cousins.

      Throughout these pages I have written numerous essays, too many to even selectively mention—although it is obvious that the grouping of films that bear a deep connection with the trio of longer films about family sexuality that I discussed in George Stevens’ Shane (1953), Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Teorema (1969), and Harold Prince’s Something For Everyone (1970)—that demonstrate the complexity of how family life effects a young or even a slightly older person’s sexuality.

       In this essay I have chosen 12 short films from 2001 to 2020 that deal with only a handful of the numerous familial issues that complicate and sometimes destroy the individual’s sexual life and possibilities for adult love.

      All of these involve “family secrets,” in most cases not just sons and daughters hiding their sexuality from their parents, but a far more intricate and complex linking of secrets that when revealed sometimes lead to greater openness and freedom but just as often end up in terror and even suicide.

      I was tempted to discuss these in connection with the subject of sibling sex, but in the end felt it was simply more logical to discuss a far wider variety of familiar situations in chronological order of when the films were first released; but I will interlink each of these films with the others when appropriate.

      These films, produced in many different countries and societies reveal to us that often the transgressive behavior of family members, although not always destructive, is connected with their children’s or even the adults’ behavior. The issue at heart here is the necessary secretness of any such sexual acts as well as numerous other secrets the family has hidden in shame or obfuscation, which only further mystifies the very young men and women involved.

      Although not included in this discussion one might cite one of the most extreme examples in the case of the TV series Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menedez story from 2022, created by Ian Brennan and Ryan Murphy, which I write about in that year.

   The films included here are Australian director Ben McMormack’s 2001 film Family Outing; Brazilian director Júlio Maria Pessoa’s 2002 film In the Name of the Father; US director’s James Burkhammer’s Starcrossed; the 2008 film from US director Gregor Schmidinger The Boy Next Door; another US film, J. C. Oliva’s Brotherly also from 2008; German film director Marcus Schwenzel’s 2009 work Brotherly Love; Brazilian director Caru Alves de Souz’s Family Affair of 2011; the Spanish film by Venci Kostov, The Son from 2012; Spanish director Miguel LaFuente’s My Brother of 2015; another 2015 film by Costa Rican-Swedish director Nathali Álvarez Mesén, Filip; Hong Kong filmmaker Ray Yeung’s Paper Wrap Fire, also of 2015; New Zealand director Welby Ings’ Sparrow of 2016; Brazilian director Caio Scot’s After that Party, released in 2019; British director Maj Jukic’s My Dad Marie of 2020; and in the same year, the director from Czech Republic Dominik György’s The Touching, which almost summarizes the issues at hand.

       But there are many, many others. Anna Kerrigan’s Cowboys of 2020 and Alan Ball’s Uncle Frank of the same year might be described as filled with sexual family secrets, or even Pedro Almodóvar’s 2023 short, Strange Way of Life. The list is nearly endless. This series of essays is but a dive into a foreboding and hidden subject. Family life is also about sex whether or not it intends to be. Fathers and mothers are not inseparable from their sons and daughters sexual dires, and the children cannot be removed from their own desires even for one another. Incest and family destruction goes back to Greek drama and before. Let us be honest: families are a sexy mess mixed up with every child’s identity.

 

Los Angeles, December 6, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema (December 2024).

Waide Aaron Riddle | Lost Hills, CA / 2010

there’s no place like home

by Douglas Messerli

 

Waide Aaron Riddle (screenwriter and director) Lost Hills, CA / 2010 [5 minutes]

 

A very short rather meaningless pean to what is self-described in this film as white trailer trash, a now middle-aged man (Waide Aaron Riddle) and his momma (Robbin Ormand), in a chartreuse trailer.

    The only difference in this instance is that the son is gay, inviting all of his gay friends over for a barbecue. Some, it appears, head straight for the bed, while the gay boy drinks a few beers with his friends and his momma, whom for some reason that writer and director Riddle won’t explain keeps awarding her with kisses. He’s obviously proud of his mother and his greaseball father’s achievements just to keep a roof over his head. He’s also proud of his new tattoo. He’s happy, he proclaims, as if we might suggest he has no right to be.

    What their gay baby-boy, now with a grizzled white beard, does for a living is never established. Why he’s proud of his lowly life is never explained. This movie appears to simply justify its joyful presentation of life in a trailer park by showing a lot of hunky gay men, mostly shirtless beings easily accepted by the curler-haired momma.  

      This is a narrated tale, with the voice of Jack Geren, without any true characters or dialogue or even story. The pretty down-home boys, it appears, are all you need to make you realize that there’s no place like home, wherever that may be.

