Philippe Barassat | Mon copain Rachid (My Friend Rachid) / 1998

pay to touch

by Douglas Messerlli

 

Philippe Barassat (screenwriter and director) Mon copain Rachid (My Friend Rachid) / 1998

 

It is difficult, in some senses to imagine the charming French film My Friend Rachid as an LGBTQ film since its major focus appears to be on a young sexually curious nine-year-old boy at a time when most boys first become interested in their own bodies of those of their peers. Eric (Jonathan Reyes) is simply obsessed with the size of his older Arab friend Rachid’s (Nordine Mezaache) cock, and begs him to show it to him and let him touch it whenever possible.

     Most of the time, Rachid will show him his penis, but will not let him touch it because to fondle it or even allow it to be touched would mean he was homosexual. But gradually, Rachid learns how to manipulate the young boy into paying to touch it, Eric only too willing to beg for money, under various false pretenses, so that he might grasp and handle his large-dicked pal.

      But then there are also moments that seem almost dream-like to Eric when Rachid takes the activity a bit further, as for example, when working in an arab night club as a waiter he encourages Eric to join him on a large constructed cock which flies through the sky over the small stage as part of the act, female Arab singers performing below.

      At another point, Rachid suggests that Eric “become” his penis on the lookout for girls and others who might interested in him.  

     And on another night, after fighting with some boys over a girl who he’s hired for sex, Rachid slips into Eric’s bed and, given the description of Eric’s dream wherein Rachid was joyfully being hung on the cross while he himself suffered the pain, the narrative hints that the older boy engaged in sex with the younger in his sleep. In the morning Rachid insists Eric owes him 100 fins (francs).

     Gradually, it becomes apparent that, in some respects, this is a story not about Eric’s sexuality, but Rachid’s as he moves gradually, with his outsized cock, into prostitution. Eric grows up, marries and has children, producing an almost stereotypical bourgeois family.

      But when he encounters Rachid one day on the street, who readily greets him, Rachid’s friends ask if Eric might have been a client, Rachid insisting, no he was a fellow classmate, a pal.

      What we realize is that his “pal” helped to show Rachid how to be a male prostitute without being self-labeled as a homosexual. As long as money was exchanged, touching his cock was perfectly permissible—perhaps even enjoyable for Rachid. But when Eric’s mother, suspicious of his constant requests for money, cut off the supply, Rachid disappeared from his life.

     The naïve Eric seems not even able to perceive how he helped train a young man in the life of prostitution, the way perhaps, the French society as a whole can never truly comprehend how their racism, lack of job equality, and failure to socially accept outsiders such as Rachid help to inculcate the idea for those who remain outside their cultural boundaries that the only choices they have in order to survive are robbery, drug dealing, prostitution, or welfare.

      Barassat’s comedy, accordingly, gets turned on its head. And yes, the little film becomes very much an LGBTQ story, being as it is about a male prostitute, who like so many who perform the same role, cannot accept themselves as being queer. They use sex, so they argue, only to make money, not to enjoy the pleasures of the body, while, of course, quite enjoying being sucked off or fucking some of their clients.

      At turns light-hearted and fantastical, Barassat’s small 19-minute gem is also a lovely satire of the bourgeois French culture, which the previously sexually fascinated adolescent eventually joins and ultimately comes to represent.

 

Los Angeles, January 12, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (January 2025).

Sean Lìonadh | Too Rough / 2022

shift of power

by Douglas Messerli

Sean Lìonadh (screenwriter and director) Too Rough / 2022 [15 minutes]

 

To call the family at the center of Scottish director Sean Lìonadh’s short film Too Rough as dysfunctional, as does the IMDb site, is almost an understatement. These people, an alcoholic couple with a mentally challenged child (James McCarry, Kevin O’Loughlin, and Tomas Palmer) are a disaster zone of hate and total destruction. How their son Nick (Ruaridh Mollica) has even survived all these years to celebrate at a party when evidently his parents are out of town, is almost inexplicable.

     How have they fed him? Can either of these parents even hold down a job? The only salvation for Nick’s younger challenged brother is that he cannot comprehend the meaning of the words that come pouring from their lungs during their violent shouting matches. That child, Flamingo, is only frightened and hides out in a closet.

