Gary Halvorson and Mariusz Treliński | Iolanta and Bluebeard's Castle / 2015 [Metropolitan Opera HD-live broadcast]

what’s love got to do with it?

by Douglas Messerli

 

Pyrotr Tchaikovsky (composer), Modest Tchaikovsky (libretto, based on a play by Henrik Hertz), Iolanta and Béla Bartók (music), Béla Balázs (libretto, based on a story by Charles Perreault), Bluebeard’s Castle, Mariusz Treliński (stage director), Gary Halvorson (film director) / 2015 [Metropolitan Opera HD-live broadcast]

 

I originally intended, before actually viewing the two operas presented in the MET’s HD Valentine’s Day broadcast, to discuss these works separately, adding my remarks about the Bartok opera to those I had already made above on the Los Angeles Opera production, and writing about the Tchaikovsky work, never before performed on the Metropolitan Opera stage, within another context. After seeing the pair of short operas, directed by Mariusz Treliński, it became apparent that to do so would be to ignore the carefully constructed and, at times, revelatory links between the two works.

     Of course, there is absolutely no reason to imagine that these two very different pieces, written only 20 years apart, need have anything to do with one another, Iolanta representing clearly a work of 19th century that romanticizes love and seeks for its characters’ purification through their orientation to the light, “the pearl” of God’s gift to mankind. Light is not just God’s first creation, but representative of moral value and comprehension in the Tchaikovsky work.

     This work struggles with a pre-modernist dilemma: how is someone without the knowledge of light and all that it represents—good, beauty, love, wisdom—able to comprehend what is missing from their life? Importantly, the opera asks questions that Blake had previously posed: can innocence be good, does lack of knowledge allow for salvation, or, as Pope Francis recently pondered, can an animal be forgiven and granted eternal life? For in this opera, which the director has linked up intimately with animal life, represents the blind Iolanta (Anna Netrebko) locked up, not in a beautifully enchanted cottage—as the original libretto would have it—but in a hunting cabin, replete with the trophies of deer antlers posted across its walls. Deers are seen roaming about the place, are shot, and their blood is drained all during the course of short performance.

     In Treliński’s version, the young girl’s father, King René (Ilya Bannik) is not just a misguided parent, attempting to protect his beloved daughter from a truth which may, he fears, transform her joyful demeanor into a world of fear and terror, but is a dictatorial figure who pretends wisdom while denying even the concept of it—no one with access to girl is allowed to mention light and vision. Yet at opera’s start, Iolanta has come of age enough to perceive that something is missing from her life, and begins to suffer even though she cannot yet comprehend why she might have any right to do so, particularly since she is lovingly cared for by servants day and night. Eyes, accordingly, have no purpose but for tears, and tears, alas, have become to appear in her eyes without cause. What we begin to perceive is that, even in the closed world in which she has been sheltered, the young blind girl is beginning to comprehend that something is amiss. How can her nurse, for example, know that she is crying without touching her eyes, to spot her fever without putting her hands to her forehead?

     The opera’s libretto, however, does hint, moreover, that René’s intentions may not all be a as loving as they are manipulative. Why will he not even reveal that he is the king or that Iolanta has been promised in marriage to Duke Robert (Aleksei Markov)? This beautiful young maiden locked away in her enchanted garden, after all, is not so very different from the forested animals the King keeps on his property to hunt them down and destroy them. And not only is René mistaken in his notions of filial protection, but he has not bothered to discover whether or not the young man to whom she is promised is a suitable husband for her. In fact, Robert, even knowing of the vow to which he has been committed, has been, so to speak, actively playing the field, and has fallen in love with another woman, Mathilda.

