Fabíen Cavacas and Camille Melvill | Passer les Champs (Beyond the Fields) / 2015

howling with closed mouths

by Douglas Messerli

 

Fabíen Cavacas and Camille Melvill (screenwriters and directors) Passer les Champs (Beyond the Fields) / 2015 [30 minutes]

 

After writing the essay about the film On the Same Team (2014) I came upon another film just a few days later by French directors Fabíen Cavacas and Camille Melvill that was so similar in its thematic—particularly since that film, Passer les Champs (Beyond the Fields), also related to the consideration of gay brothers and gay sports that I had also just been exploring—that I was almost startled by its relationship to the piece I had just titled “Beyond the Hills.”

     This work also contained a young man involved in amateur sports, in this case soccer, who had stayed at home apparently out of a sense of stasis. He seems unmotivated even to pursue the job his parents have hinted that a friend is willing to offer him, refusing to even make the call. Indeed, except for his younger brother Théo (Pierre Prieur), Lucas (Maxime Taffanel) seems to shun women and have surly relationships with his parents and his soccer friends, the latter for whom he may soon serve as their coach.

      Like Emanuel of the other film, Lucas seems trapped in the community in which he lives, and bitter about that fact. But at least the Argentinian rugby player in On the Same Team has a local friend with whom he engages in sex. Lucas, who appears to be heterosexual has no apparent girlfriend and even his seeming soccer buddy Nathan (Théo Pittaluga) irritates him, particularly when he shows interest in befriending Théo.

      We perceive this not as a form of jealousy, but a fear of sorts that his brother may be hurt through their friendship, since Théo is openly gay—only to his brother. And Lucas evidently has assumed the role of his protector, despite the fact that in the small farming village in which they reside there seems to be no one to protect him from. As Théo confirms, there are no “faggots” in his class, which explains why he has been chatting online with an older man, who he wants to meet when the man comes to town on business, a meet-up which Lucas warns him may be dangerous.

      Thus, it appears that Cavacas and Melvill have set us up for a situation very similar to the one I wrote about in the Norwegian film of 2003, Precious Moments, about a young gay man whose having sex with an older man ends in his partner’s arrest—although the sexual age of consent in France is 15, and even if Théo, since he’s still attending school, is clearly not the age he claims to be when he meets the stranger, 20, he is certainly of legal age.

      But before that, this far too subtle tale—almost as if afraid, like its characters, to tell its own story—seemingly first takes us down a kind of dead end, which perhaps clarifies both Théo’s and Lucas’ long silences and apparent frustrations.

      The morning after the brothers’ discussion Théo drops his Lucas off at soccer practice, meeting briefly with Nathan, to whom the boy has loaned a book to read, Allen Ginsberg’s Howl. Nathan, in turn, invites Théo to a team party they are planning for that evening, telling the younger boy that he would particularly like to have him attend.

      It is after that meeting, moreover, when Lucas becomes even more incensed about Nathan and, by the end of the day, decides against even attending the party which his teammates are throwing.

Théo does attend, clearly out of place since most of the players are entertaining their girlfriends, including Nathan. But near the end of the evening, sitting alone, Théo is joined by Nathan, telling his girlfriend that he’ll catch up with her. There is no real conversation between the two, but when Théo asks Nathan if he wants to go somewhere, Nathan stating that he can’t—beholden as he is to her girlfriend of 3 months—we can only presume that something sexual has been going on between the two, something in the nature of Emanuel and Tano in Vilaró Nadal’s film.

      The only alternative for Théo is to meet up with the stranger in the hotel.

     From the moment the boy encounters and we witness the older man on the phone with his wife, we recognize that this is not a good situation, particularly when the elder orders Théo to strip and not “play around” like a kid. We never discover precisely what does happen. The directors only show us a sense of rising tension: Lucas at home in bed—reading, incidentally, Ginsberg’s Howl—obviously worrying about the time and the whereabouts of his brother. And, finally, a call from Théo, who having motorbiked to the hotel, is now asking for Lucas to pick him up.

