what clara said
by Douglas Messerli
Paul Sloss (screenplay), Ben Hull
(director) Out! / 2020 [10 minutes]
Out! Begins in medias res with a
furious elderly woman, a mother whose son in his early-to-mid
20s sits at the other end of the
table, who might during the first few moments of this film remind one of boy’s
parents in Zac Goold’s film Out of the same year since no one but she
will have the opportunity to speak.
Indeed, the first words of this film come from her as a shrill command,
“Out!” as if she were already reacting to what her son may wish to tell her. In
fact, it is only the dog who is attempting to squeeze through the dining room
door, but it might as well be a command to her son, who looks askance at her
bellow as if it might have been directed at him.
The two of them apparently are still waiting in an unnamed guest, who the mother claims is always late and wouldn’t be surprised if she didn’t show up; whatever, she need’s “a good talking to,” evidently for her comments earlier in the day or a day previous. But his aunt Caroline, his cousin Clara’s mother of whom they have been speaking, is “too weak,” although “it would be a totally different story if [his] idiot Uncle Ian weren’t back inside”—presumably in jail or prison. The complaining woman (the wonderful actor Pauline McLynn) is this young man’s (Paul Sloss) mother, who decides to wait no longer as she throws out “mash” and turnips aplenty upon his plate, cursing the situation moment by moment while simultaneously insisting she no longer wants to talk about it.
He keeps trying to interrupt with a calm, “mum,” but she is having
nothing of it, suggesting if “she turns up later she can have some salad; it
won’t do her any harm.”
What the son does manage to slip in his response to Clara’s
words—evidently in reaction to his sister Rita’s comment about Clara’s twin
boys which his mother sees as a joke—is that he saw it as not being very funny.
But even here, as I slightly contort the narrative to make sense, I’m moving
slightly ahead of the story. The first time through this film everything that
the mother and son say is a blur, with no context in which the comprehend her
angry railings. And it is our very gradual series of revelations about what is
truly being said that makes this film so lovely to watch.
If what Rita said was a “joke,” what Clara responded, according to the
mother was “disgusting,” “unforgiveable!” She sits, the two of them in moment
of quietude as neither of them shows the slightest interest for the piles of
food she has thrown upon their plates.
Out of the quiet the son begins to speak, suggesting that if Rita is
coming—we realize now that they are expecting either or both of the named
women—there’s something he needs to say. But his mother clearly doesn’t want to
hear it, finally suggesting that if he insists he should rush upstairs to get
her pills since she’s “a martyr to my reflux.”
That line alone, along with her other colloquialisms, makes us feel
delight even in her outraged presence. What has so angered her? And what does
the son so desperately want to tell her before Rita arrives?
When the son finally suggests that she might not like what he has to
say, she responds “I didn’t like curry until I tried it.” “No,” continues her
son Ben, “I mean you might like what I have to say.”
He now reveals, despite her not wanting to hear, that what Clara has
said was because of him, that “she said it to defend me.” Although we’re
getting closer, we are made now more curious about what might it have been that
Clara said, defending Ben and offending his mother simultaneously, although we
now suspect we know the words her son might be about to speak.
As his mother continues in response, amazed that he has come to such a
conclusion since nothing he could possibly be connected with “that girl’s potty
mouth,” Ben finally mutters the words: “I’m gay,” as his elder continues her
torrent of anger against Clara.
Frustrated by her continuance, he repeats, “Mum, I said I’m gay,” she
responding, “Is that a yes or no to carrots….” He repeats, “Did you hear,” she
finally answering, “Yes, I did.”
“I’m gay!”
Her final response: “And?”
Something has happened here that neither the character nor the audience
has expected. But that clearly is the nature of slightly absurdist work, where
language performs in ways other than we might have expected?
The shock of her words now silences him again. What recesses of love do
they come from. But there they are, an open invitation for him to love who he
wants.
But surprises continue, as she asks why he said gay and not bisexual, he
answering “because I only like boys.” Like many a mother in her situation, she
attempts to suggest that he may still be experimenting, which he again denies.
But full of family lore, she reveals, “Your Ian experimented when he was
younger.” She concludes that he should simply not shut off any of his options.
Once more he repeats that he is “just gay…straight gay. Okay not
straight gay, gay gay.” She finally has him speaking almost baby talk.
Her next words, like so many mothers in these films, are that she “knew
already.” When he responds that she never said anything, she counters, “neither
did you.”
But now the next round begins as he reminds her that she “hates gay
people.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she surprises him (and us) once more. After all,
she listens on the radio to Graham Norton and she has an Elton John CD in the
car, “And they don’t come much gayer than that!”
He reiterates, however, that she has just literally blacklisted Clara,
cut her from the family for defending her own kids against Rita’s homophobic
attack.
The mother explains, finally what it is that Rita, his sister, has said
is that the matching sailor suits with which Clara dressed her 4-year-old twins
made the boys seem like a pair of queers. “And they did.” Well, we have that
settled finally. Obviously, we still don’t know quite where Ben stands in all
of this strange linguistic salad of his mother’s imagination. For when he still
protests, she returns to her theme, “What have I said about not wanting to talk
about all of this?”
Suddenly she’s on the way to the kitchen for “sprouts.”
He calls out to her, “I’m sorry I’ve been lying to you all these years.”
And when she returns to the room with a bowl of sprouts, adds, “And I’m
sorry that you thought I hate gays.”
Her very next statement, however, seems to turn back on his fears, “But
I’m glad you don’t dress like a queer though.” Touché one wants to shout!
But the next moment, she sits down next to him, reciting one the most
amazing monologues of motherly love that I’ve heard in a long while:
“Wear what you like. It’s just that
as a parent you have ideas for your children, hopes, aspirations. Watching them
grow every day. Keeping them safe. Helping them to develop. You want to
celebrate their individuality, shout it to the rooftops. But you also know that
the best way to keep them safe is to stick as closely as possible to the status
quo. I knew you were gay. But I hoped that you weren’t. And it’s not because it
makes you any less a person. Or any less my son. It’s just that it makes your
life more difficult. And I would never wish a difficult life on my beautiful
son.”
Finally, one sits in wonderment of this contrary woman, this mass of
contradictions that make anyone around her fear for their sanity.
Sloss and Hull don’t suggest this in their work, but I might argue that
what she has expressed, the sentiments of so many well-meaning parents, are
what is the cause of so much of any culture’s homophobic response, the reason
why children still find it so very difficult to express what they are naturally
born to: the world is so terrified of difficulty, as if an “easy” life
might be the preferable one. But in fact, it appears to me that the opposite is
true. It is the medium difficulties which make for a full life not the
simplicities or the gentle flow of things. To move through any world without a
wind at one’s face might as well be to sit down on a couch and rot. Meaning is
in natural confrontation with simple and past truths. The status quo destroys
all development and new thought. However, I should clear I’m not arguing for
authoritarian parenting or purposeful challenges that some parents force their
children to undergo. The world at large will offer enough without parental
interference.
The mother of Hull’s movie hugs her son. But releasing him soon after,
she fills in the missing matter: “But to be clear, Clara telling your sister to
take her head out of her minge* had nothing whatsoever to do with defending
you.”
This film is surely one of the most amazingly difficult, exasperating,
yet loving “coming out” films ever made.
*For those of you not in the know,
“minge” is the British street equivalent for the word “cunt,” the latter of which
coincidentally was the last word of the other film I wrote about this morning,
the 2015 short, Surprise, directed by Leslie Bumgarner.
Los Angeles, August 16, 2022
Reprinted from World Cinema
Review (August 2022).
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