      Fortunately, his close companion, Vaudémont (Piotr Beczala) has not yet found the perfect woman he is seeking, and which, almost as soon as he has sung of his desires, he discovers in the visage of Iolanta. But even suddenly witnessing everything for which he has been seeking, also reveals his own failures: for him everything is based on sight. Accordingly, just as he begins to reveal to the unknowing girl the importance of light and all that it represents, she, in incomprehension of words, begins to reveal to him that love, wisdom, and knowledge can (and must) be known even in the darkness.

     Had Tchaikovsky been a 20th-century composer, he surely would have sought out that second truth more thoroughly, faced as Bartók would soon be, with the bleakness of the already discordant future. But Tchaikovsky and his story, being of another time, pursues instead how to bring the light to his heroine’s life so that she, too, can be blessed just as has her loving knight.

     Today, the ridiculousness of the magical cure by the Arab doctor Ibn-Hakia (Elchin Arizov) is apparent, with its mysterious “backstage” melodramatics which, we are told, the young girl bravely endures as she is forced to wear a blindfold to cover eyes that cannot see the light. Chalk it all up to a dramatic revelation of the fact that she is cured, and is now suddenly able, because she has willed it, to share in God’s great and glorious gift, all somewhat campily represented in this opera’s conclusion through the project of white rays emanating in an art- deco-like pattern behind the carefully arranged gathering, for the work’s conclusion, of the chorus and leads.

     Hinting that the happy girl of the first opera, in entering the new century, is drawn to return to the world of her father’s dark domination—or, one might almost argue, as if young Countess of Rossini’s Barber of Seville were to sudden awake in the bed of Mozart’s Le nozze di Figuro—Judith (Nadja Michael) of Bluebeard’s Castle inexplicably leaves her happy home of light to follow the Bluebeard (Mikhail Petrenko) into his nightmare castle. Like Vaudémont of the Tchaikovsky opera, Judith hopes to help Bluebeard—by opening the doors to all his rooms and revealing their secrets—to see the light and, in that process, discover just what they meant for Iolanta: good, beauty, love and wisdom. Treliński, in attempting to link these works, brings in, quite naturally, elements of the first work, the antlered deer heads, the roots of trees, flowers, etc into the second opera as Judith tries to entice Bluebeard to perceive (perhaps with a bit tweaking of the translation) just what Modest Tchaikovsky described as “the pearl” of God’s gift to mankind. And, in this sense, by performing these works together, they function to slightly shimmer off of one another, giving each work an intensity of meaning that alone they might not reveal. What also became clear by bringing these works together, was how informed they both were by eastern European thought, along with its inherent appositions of evil and good, meaninglessness and revelation.

    Yet, as my companion Howard pointed out, too often this can lead to “connect the lines” sort of sketch that easily collapses with any careful thought. For Judith is not and never could have been as innocent as Iolanta, even as a child. She is attracted to Bluebeard and his dark world, not because she herself once shared it, but because she cannot truly believe in his rumored evil. A bit like the Biblical Judith, Bartók’s figure might even imagine herself as being able, in the end, to take charge of the situation by beheading her Holofernes when he attempts to rape her in her bath. But she cannot act in time, needing still to prove her would-be lover innocent, refusing to believe the truth she already knows but cannot will herself to believe.

     In fact, even more so than when I saw the great Bartók opera late last year, I could not help but comprehend the work, this time around, as a horrifying, nightmare prediction of World War I and the fascist interventions of the rest of the 20th century. Everything that Bluebeard reveals to Judith will be realized in the century ahead, as the idealist’s life—the dreamer in the moonlight—will be the required sacrificed of mankind.

     What these operas do ultimately reveal by their pairing is that while the first may represent a dream of love, the second has actually very little to do with love, but is a tale of the twisted human attraction to the perverse, concerning the awful hypnotic draw of the human species to the heart of darkness.

 

Los Angeles, February 16, 2015

Reprinted from USTheater, Opera, and Performance (February 2015).