     What has happened in that room is never explained; but we do observe a cut on Théo’s lip and can only suspect that the boy got cold feet and attempted to leave, infuriating the older man. The boy refuses to say anything about the event. Théo simply asks can they stop somewhere before they return home. There is no other place, we realize, in this village. They stop at the soccer field, where one drunken survivor of the party lies like a dead man in the middle of the open space.

     The brothers, sitting together, stare out over the fields around them, Théo suddenly blurting out a question that might have been in our minds as well: “Why don’t we leave?”

 

      Lucas’ answer is as enigmatic as his personality has been throughout the entire film: “You’ll leave. But I’m staying here.”

      In coming out to his brother and in his obvious search for sexual gratification the younger brother has already made clear that he is no longer able to survive in the emptiness of the small village in which the brothers live. But Lucas, apparently, still unable to define his own sexuality or to even comprehend his entry into adulthood, seems permanently infantilized like so many young males who settle down with the first woman they meet and hang on by a thread through the rest of their lives without waking up to who they are or might have been. Like Emanuel’s sister, Lucas will be defined by staying behind.

 

Los Angeles, June 27, 2021

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

     

  

Alain Guiraudie | Du soleil pour les gueux (Sunshine for the Scoundrels) / aka Sunshine for the Poor) / 2001

off the track

by Douglas Messerli

 

Alain Guiraudie (screenwriter and director) Du soleil pour les gueux (Sunshine for the Scoundrels / aka Sunshine for the Poor) / 2001 [55 minutes]

 

As opposed to the multiple characters of Guiraudie’s That Old Dream that Moves of the same year, Sunshine for the Scoundrels has only four characters, although numerous others are mentioned. And the work, with it Beckettian-like tropes, might almost be perfect for stage were it not that the central action occurs on the vast open spaces of France’s Causses plateau.

     Yet there this is most definitely the territory of what used to be described as the theater of the absurd. None of these characters remain in stasis for more than a few moments, and all are seeking something almost unachievable or, if nothing else, something that cannot truly satisfy their true desires. In fact, there is something incredibly sad about each of Guiraudie’s figures in this work despite the fact that the work is basically a comedy or perhaps even a farce. Each of them is provided with a first and last name which is generally how they speak of and address one another as if no one in this world can truly come to know anyone else by their first name only.

    Nathalie Sanchez (Isabelle Giradet) has been a hair stylist back home, but has grown fed up with the daily routine and low wages, and since she has long been told by her mother that as punishment she will send her to the Central Massif, Nathalie determines finally, after she is able to get up enough nerve, to travel there and visit the famous Ounaye shepherds. Walking down a long stony path, she suddenly comes across a running figure moving at an odd angle from her straight direction. It is the bandit Carol Izba (Michel Turquin), perhaps the unsung hero of this looney saga, running in an attempt to escape the bounty hunter Pool Oxanosas Daï, sent to bring him back to the local grandee because he has just killed a wealthy female landowner while stealing her money.

      You might describe Carol Izba was the local Robin Hood who steals from the wealthy landowners partially in an attempt to protect the poor, downtrodden shepherds who are forced to work the land for their entire lives, with the own children taken away from them, just as they have been sold into bondage by their own parents. And his maddening bifurcations of the flat plains with Pool Oxanosas Daï hot on his tracks might be said to constitute the most comical elements of this beautiful fable, as well as a sublimated sexual text since it is also clear that the chased and chaser are wed to one another by their beauty, youth, fitness, and their inevitable longing and regret to meet up.

     In fact, later, when Pool Oxanosas Daï almost catches up with his prey, lassoing him without being able to bring him to a full halt, he finally looses the rope and falls, panting and out-of-breath to the ground, his well-built body spread full out, with Carol Izba daring to return and come closer just to check up to see if he is still breathing but also to fill his eyes with the naked-chested handsome male hot on his tail. It is the most homoerotic moment in this film which otherwise is basically heterosexual. And we realize in that moment that the two young men are on the run for more than just their lives, but for their sexual desire and freedom from one another.