      Let me assure you, I have nothing against trailers or the people who inhabit them. I do have a beef, however, with such an empty shell of a movie.

 

Los Angeles, December 6, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (2024).

Tom Speers | Boy Saint / 2018

stem of thorns

by Douglas Messerli

 

Peter Laberge (narrative), Tom Speers (director) Boy Saint / 2018 [8 minutes]

 

I am not a great fan of cinematic portrayals of overwrought poetry, in this case a sort of adolescent outpouring of memories by poet Peter Laberge.

     A gang of boys consisting of actors Finn Gillespie, Lenar Gaffney, Lewis Brophy, Scott Brophy, Harry Eaves, Evan Hamilton, Raymond Scully, run through the wilds of the Irish countryside, behaving like all such gatherings, somewhat destructively, while wrestling, swimming, mocking, threatening, and in the process developing their bodies into manhood.

    But two of the boys, presumably Gillespie and Gaffney, become attracted to one another and longingly stare into each other’s eyes, hoping for an escape from the others to consummate what might be their boyish love.

       In Tom Speers’ endlessly droning action accompanied McKenzie Stubbert’s overwrought musical score and by the late-romantic poetic proclamations of Laberge’s writing (“In the beginning we were one blood. Then the body grew its disagreement like a stem of thorns inside out.”) the boys don’t have a chance. The gang with which they run won’t abandon them to themselves for a moment.

        This short Irish film is all about boylove-longing without any real substance. The boys can only stare at one another with childhood desire in their eyes. The film is pretty to look at, but frustrating to listen to the with elder poet pontificating on his own long past love.

 

Los Angeles, December 6, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema Blog (December 2024).

Beatrice Schreiber | Harley / 2014

the unlikely couple

by Douglas Messerli

 

Beatrice Schreiber (screenwriter and director) Harley / 2014 [12 minutes]

 

Director Beatrice Schreiber’s feel-good drama Harley is both unlikely and rather preachy. But then we’re in San Francisco where such gay stories always seem possible.

     Lucas (Caleb Hoffman), a cute, slightly effeminate gay boy shares an apartment evidently with Harley (Lars Slind) a musclebound beauty performed by an actor who in real life was a football player and model from Seattle. Also sharing the flat is Kira (Hannah Elder) who seems to be convinced that Harley is her man. Both appear to have basically ignored Lucas for several years until one day, in a terrible incident of homophobic rage, Lucas is beaten and raped so severely that he falls into a coma, unlikely to come back to life.

       Suddenly, so we’re led to believe, Harley’s deep homosexual feelings for Lucas come to surface as he writes daily diaristic love letters to the comatose Lucas and works out with the intention to find and kill the assaulter.

       Understandably, Kira perceives the radical change in Harley’s demeanor, attempting to bring him back into her life and reality, since it appears that Lucas is gone. Kira is convinced he will end up in jail.   

   But in a kind of miracle, in which this short film trucks, Lucas wakes up and comes back to life, returning home into the apparently now ready arms of Harley, who forces the boy to read his journal, kisses him and promises to makes things well again.

        Neither Kira and Lucas has known anything about Harley’s interest in boys, but Lucas, after reading his love letters, is only too happy to snuggle up into his new relationship.

        This is pure fantasy, cooked up in the imagination of a woman who suspects, presumably, that musclebound hunks often secretly hunker for sweet nerds like Lucas. Most gay men will surely realize this is just a kind of gay boy’s dream, and not what happens in real life. And that it takes a near-death experience to get there should clue everyone in to dangers of such fantasies.

 

Los Angeles, December 6, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (December 2024).

Faith Strongheart | Havana / 2019

an escape artist who refuses to escape

by Douglas Messerli

 

Barbara Soares (screenplay), Faith Strongheart (director) Havana / 2019 [12 minutes]

 

The quite wonderful short gay film created by women should be show-cased with the many excellent films about gay Cuban life, including Tomás Gutiérrez Alea and Juan Carlos Tabío’s 1993 film Strawberry and Chocolate, Julian Schnabel’s 2000 film, Before Night Falls and several other important movies. To group them, however, would diminish the power of their cries from the time in which they originally were released. The Cuban gay scene, representing some of the most noted writers in history, which included José Lezama Lima, Virgilio Piñera, Guy Cuevas, Severo Sarduy, Abelardo Estorino, Eduardo Machado, and Reinaldo Arenas was one of the richest and most fascinating developments in LGBTQ history, and itself would make a truly remarkable documentary feature.