Stephen Riscica | It Gets Better? / 2016

when love is hard to find

by Douglas Messerli

 

Stephen Riscica (screenwriter and director) It Gets Better? / 2016 [11 minutes]

 

In this short US film an older man, clearly now an alcoholic, sits next to his computer, occasionally watching a short YouTube piece by a handsome young man (Samuel Ashkenazy) who proclaims, as have many a short film and just such broadcasts, that things actually do get better when you graduate and leave home. The young speaker is clear that although he despaired in his high school days, he now has beloved friends, and feels at home in the LGBTQ community.

    This message, I believe, is important for young people to hear, for, in fact, things do generally improve for those who move out of their closeted worlds into larger cities at the right age, and who find jobs, and are willing to meet others at bars or other social occasions. The gay world is generally supportive. It certainly was to me when I tried out New York City for a year, helping me, at moments, to find places to live and showing me in general how to survive. I fell in love with an older man who made me feel somewhat protected, although I already possessed a pretty strong constitution, and was ready to meet the obstacles of that sometimes cruel city. Besides, I knew that eventually, when the time was ripe, I would return to the university and finish my education. For me the tough urban jungle was an exciting and energizing experiment. Things were never that bad for me in the first place, but succeeding at the challenge made my life even richer and allowed me to finally live the full sexual life for which I been longing.

   Disgusted, however, by the proselytizing of the young YouTube speaker, the man determines to record his own story. He too agrees that in the freshness of youth things do indeed get better, when you’re young and you meet someone with whom you fall in love. He makes an important point, arguing that young gay men (and by extension gay women) are never taught how to love.

     One could argue that many a young heterosexual is also never taught to love as well, but the society is full of models. Perhaps it’s easier for today’s youth who need only to turn on their computers to see gay films and even porn that help to explain and teach what it is gay men and women do together, the gay films sometimes even presenting the problems and joys of what loving entails.

     But for those of previous generations, which this man represents, there were no models. Yet somehow, as he points out, young gay men still found one another, learned how to love together, and how to heal their previous hurts for simply having been born different.

      Just as the youthful YouTube commentator argues, youth seems full of possibilities. But the old man (Gys de Villiers) soon lost his lover and has grown bitter. Evidently he looked for replacements without success, and as the years passed, despite his constant attempts to keep going and seeking what he describes as “the light,” he was unable to find it. This happens, as we well know to many people. Love seems to pass them by. The joy others have been awarded, has slipped away from this now angry man, who however, like a Beckettian hero, determines that “must go on,” even if he feels he cannot.

      The “It Gets Better” campaign is fine for youth, but at a certain age for gay men, whose chances become slimmer as time moves on given the smaller pool of choices they have available, and the structures that—which I argue fortunately—still do not always fully embrace the institutions such as marriage which are generally required of heterosexuals, some people have to learn how to live alone, and find close friends to fill the gap. The man in this movie seems to have not imagined that possibility, or was simply unable to make friends, being as determined as he was to find a replacement lover.

      As mean and unfulfilling as the regular gatherings presented in Mart Crowley’s The Boys in the Band were, at least they represented a community offering up both bitchery and love. And today there certainly must be more open-minded, less closeted gatherings available to older men such as the figure of this short film. His sadness, however, is overwhelming, this short offering him no consolation since he has now confused love with wine.

 

Los Angeles, December 15, 2024

Reprinted from My Queen Cinema blog (December 2024).

Ryosuke Hashiguchi | Hush! / 2001

choosing a family

by Douglas Messerli

 

Ryosuke Hashiguchi (screenwriter and director) Hush! / 2001

 

Homosexuality has a long history in Japanese cinema, some of which I have already written about. But this lovely and somewhat frustrating film from 2001 is one of the fullest discussions of the possibilities of a LGBTQ family before marriage and child-adoption were major options, and in that sense, this film enters new, if not radical, territory regarding the Japanese LGBTQ world.