  Carol Izba, meanwhile, tells the confused Nathalie Sanchez that if she wants to find an Ounaye shepherd she will have to move off the straight and narrow path and cross the plains at an angle, perhaps the lesson we learn again and again throughout this tale.

      She does so, and almost immediately runs into an old man, evidently a gay shepherd (so Criterion, Mubi, and other sources tell me, something I missed in my viewing of the film, which will amuse all of those who think I simply read queer into these movies). The elderly Djema Gaouda Lon (performed by the director himself) has lost his flock, and now with Nathalie at his side goes in search of them, the two offering along the way varying views of life—the young Nathalie Sanchez predictably arguing against the traditional ways and the acceptance of subjugated oppression, while Djema Gaouda Lon positing there is no way out except death—in a manner of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s The Hawks and Sparrows (1966). In their long discussions we learn of both their pasts and the fact that the lovely sheep they seek are not all very nice, since they often bite and spread a disease which kills the shepherds.

     The conversations between young and old, however, are as always fascinating, the one arguing for change, the other that such altercations of order are impossible and meaningless; it is difficult to know which of them is wiser. But Nathalie Sanchez does ultimately seduce the lonely old shepherd who enjoys the sex, even if the young girl is a bit disappointed—not with the sexual act

but the fact that it will result in nothing further. She, who has already become determined to stay on the Central Massif has no future there. The questions is, where might she go from here?

      The same question haunts Carol Izba, who keeps attempting to escape the Causses to the city of Montpellier. But he cannot escape his homeland any more than can Djema Gaouda Lon, and he keeps rushing back, running in unpredictable directions and angles through the landscape, determined to remain and help the shepherds, just as Pool Oxanosas Daï is determined to capture him and take him to the grandee who surely hang him for his crime.

      In fact, he eventually spots Djema Gaouda Lon’s flock and tells him where they are. But when Nathalie Sanchez and the old shepherd finally reach the sheep (which we never see), she rushes forward to pet them, everyone warning her to stay away since they bite. She is finally found a room for the night, and everyone seems settled down for another day, with perhaps Nathalie Sanchez ending up with the hero Carol Izba in her bed, but whose life will surely be a dizzying pattern of zigzags, both physically and sexually, if she dare trail along after him. The hound will always be after the hare since they are inevitably and one might say naturally attached to one another. But perhaps even that life, after all, is better than being a boring hairdresser without any money left at the end of the month to even take in a movie.

     Sunshine for the Scoundrels is perhaps one of the most joyfully intriguing films I have seen in a long while, and with Guiraudie’s That Old Dream that Moves of the same year demonstrates that director’s genius.

     You might describe these two films as bookends, the one about a gay male entering and utterly disturbing a totally heterosexual space, while in the second a heterosexual female intruding upon a primarily male world, both of whom shake-up and alter the mindsets of those involved.

 

Los Angeles, March 11, 1025

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (March 2025).

Lee Matthews | Chasin' / 2021

taking a leap

by Douglas Messerli

 

Ben Chuah (screenplay), Lee Matthews (director) Chasin' / 2021 [8 minutes]

 

Not much seems to happen in Australian director Lee Matthews short film Chasin’ from 2021. Two men meet up after midnight for sex in a park, one a slightly older individual, a black man named Joseph (Dushan Philips) who fears he might have been stood up by a later arriving younger white boy, Spencer (Jay De Leon). And even when he does arrive, Spencer seems disinterested in even introducing himself, more focused of finishing his cellphone game of Pokemon.

     Yet he does introduce himself and seems amiable enough, and certainly cuter perhaps than the still good-looking Joseph might have expected. Joseph suggests they go into the woods for sex, but Spencer immediately points to what appears to be the park recreation center, entirely closed off with a quite high fence. But Spencer suggests it’s no problem and quickly begins scaling the fence.

       Joseph has a far more difficult time, but eventually makes it over, coming down hard on his leg, however, as he falls into the inside tennis court. Spencer comes to rescue him, joking about his friend’s older age while supporting him as they limp over to a bench.