      Nick is equally terrified, but it is because he knows all too well what his father and mother are saying, their hatred for one another, their homophobic slurs, and, at one point, so we perceive what his father’s drunken toppings of his body indicate. Whether the latter has actually resulted in sexual abuse is uncertain, but after we observe this one afternoon, we can imagine anything having happened in the past.

      What’s different this time, is that after the party Nick has fallen into the arms of his boyfriend Charlie (Joshua Griffin) at the party, and wakes up in bed with him as his parents return. We cannot quite discern whether Nick’s absolute terror of the situation is the fear of the consequences of being discovered with a black boy in bed which might surely result in beatings or even murder; or whether he is more terrified that Charlie will discover the full truth about his family and reject him out of hand. In any event, hysteria sets in, with Charlie mostly refusing to play along, arguing that he will not hide under the bed like Anne Frank.

      Yet he does piss in a glass instead of daring to use the bathroom, and leap to the side of the bed when Nick’s father, in the midst of his violent argument, enters and lays down on top of his son, whispering of his love into his son’s ear. The presence of Flamingo, however, distracts him, and he leaves, the fight between the parents continuing for a while before it finally settles down.

      When Nick again demands Charlie leave, he refuses. He is now there to protect his lover and rejects the very idea that he might abandon him to the horrors of his own home. Just as Nick holds his little brother’s ears so that cannot hear the full-pitch battle, so too does Charlie hold Nick’s ears.

     The couple finally kiss, Nick suddenly realizing a new sense of peace in having Charlie’s support instead of fear and absolute disgust.

                          

     Things do finally quiet, and the boys, together, move forward into the living room where the discover the battling couple drunkenly asleep in one another’s arms. Nick picks up his mother and moves her in another, more comfortable, direction, while Charlie, observing the oven smoking, pulls out the burned meal she had begun to prepare. Together they sit, holding hands, perhaps waiting for the horrors to awaken or just watching over them, realizing that it is they who are now in control, not the out-of-control drunkards. With Charlie there to help support him, Nick can finally put an end to his own version of hiding out in the closet.

 

Los Angeles, December 12, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (December 2025).

Elene Naveriani | Red Ants Bite / 2019

love as survival

by Douglas Messerli

 

Donald Acho Nwokorie, George Imo Obasi, and Elene Naveriani (screenplay), Elene Naveriani (director) Red Ants Bite / 2019 [23 minutes]

 

Two Nigerian men, who have immigrated to the country of Georgia, spend the day together, apparently as they usually do. As the film begins Afame (Donald Acho Nwokorie) has been waiting in the park for three hours for the arrival of his friend Obinna (George Imo Obasi), who has evidently been at a party which the less flamboyant Afame has refused to attend.

     Afame is married to a Georgian woman and has a young girl who he basically looks after while the mother works as a porn masseur. Yet, it is also clear that the two men share a relationship that is far deeper than mere friendship.

     They do little throughout the day, clearly both without work in a society in which they are unwelcome and often greeted with racist comments. Afame (who wears a large gold cross) is sometimes able to rise above the abuse, but it is obvious that it daily cuts in like a sword into

Obinna’s life, although he insists that he doesn’t cry. We also discover that Afame is suffering from some unnamed disease where in gums are bleeding.

      They do little throughout the day but talk, swim in the Kura River, which runs through the capital city of Tbilisi in which they live, sit by the riverside, get a couple beers, and return to the spot where Afame’s wife, Magda (Magda Lebanidze) works, in order to pick up Afame’s daughter.

      Together, they take the young girl to the Tbilisi zoo, which we are told early in the film, suffered a huge flood which killed off many of the zoos most precious animals, and made others ill. Some of those who survived wandered the streets of the city. Evidently, the city is still in the process of building a new zoo, but what is left is sad and abysmal, with animals trapped in small spaces, symbolizing the similar entrapment of these unhappy Nigerians, strange prey wandering Tbilisi on this day.

      Back at home, Afame gently puts his daughter to bed, after which the two men play video games. Yet, as we have suspected by their intimate touches and often languorous looks at one another, in a world without love they find their fulfillment in one another.

      As Magda returns home in the early morning she discovers her daughter in bed, being held by Afame, who himself is being hugged close by Obinna, the three of them fast asleep. The worn-out woman has no patience for these men and their obvious homoerotic affections and orders them both out of the house.