    It begins in Naoya Hase’s (Kazuya Takahashi) apartment before he has met his later companion Katsuhiro. His pickup for the night wakes up, dresses, and attempts to sneak out before Naoya even awakens. But Naoya does get up and offers the man tea or coffee, but even that is too much for he runs off to wherever he might be going. Naoya describes him under his breath: “Jerk!”

    It’s clear already that Naoya would like a relationship, when all he seems to be able to find is one-night stands.

     The camera, follows the likeable Naoya on his bicycle to his job as a dog groomer and animal doctor, where we learn to like him even more given his cherry greeting and caring for each customer and his rapport with the dogs and other pets. Yet no one can stand the lecherous boss, who seems always to be cooking up some new potion for providing his animals and longer life, and lures one dunderheaded woman back into his office so that she can breed her pet Golden Retrievers, the two employing the dogs as an excuse for their own lurid desires, egging the dogs on for sex in front of the woman’s prepubescent daughter.

     We also encounter another of the major characters, Asako Fujikura (Reiko Kataoka), a woman who has perhaps had too much wild and unprotected sex with strangers. She lives in sewer like-conditions in a small room. But it is at the doctor she visits that we learn, as the nameless reviewer for the Japononfilm site summarizes: “She has spent a life of one-night stands that mirror those of Naoya before he meets Katsuhiro, which have left her lonely with two abortions and an ovarian cyst. When the doctor suggests she have her ovaries removed rather than just the cyst, she begins to think about a last chance at motherhood.”

       Still, she is talked into allowing one of her crazy suitors to talk her into sex. She is, after all, constantly lonely, working alone even as a dental technician who in an office back room chisels and molds the teeth the doctors will use as crowns for their patients.

         Suddenly, and a bit too quickly for the viewer to have even assimilated the fact, Naoya has picked up another handsome young man, this one being Katsuhiro Kurita (Seiichi Tanabe), who does not run off in the morning after sex, surprising the loveable Naoya so much that he overfills the coffee strainer.

       We next see them as a couple in a restaurant, Asako overhearing their conversation and noticing their intertwined feet under the table. Hearing the gentle, not yet openly out Katsuhiro speak about children and looking at his large sad eyes, Asako decides then and there that Katsuhiro would make the perfect father for her baby, the one she’s decided will now replace all the failed men with which she has previous filled her life.

       In a sense she is the polar opposite of Katsuhiro, who is constantly polite, demurs to all, is confused about choices, and when aggressive approached chooses silence instead of confrontation. Asako is all outspoken, impulsive action, and soon confronts the couple, insisting that Katsuhiro consider the offer, without any strings attached. She claims she will use a syringe to implant herself; all need provide is the sperm.

     Naoya is outraged at the very idea; gay men were not meant to have children. But, although Katsuhiro naturally is somewhat taken aback by the actions of this aggressive woman, he is clearly intrigued and promises—his usual position on all controversial issues—to think it over.

       Katsuhiro works is a strange hanger-like structure, with a large built-in pond where the engineers, he being the low man on the totem pole, explore with toy boats materials, shapes, and designs of what will become larger ships and sea-going vessels. He spends most of his time in fisherman’s pants wading around in the pool.

       If there is a villain of the piece, it is the secretary/staff-assistant Emi Nagata (Tsugumi) who is under the delusion the Katsuhiro’s kindness and reassurance’s that she is not worthless represent his love for her. She has not only convinced herself that they are a couple in love but that they will soon be married. She even arranges a meeting with the woman she rightfully sees as the aggressor—although completely misunder-standing what Asako wants out of her relationship with Katsuhiro—basically to ward her off. And when that doesn’t work, she meets up with Naoya’s slightly crazy mother, Katsumi (Manami Fuji), who knowing that her son is gay is now fearful that he’s soon going to be demanding an operation, presumably imagining that all gay men eventually become transsexuals.