      Spencer insists he has a special potion to help the pain, and pulls out a bottle of what looks like an orange drink. Joseph is skeptical and defers, but Spencer insists he drinks. He does so only to discover that it’s mostly vodka.

      We see the two soon after their sex, which has apparently been quite fulfilling for both of them. They continue to talk, Spencer suggesting that he’s in a relationship, but with an older person—perhaps even older than Joseph—which he doesn’t particularly want given that all of the experiences he shares are 4th or 5th-time for the person he’s with, while he wants them all to be first time encounters with the world.

      As Spencer takes another phone message, Joseph suggests it’s time for him to go, after 2:00, and besides he’s hungry—particularly after his first experience of jumping a fence for sex. His phone battery seems to be running out, and Spencer, pulling another surprise out of his backpack offers him his own battery charger which he tells him to keep “until the next time,” clearly a statement that comes as somewhat of a surprise to Joseph. 

      Obviously, despite the age differences and amusements they both shared at the expense of the others, something between them has amazingly “clicked.” Spencer even suggests he share a late night dinner. But then, as Joseph looks back toward the exit, there’s still that fence to climb once again.

      This short film, in the end, offers more than it might at first seem, a budding relationship that has occurred somewhat obliquely, some of it offstage, but even what we’ve seen cloaked in the humorous generational differences that both have found in one another. Spencer seems always to be a kind of wild card as Joseph patiently awaits to see what’s dealt, as if he were “chasin’” the constant shifts of mood and expression of this young man. 

 

Los Angeles, October 13, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (October 2022).

 

A. J. Mattioli | Night Disclosure / 2021

playing games

by Douglas Messerli

 

Hamish Downie (screenplay), A. J. Mattioli (director) Night Disclosure / 2021 [13 minutes]

 

Marc (José D. Álvarez) and his boss Tom (Sean Patrick Murtagh) arrive back to the bosses flat late one evening after making a big real estate deal, Tom expressing his great admiration for what Marc has helped to accomplish, yet another sale to a wealthy woman who has been buying up properties for her husband as if she were attempting to control the Monopoly board.

    But I’ll stop with the moment-to-moment account of the plot there. Mattioli’s short film is a frail attempt to discuss issues of gay relationships, monogamy, and the games gays play that seems so stagey and unbelievable that by the time this couple head off to bed you’ve become completely disinterested in their relationship.

     Basically, Marc and Tom, apparently a married couple spend much of their life role-playing, pretending to be real estate brokers, to flirt with the boss, and to reveal breaks in their relationship in order to protect themselves from the possibility of the real events. They’re also into some serious S & M strangulation fucks.

     Downie’s screenplay has Marc beginning to flirt with the blue-and-true boss, who rejects his come-ons. The one thing Tom has promised in his marriage vows, he insists, is to love and cherish the man he married. Despite Marc’s insistence that he and his husband have an open relationship, Tom is not impressed; it’s not for him. That doesn’t stop Marc from behaving like the worm in Eve’s apple, boring into the possibility that despite Tom’s loyalty perhaps his lover has not maintained the same sense of integrity.

     When Tom insists on his trust of his companion, Marc shows him pictures of himself and his lover together, finally revealing that they have been having an affair for years. Devastated, Tom dives in for a brutal fucking and choking of Marc before the two finally trot upstairs where we realize they are married to one another as they get into bed and have a good bout of “normal” sex.

      Frankly, given the questions they keep asking of themselves, I wouldn’t trust either of them. It appears that their game-playing may be the only way they can keep their relationship together and keep the fears of cheating from consuming them. By playing out their fears, they apparently are able to resist their actualization. I certainly wouldn’t trust them to sell me a house; but then, it becomes apparent, they’re not really real estate agents either.

     Finally, one has to ask, who are they? How did these two come together? Did they find each other through their role-playing, and if they are such clever gamesters how can they possibly imagine that they are not constantly lying to the other? Perhaps it comes down to the fact that we simply don’t believe this pair is truly a couple.