      They leave, taking a bus off to somewhere/nowhere once again where they might survive another day together, the sleepy Obinna taking another nap, his head nestled into Afame’s shoulder. The other riders are clearly not amused by this open display of affection, perhaps also accusing the sleepy head Nigerian as being simply lazy.

      Very little is said in this short film, yet it reveals the isolation and loneliness of these intelligent men stranded in a world as cold, empty, and derelict as the streets and buildings this masterful film depicts.

      There are no red ants (or fire ants) depicted in this Swiss-Georgian film, only a large black ant that Afame notices on Obinna’s chest. But still these men are bitten, again and again, by the small-minded individuals they come against every day of their lives. It’s enough to make you cry, even while Obinna refuses to give into the tears he deserves to shed.

 

Los Angeles, January 12, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (January 2025).

Sven Spur | Eden / 2020

count me out

by Douglas Messerli

 

Sven Spur (screenwriter and director) Eden / 2020 [17 minutes]

 

Let me begin this essay by repeating what anyone who has made their way through the pages of the several volumes of My Queer Cinema will already know: I have nothing against pornography or with sexual cruising, and I have embraced both, porn as a viewer and sexual cruising (in my youth) as an active participant.

     Yet, this short film which borders on porn and concerns sexual cruising leaves me rather bored. Perhaps it is because the actors—given rather meaningless character names that matter little in the “story”—Wolf (Mustaf Ahmeti), Benny (Vincent van Driessche), Dirk Couvent (Philip), and Ludovic Harnais (Lu)—simply don’t attract me; they seem all at the edges of S&M, not my cup of tea. But it is also because the soft porn of this film (only one glimpse of a flaccid penis, no semen spewed) is not terribly sexually exciting. Even TV series have shown more sexually arousing images.

      Belgian director Sven Spur has his figures reveal a lot of butt and engages his actors in a great many anal fucks, but provides the viewer with very little in the way of sensual lust. If this is Eden, Adam was lucky to have escaped. Here it’s all mirrors and colors, red being the dominate one, perhaps suggesting, rather puritanically, that in Wolf’s endless sexual searches we are approaching hell.

     But even so, it’s all rather safe sex. Wolf wears a condom, as presumably do the others; and at one point he romps down the street in the rain with one of his meet-ups as if he were a young pup in love. Being a Wolf, however, he also howls.

     Perhaps the major reason this film leaves me cold is that it is simply boring. Wolf meets someone in the park for sex; he sits soaking in a spa pool waiting for Benny to swim over to him and encourage him into sex; he sits in a room of mirrors where he fucks Benny; he cleans out his butt in the bathtub; he has sex in a bedroom; and he ends up in a sling where he gets fucked by another. And that’s all there is. Nothing is made of these events, except perhaps a bit of jealousy by Benny as he watches his former partner get fucked, rather longingly and not as a voyeur.

     In so many gay films attractive men and cute boys have a much more active and sensual love life. Wolf, his ears and fingers stuffed with rings, seems on the hunt for something which he can’t quite reveal to us, even if he presumably finds what he’s seeking. Good for Wolf, but leave me out of this record of his acts. Well, in fact, the director already has.

 

Los Angeles, January 11, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (January 2025).

Máté Konkol | Budapest, zárt város (Budapest, Closed City) / 2021

controlling desire

by Douglas Messerli

 

Máté Konkol (screenwriter and director) Budapest, zárt város (Budapest, Closed City) / 2021 [13 minutes]

 

Hungarian director Máté Konkol’s 2021 film Budapest, Closed City is a very sad testament to a once great and vital European capital city that, at least from the viewpoint of our young teen tourguide Péter (Péter Dániel Katona) is quickly shutting down, all of its major cafes and bars having been closed by the government of Viktor Orbán, whose racist, homophobic, and generally rightist policies have turned Hungary into a country that the European Union no longer perceives as a democracy.

   Péter is touring around his British friend Adam (Adam Wadsworth) explaining how even old neighborhoods such as the one in which he was born, have been torn down. Clubs have disappeared.

     Eventually the native Budapest boy takes his friend into what looks like a highly graffitied toilet, so terrible that even Adam comments that this must be the filthiest bathroom in all of Budapest. Yet actually it poses as the entrance to a semi-hidden club where singers perform and many of Péter’s friends can be found. You can perceive that he is more than a little proud to be able to introduce Adam around, all of them presuming that he might be his boyfriend, but no one willing to speculate. This is not a world in which homosexuality is accepted, and being openly gay or even engaging in homosexual behavior can end in violence or imprisonment.