        We would love to see Katsuhiro simply tell both women to shove off; and certainly Naoya has insisted that his lover tell Asako to look elsewhere for a father for her baby. But to demand that of Katsuhiro is to be quite insensitive to Japanese culture, where young boys are instilled with concepts of respect for their elders, particularly women. And in Katsuhiro’s case, wherein his father was an abusive drunkard, he has become particularly respectful of women life is abused mother. Katsuhiro cannot simply refuse the women their claims, and the result in this comic drama is disastrous, particularly when by accident Naoya picks up his lover’s phone, taking it with him to the office, only to discover he has still remained in touch with Asako, who when he confronts her admits she determined still to persuade him not only to provide the sperm but to be involved with the child rearing, something, she admits, to Naoya, will affect him as well.

      Even worse, Emi has hired a detective to obtain information about Asako, and hands the summary over the Katsuhiro’s brother and sister-in-law. The family, daughter in tow, immediately travel from their city to Tokyo to confront Katsuhiro, as Naoya’s mother also now confronts her son. The mother is insistent that Naoya’s lover is being unfaithful to him with Asado, once more unable to understand their relationship; while Katsuhiro’s sister-in-law (Yoko Akino) is simply outraged that he would consider marrying someone who is uneducated, with two abortions, and a list of sexual partners. She is so worried about how their inheritance will be split, about what she believes is an in-born condition of sexual aberration and ignorance that it doesn’t seem to even dawn on her that her brother is actually in a relationship with Naoya.

     Through all of this Katsuhiro, in complete confusion over the matter, cannot or will not say a word to clear the mess up, and every time Naoya attempts to say anything his loud and insistent mother interrupts with her own mistaken ideas about reality. Finally it is the assertive and brave Asako who attempts to explain that all she really wants is a child, that she is not claiming either man’s love or even involvement with the child’s well-being.

      That shocks the sister-in-law even more, as well as Naoya’s mother, neither of them even able to imagine birth by artificial assimilation. The sister-in-law attempts to explain, using herself as the example, how difficult it is to give birth, how hard it is to raise a child, etc. And finally, she argues that you cannot choose a family, a family what is given you by birth. But is apparent she is a woman who loves to suffer, while her husband, much like his brother, is a forgiving and truly loving being. Only when Asako passes out, does the family jury break up, Katsuhiro’s brother, who apparently has long known of Katsuhiro’s sexuality, secretly telling him to do what he wants and not to follow any family dictates, before he gets in the car with his wife and daughter on their way to visit the nearby Disneyland for the daughter’s sake.

       But that isn’t the end of the horrific events, as Emi shows up, desperate again to talk to the man she is still convinced loves her. This time, as she clings to the willing-to-listen Katsuhiro, Naroya forcibly attempts to break it up, insisting that it is not time to break off all contact. But Emi keeps insisting on talking about it, and Katsuhiro remains willing to listen, until finally, after several attempts, pulls him away for her, Emi threatening suicide.

      By this time, any viewer would also be frustrated by Katsuhiro’s passivity, and the man himself admits that he has never been able to stand up for himself, Naoya suggesting that it is perhaps the time for him to start doing so, admitting who he is and standing proud of his existence.

      A telephone call, however, undercuts even that possibility, as we discover that Katsuhiro’s brother has been hurt in a small accident at Disneyland. Yet, according to the sister-in-law, he is now all right, and they will be returning home.

      Somewhat later that same evening, however, a second call reveals that the brother has died, evidently of the concussion.

      Long after the funeral, which we do not witness, we see Katsuhiro, Naoya, and Asako visiting the lot where the family house (which we have seen in an earlier fragment when Katsuhiro has returned home for a friend’s wedding) once stood. Katsuhiro is disgusted that his relatives could not wait to sell the land, and even his sister-in-law who did not want to leave the house, eventually signed off on the deal, just for the money. It appears none of the “so-called” inheritance went to him.