      As the reviewer for Film Carnage (listed simply as Rebecca) has noted: “Unfortunately, there isn’t much chemistry to be found between these two actors, the biggest problem is that the performances come across as wooden or as though they’re trying too hard. Álvarez surprisingly feels like he’s playing into stereotypes, it’s disappointing to see from a queer actor who you’d imagine would be keenly aware of avoiding such pitfalls but even his movements feel exaggerated in a cliched manner. Murtagh on the other hand plays things overly straight-laced, adding a touch of pretention. These difficulties are a key factor in hindering the film from building any tangible atmosphere or energy.”

      I’d argue that the film’s lethargy results from its idea-laden script. Any couple who spend so many hours talking about faithfulness and monogamy suggests just how very fearful they see those restrictions. The real point, is that they are restrictions that destroy, as in many a heterosexual marriage, many a relationship.  

 

Los Angeles, March 11, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (March 2025).

Marco Sandeman | Delta / 2014

imprisonment

by Douglas Messerli

 

Marco Sandeman (screenwriter and director) Delta / 2014 [10 minutes]

 

At the very beginning of Danish director Marco Sandeman’s short film Delta, we watch Julie (Rosalinde Mynster) returning home to the isolated house where father Nicolas (Peder Holm Johansen) now lives with his young male lover, Christian (Mads Reuther). Her father’s sudden announcement of his homosexuality obviously is what has led to her parents’ divorce and the decampment of Julie, her sister, and mother to England, where they now live.

    Even as she approaches the house, we see the young Christian go storming off like a son having just a row with his father.

     Nicolas is absolutely delighted, he claims, with Julie’s visit and when Christian returns, apologetic, he quickly brings out the champagne so that they can celebrate and his daughter might have a chance to meet his new young lover, whom we discover he has met through an escort service or Grindr.

     But Christian quickly takes over the conversation, particularly as Nicolas scurries around attempting to gather up some celebratory dinner provisions. And it soon becomes apparent that despite Nicolas’ insistence that he has never been happier and that he and Christian get along wonderfully (despite the occasional argument, he admits), that the young man feels terribly isolated in the Delta home. Apparently, Nicolas will not give him enough money that he might even buy a ticket to return to Copenhagen for a visit. Or, for that matter, even to purchase a pack of cigarettes. And gradually it becomes obvious that Nicolas is terrified of losing the unhappy young man, and, in a sense, has imprisoned him in their relationship.

     Julie has apparently returned home to share some news with her father, one source describes it as a personal incident (we suspect it might have been a rape), but she is never able to share that information given that her father is himself so caught up in an emotional stew over possibly being abandoned by his beautiful young lover.

      We can only guess that this kind of self-centeredness was behind his being previously unable to share the fact with Julie’s mother and his family that he was, in fact, a gay man, himself imprisoned in a marriage. Although he professes his love of his daughter, his thoughts are all about himself and his young lover, even after she explains that she has something important to tell him.

      This small piece shows us in 10 short minutes almost everything we need to know about how Nicolas goes about destroying the lives of those around him, seeking love only for his own needs.

 

Los Angeles, March 10, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (March 2025).

Isaac Winkler | Next to You / 2017 [music video]

gay ballad of lost love

by Douglas Messerli

 

Eli Lieb (songwriter and performer), Isaac Winkler (director) Next to You / 2017 [3 minutes] [music video]

 

I've said this all previously, but it won't hurt to express it again. Over the past few years, as I've mentioned in an earlier essay of the songs of Eli Lieb in 2013, we finally have a handful of major openly male gay popular singers and rappers such as Troye Sivan, Lil ‘Nas X, John Duff, Eli Lieb, the boyband Echo V, country-western singer Chris Housman, as well as others like Jesse Pepe and the Thumpasaurus band who often perform what appear to be gay songs, despite not openly expressing their sexuality.