     The two boys drink, and Adam, who doesn’t smoke pot, even asks for Péter to roll him a joint. It’s clear that Adam is enchanted and basically in love with his guide, now nearly desperate to engage in sex.

    But even here Péter points to a woman standing in the corner who has been following him, even though he’s cut her from his intercut connections. Her intentions seem to be sexual, but it is almost as if she might be a kind of spy trailing his whereabouts and behavior.

     As the two boys finally leave the underground club, and sit together in what seems to be a subway passage or an underground walkway. Adam suggests that Péter should leave the city, to which Péter agrees, but it’s clear he won’t, his days spent in hard work, his nights in partying. Adam leans forward to kiss him, at first seeming to be accepted; but when Adam gets more serious Péter backs off, insisting “I can’t.”

     Adam gets up and walks off. Péter can only curse the impossibly frustrating situation. Soon after, the older woman from the bar comes up behind him, carrying a bottle of wine. Péter gets up and walks home with her for sex, clearly the only way to relieve his sexual duress. The next morning, he gets up early to leave for work. The film does not even bother to show us the two in bed, the sex, if it occurred, having been utterly meaningless. Péter is a gay boy who in Budapest apparently cannot even live a closeted life.

      It’s not only the city’s nightlife that the Orbán has basically closed down, but its citizens.

 

Los Angeles, January 11, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (January 2025).

Pauline Noel | The Pianist / 2024

the story of love

by Douglas Messerli

 

Jessica Limbardo (screenplay), Pauline Noel (director) The Pianist / 2024 [8 minutes]

 

Jackson, a composer/pianist has evidently been commissioned to write a new piece, but is obviously in the midst of a creative block. He has been drinking for days apparently (bottles of wine and scotch litter his otherwise immaculate apartment) without having been able produce anything of value.

     His lover Teddy rises and attempts to lure him back to the piano to compose, reminding him that Jackson once told him that songs are just like stories. “So tell the story,” he insists. “Tell me the story for love.”

     As he begins to play, the film shifts to the now stereotypical street scene (this in New York) with in love boys running every which way and bumping into each other in the middle of the street, only to rush off again hand-in-hand.

     But once more, as Jackson describes it, he gets “stuck in the middle.” Is this a reflection of their own relationship we have to ask? “I don’t want it to end” moans the pianist.

     Once more Teddy reassures him that he can do it. “I’ve seen you do it a thousand times.”

     The street scene returns, but Jackson blocks it out. He can’t go on.

    This was about half way through this little cliched film, and I too was about to storm off given the amateur theatrics and inane plot of Pauline Noel’s short film. Surely, as a writer, I can no longer talk about such simple-minded works!

      But finally the friction between the two actors produced a tiny bit of heat, Teddy facing off with his lover: “I know what this is. It’s just you and me here babe, where you gonna hide?”

      But then, the back story made it even worse. Apparently, Jackson’s still miffed because Teddy failed to appear for one of his concerts. There he was waiting to go on, and no sight of Teddy. But, Teddy tells him, life is cruel. Get over it, you’re a pianist, that’s what you do!

      I almost quit this little movie once again to switch on the 1940 film Knut Rocke to hear Pat O’Brien shout out, “The last thing George said to me, 'Rock,' he said, 'sometime when the team is up against it and the breaks are beating the boys, tell them to go out there with all they've got and win just one for the Gipper”—which given my disinterest in football and football movies should give you a clue of my state of mind.

      Back at our little movie, of course, Jackson finds a way through music to bring him back to love. What we discover, as well, is that the reason Teddy didn’t show up for the concert is that he evidently stepped off a New York street corner and was hit and killed by a passing car, and the concert, we discover, is a memorial for William Theodore Davis, the pianist’s beloved “Teddy.”

     Images of An Affair to Remember blur out the dance of Jackson and his dead Ted, tears presumed to have welled up in your eyes. The end.

     I recognize that this well-meaning film might have even been based on a real-life event, so I truly don’t wish to make fun of an amateur indie. And I’m a sentimental being. But….well, there’s a limit. This is most definitely what the males of Nora Ephron’s Sleepless in Seattle would describe as a “chick flick.”

    

Los Angeles, January 11, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (January 2025).