   The three of them walk along a river, attempting to skip pebbles one by one, across its surface. Only Naroya succeeds. And a moment or so later, in the most moving scene of this work, Katsuhiro breaks down into open sobbing, finally releasing all his pent-up sorrows, anger, fears, and whatever else he has been holding within for years. The others stand off for a while, simply out of respect for his grief, but eventually join him in hugs and gentle strokes of his back.

     Finally, the two men have moved Asado herself into the house, and she now has purchased two large syringes, handing the first to Katsuhiro and the second to Naroya. Naroya asks why he is also receiving one, without missing a beat, she declaring that it is not good to be a single child, and he will father of her second baby.

     We laugh, as the credits reveal, in fact, the faces of two babies. Against the siter-in-law-s logic, these people have chosen to create their own family unit in the manner only they can clumsily create it. But it is surely as healthy as any other such family unit, and far better that what any of them experienced growing up.*

     The title of this wonderful film comes from the accompanying song at the beginning and end of the film, Bobby McFerrin’s beautiful rendition of the American folk lullaby,

 

“Hush little baby, don’t say a word, gonna

 Papa’s buy you a mocking bird,”

 

*A somewhat similar situation occurs in François Ozon’s Time to Leave (Le temps qui reste) of 2004  where an unknown woman approaches the dying hero of this film, explaining that since her husband and her cannot have children, she would like him to be the father. Although here, he does have sex with her, in her husband’s presence. And that is the end of their association, since he is dying. He even forces a breakup with his own previous lover.

 

 

João Cândido Zacharias | Os Últimos Românticos (The Last Romantics) / 2019

sexual taboos

by Douglas Messerli

 

João Cândido Zacharias (screenwriter and director) Os Últimos Românticos (The Last Romantics) / 2019 [12 minutes]

 

Hardly a profound study in public sex—although that would certainly make for a very interesting film since it represents still a taboo in most societies, but one that is broken regularly by gay men—the three men in this story tell stories about having sex in public spaces.

    It should hardly be surprising that the first and second location is a cinema. I think every gay man of a certain generation has probably had sex at one time or another in a movie theater. I certainly have, but this not the time or place to discuss the incident. In this case it is a cute young curly-blond-haired boy (Maurício Barcellos) who tells of sitting down in an empty seat in an otherwise full movie theater next to a bearded man.

     He describes himself as primarily the aggressor, putting his hand on the armrest next to the others, who seems to be perfectly happy to leave it there. They quietly and discretely touch one another’s hands before the other man pulls his hand to his hard cock, with the boy begins to caress, eventually unzipping his pants and allowing the boy entry to the cock through his underwear, hiding the action from the neighbors, who apparently notice nothing with his backpack. The boy begins to jerk him off, but finally stops, the boy explaining that he suddenly came without even touching himself, just through the excitement of the event. The first time it has even happened to me, he muses.

     He observes that the other attempted to return the favor of jerking him off, but he pulled his arm away to prevent it since his pants were already full of cum.

     The scene changes to two bearded men, apparently lovers, lying in their bed. The one (Lucas Canavarro) begins to tell the same story as the boy, only Rashomon-like, the facts change ever so slightly. It is he the one who puts his arm up next to the boy’s and does the caressing, and the boy who reached out eventually for his cock. The bag is still there, and the incident of the boy stroking his penis through his underwear remains. But in this case, he does return the favor, touching the boy’s cock only to discover it covered with semen, slightly aroused by it but also a bit disgusted. After holding it a while longer he removes his sticky hand.

    Clearly we have to believe the second man’s story since he confirms that the boy has already cum. Evidently the boy was too embarrassed by his own early ejaculation to want to involve another person in the event.

       The other person lying in bed with the second story-teller (Victor Lisboa Gorgulho) tells another story of being on a sleeper bus, where a highly muscled young man sits down next to him. Later the guy lays down to sleep, but the storyteller cannot. Soon the muscled sleeping guy moves in a manner that his hard cock touches our friend’s hand. He doesn’t know if it is intentional or not. But he leaves his hand there and later it happens a second time and leaves it there. So he begins to slowly move his hand over it as if to jerk him off. And then “I said fuck it, and unzipped his pants, pulled out his dick and jerked it until he came.”