       Of course, there is also Elton John and in the past Freddie Mercury; and David Bowie and Mick Jagger were known to or at least said to have had queer sex. And there was always Little Richard and Johnny Mathias. And several others. But the older musicians did not sing out ballads particularly about being gay the way Sivan, Lil ‘Nas X, Lieb, Echo V, and Pepe do today.*

    Iowa-born Lieb’s “Next to You” of 2017 is a perfect example of the new openly gay sensibility Although the song’s lyrics say nothing particularly about queer love, the video, directed by Isaac Winkler, makes it quite clear that the sad ballad of lies and a break-up in process is addressed to another man through the use of a backscrim film that shows the Lieb who stands singing in distress lying next to a handsome long-haired fellow, the focus of his sad pleas for the other to remain.

      Here are introductory lyrics and major refrain:

 

2am Friday night your picture on the bedside

Where do you run when you want to hide

Gave you everything my leather coat my beating heart

Where did they go

I'm reaching out but my hands are tied

You don't even say goodbye when I'm lying right next to you

I could take a million lies if I'm lying right next to you

and you're all I need oh, oh

I just want to live this lie lying right next to you

You've got me down so I'm getting high…

 

You don't even say goodbye when I'm lying right next to you

I could take a million lies if I'm lying right next to you

and you're all I need oh, oh

I just want to live this lie lying right next to you

 

*All through my youth I heard male singers warble out ballads about heterosexual love, but I always imagined some of their lyrics being addressed to another male. Now young people can know that at least some of the songs they hear on radio or, particularly those they watch on the internet are being sung to another male lover. It’s not enough to know that Freddie Mercury is gay while singing the vague referents to Bohemian Rhapsody—although Australian writer Gareth Hill has made a very good case, I’d argue, that Mercury’s song is a coded message about coming out and his realization that he had just killed a man, his old heterosexual self, fearful of his religious mother’s pain and wrath. And Little Richard’s “Tutti Frutti” was far more obvious, in Italian basically meaning, “everyone’s a fruit,” and its original lyrics making it clear it was about anal sex:

 

Tutti Frutti, good booty

If it don't fit, don't force it

You can grease it, make it easy

 

Replaced by the record producers with: “Tutti Frutti, aw rooty.”

 

Los Angeles, March 9, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (March 2025).

Stéphane Marti | Ladyman / 1976

dancing for the sultan

by Douglas Messerli

 

Stéphane Marti (director) Ladyman / 1976

 

For French director Stéphane Marti the body is not worshipped only for its physical beauty but for what it evokes through how it covers and hides itself and how through its motions it entices us to embrace everything we can never know about it within.

      Marti arguably perceives that body at its best is exotic, androgynous, constantly shifting, and unapproachable. For him, it appears, the other is best kept at arm’s-length while simultaneously attempting to lure the other closer to it. At least that is how we observe what might almost be said to be the evocative dance of the seven veils that his long-time subject, Aloual, performs before his cinematic surrogate to the music of Lou Reed in the 1976 film Ladyman.

 

  As his often verbally impenetrable publicity characterizes his cinematic concerns: “Marti works around issues of the body, the sacred, of gender identity disorder and strategies of desire.” I wouldn’t exactly want to label being confused or interested in different and competing genders within oneself a “disorder,” but I think the fact that Aloual clearly is interested in alternately robing himself—a bit like he was performing a private fashion show for his friend (Philippe Chazal)—in various feminine and male attire is clearly fascinating.

 

     We gather through Marti’s presentation of Aloual—eyes glamorously painted somewhat like an Indian devi, as he dances, poses in his red shorts and on occasion (apparently invoking images of the past) stands completely nude in between changing outfits— imploring the “cornered” other male to take him into his arms and secret confidences, that he would like to be appreciated as a beloved object—all to no avail,  The brooding dark French male keeps rejecting Aloual’s open hand and attempts to embrace him.

 

    Evidently, it is dance itself that pleases Chazal’s character more than any consumption or obvious acceptance. Aloual must depend upon his memory of past embracement or imagine wooing the viewers of the film. Evidently, if this episode of one thousand and one attempts to enchant the sultan, any attempt to grasp the constantly moving exhibitionist by the voyeur would mean stasis, the body contained and controlled instead of merely worshipped.

 

Los Angeles, August 15, 2021

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (August 2021).