   But this short doesn’t attempt to reach that level, simply focusing on a lowly immigration officer, Antonio (Ifeanyi Dike Jr.) who sells illegal visas at high prices in American dollars, although when they come short will also accept expensive possessions such as the watch his first customer gives him, the only memory of his father. He hides them away in his safe, now a fairly wealthy man, but unable to use the money to buy anything he might need given the restrictions of  Cuban society.

     Even worse, this man is in love and has a regular sexual relationship with a married man, Jian (Shaofei Chen), for who he lovingly cooks dinners, and waits for each night, as Jian slips off his ring, evidently not revealing to Antonio his bisexual transgressions. But this evening their meeting ends up differently, with Jian a late arrival. Despite Antonio’s attempt to begin their usual lovemaking, Jian resists. Finally admitting that he himself now needs one of his lover’s illegal visas.

     Their love is in jeopardy, and Antonio’s role a facilitator makes it even worse. For perhaps the first time ever, Antonio refuses, as Jian reminds him that he has asked him to leave Cuba with him so many times in the past, always with rejection. Jian claims that he’s received at offer in the US at a great hospital. But at that very moment, his wife enters, obviously quite pregnant. Her father manages the hospital.

    Betrayal, lies, the entire fraud of both of their lives is laid open for them to contemplate.

     An arranged marriage over which Jian feels he had no control, outrages his male lover, who argues that he can stay in Cuba and fight. Jian reminding him, however, that he too has hidden his life, both sexually and financially, arguing that both of them are cowards.

      When Jian attempts to pay him the required $200, Antonio now insists the price is $300 in retribution, the wife (Shenli Zhao) hardly being able to understand the two men’s relationship or what is being said. His wife is even willing to pay the extra $100, perhaps to simply not have either reveal the whole truth.

      But suddenly Antonio breaks down and declares he will join Jian, he’ll leave with all the money he saved up. They might have a wonderful life together. But it is quite clear Jian has committed himself to a life of closeted heterosexuality, given the demands of his parents and the society in which he lives. There is no longer any escape.

      He has no choice but to return to his safe with its piles of money and pull out another fraudulent visa, wishing, as he has to all others, “Have a good life.”

      Antonio is left alone in a Cuba of secrets, lies, and restrictions with now a handkerchief Jian has left behind, a wealthy man with nothing to spend it on except perhaps dreams of escape or release in the arms of another man.

       This is how such restrictive societies turn otherwise loving men into petty criminals, and empty shells of human beings.

       I should add that the music by Stephen Spies is truly impressive.

 

Los Angeles, December 5, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (December 2024).

 

Simon Gualtieri | Ami d’ami (Friend of a Friend) / 2023

the bathroom saint

by Douglas Messerli

 

Simon Gualtieri and Anne-Marie Soucy (screenplay), Simon Gualtieri (director) Ami d’ami (Friend of a Friend) / 2023 [15 minutes]

 

Jules (Jules Ronfard) has just broken up with his girlfriend after meeting Samuel (Samuel Brassard), realizing perhaps for the first time that he is probably bisexual. He arranges to meet Samuel at his apartment, to just “hang out.”

      Both Samuel and Jules have evidently enjoyed their previous conversation with each other, and, despite Jules’ doubts about having arranged for the meeting, Samuel sees nothing unusual about their get-together.

      But Jules clearly has other plans, wanting it appears quite desperately to explore his newfound bisexuality for first time with a man, namely Samuel. But everything gets in the way. First of all, he can simply not find the language to speak to an openly gay man about his sexual desires; but even worse Samuel’s roomates, male and female, both apparently heterosexual, come tumbling into their tête-à-tête with their tales of their day, their equal claims to Jules (the male insists they met in college and the woman suggests she might have fallen in love had they met a supermarket) and a desperate desire to play dominoes.

      More than a little frustrated, Jules retreats to the bathroom, snapping a picture of himself in the manner of the St. Sebastian reprint hung on the bathroom wall, and sends it off to Samuel, hoping to reveal his inner feelings.

     Yet even that seems to fail when Samuel’s roommate pulls the cellphone from his hands demanding that there will be no texting allowed during their domino game. In desperation, Jules spills wine all over the table and prepares to leave.

        In Samuel’s bedroom where he has left his coat, the friend of a friend finally appears without all the others, permitting the two to talk, both afraid to broach the subject of their mutual attraction. But a kiss settles the issue, as Jules explains that being the very first time for him with another man, he may find he doesn’t like it, he may not want to sleep over, etc. Yet it’s clear the two, once they begin their sexual engagement, will truly enjoy the experiment.

       If Quebecois writer Simon Gualtieri’s likeable short film is not very profound, it does present gay love from a quite different perspective, and Ronfard is very appealing as the coming out bisexual.

 

Los Angeles, December 5, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (December 2024).