      He soon admits, however, that he made the last part up. That actually he did continue to touch it and massage his cock through his pants, but he doesn’t know if the man was asleep or not.

      Once more buses are one of the most common places in which both gays and heterosexuals have public sex. I too have done it on buses, several times, on particularly trains. Airplanes and the subway are far more dangerous, but are a common location for public sex in porn movies.

      What all of this has to do with “romanticism” I cannot explain. There might certainly be said to be something thrilling about the danger of such situations, not quite knowing whether the other totally agrees with what’s happening, and most important, knowing that there is the danger is something observing what’s happening and complaining or even calling for the police. The danger and taboo of the situation is like a drug with extends the pleasure of sex to the thrill of the crowd, the possibility of exhibitionism and voyeurism.

     These are often the subjects of porn movies, but seldom make their way into the mainstream LGBTQ films, except, as I have already noted, in the numerous public bathroom movies and gay sex bar scenes.

     I can only conjecture that perhaps Cândido Zacharias perceives anyone in the world of gay coming out, relationship dilemmas, and social bullying, who is still interested in verboten sex and love as being a “romantic.”

 

Los Angeles, December 14, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (December 2024).

     

 

 

Jamie Dispirito | Thrive / 2019

an unnamed virus

by Douglas Messerli

 

Jamie Dispirito (screenwriter and director) Thrive / 2019 [17 minutes]

 

British director Jamie Dispirito’s Thrive is another post-AIDS film, which discusses the continued devastation of lives, even though medications are available to help keep the HIV-positive person from developing AIDS and from spreading it to others. We encounter young student at the center of this film, Joe (Taofique Folarin), in his apartment early one morning as he drinks his morning coffee, takes his meds, and hooks up with someone on his cellphone for sex.

    The handsome Alex (Ben Aldridge) arrives soon after and proceeds to fuck him, as the two climax it what seems like perfect sex. Alex suggests they go to breakfast, but when Joe demurs, he suggests they just go for a coffee. But Joe makes up an excuse, and Alex realizes that the meetup is over and begins to dress.

    Before he goes, however, he admits that he’s seen Joe’s meds in the bathroom, and realizes that he’s HIV positive. Joe is a bit taken aback, but assures him he’s “undetectable,” which means he’s not infectious. He admits he found out two months ago, but hasn’t yet been able to tell anyone yet.

      Alex seems to understand, realizing that he’s afraid of rejection. Joe tells him about his previous relationship with the man who probably gave him the virus, but who’s still negative.

      Surprising, Alex admits that he too was infected—11 year ago—by someone who remains negative. And the two, for a moment bond, in their dilemmas. And yes, at first Alex also received a great many rejections from friends and possible lovers. But now he wishes that they didn’t even name the virus as AIDS, or being HIV-positive.

     He explains how a doctor might actually say, you have a virus which has no name. And in order to keep the virus at bay and to protect yourself from spreading it you’ll have to take a pill daily for the rest of your life. It would so much easier, without the stigma of the horrific epidemic, the fear rejection by others, and the concept of death hovering over one’s future.

      Alex leaves.

     And for a moment, partially in relief, but also in a flood of pent-up sorrow, the now alone Joe breaks down in tears. But finally, he realizes that Alex, almost like an angel, has brought a message of great hope, of the possibility of thriving in life instead of just surviving. He quickly dresses, and races downstairs. The camera from the viewpoint of his room high up in the apartment building looks down in a crane shot of the two men meeting and obviously heading off together for that proffered breakfast. Perhaps they can continue to find solace in one another’s company and love.

Los Angeles, December 14, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (December 2024).