Ajay Duggal | Boyfriend / 2023

returning a saree

by Douglas Messerli

 

Ajay Duggal (screenwriter and director) Boyfriend / 2023 [22 minutes]

 

A man (Ayush Dubey) living in New Delhi has left behind a young woman, Shavani, in Agra to whom he had been engaged to marry. Suddenly her younger brother (Sachin Sharma) shows up at his New Delhi apartment to return the saree he has given her for the wedding ceremony.

     The young brother also explains that he has come to New Delhi for possible admission to the university, although he is uncertain of acceptance. But he also, on account of his family, is not only confused but upset by his future brother-in-law’s sudden disappearance, and the fact that he has left behind his beautiful, intelligent, and capable sister without explanation.

     The girl’s brother understandably does not feel comfortable in the apartment of a man who has shamed his family, even though the elder offers him potato paratha and suggests the boy rest before facing the metropolis and returning home, an offer the brother uneasily accepts.

     But before he can even take advantage of the other’s kindness, they receive cellphone messages that after a new outbreak of COVID in New Delhi, the government is closing down the city for 6 days, with severe police actions for anyone leaving their home for unnecessary purposes.

     The jilted bride’s brother immediately bolts, but soon returns, with nowhere else to go, when he discovers, having returned in tears, that in the streets the police are beating anyone who appears and that there is no longer any access out of New Delhi through bus, plane, or any other form of public transportation, not even autos or rickshaws.

     The would-be brother-in-law offers the country boy the use of his apartment and half his mattress, but the young stranger is more than uncomfortable sharing a bed, and finally the late-night elder leaves his bed for a chair at the table, insisting the young man use his bed.

     In a call from his parents the next day, the young man insists he is simply staying with a friend. And the apartment owner assures his own mother that he has enough food to wait out the week of lockdown.

     A few days later, the two have men have settled their contretemps, and again the young newcomer to the city, finally having adjusted to sharing a bed and now ready to return home, asks the other once again why he has abandoned his sister. The New Delhian finally called to task, admits that he is gay, that he likes boys.

    Momentarily, the young country boy is upset and astounded, but soon admits that he too has shared such feelings, and finally recounts the fact that he was highly aroused when the city boy visited their home, but attempted to quell his feelings since the stranger was soon to be his brother-in-law.

     He had always dreamed of having a relationship with the man who was to marry his sister, and now wonders whether he might not be his boyfriend, with the stipulation that after his education he will have to return home to be married, his parents being strict conservatives. But we suspect that after a few months or years in New Delhi he may change his mind with regard to his parents’ values.

    At first our recalcitrant “hero” appears to ignore the young man’s request, but soon softens, particularly as the outsider, preparing to leave, explains that it was his appearance upon the home scene who first led the boy to perceive that he was gay.

   The two finally kiss—one of the longest kisses I’ve observed in a short gay film—sealing their new relationship, all brought on strangely by the dread pandemic and the city-wide lockdown, and a visit, perversely enough, to return his sister’s wedding saree.

 

Los Angeles, July 30, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (July 2025).

Brian Tognotti | Just Ask Him / 2020

charting the territory

by Douglas Messerli

 

Brian Tognotti (screenwriter and director) Just Ask Him / 2020 [13 minutes]

 

As I wrote in my 2021 essay in My Gay Cinema 2000-2009, “Crossing the Divide,” even young people who have come to terms with their LGBTQ identities, have further difficulties in what might described as charting the territory. Which of those to whom they are attracted night be available to approach for sexual contact, how to even bring up the issue in order to determine their reciprocity?

      The young Andrew (Donovan Napoli) of Brian Tognotti’s 2020 13-minute film Just Ask Him is facing precisely this problem. In the small, rural school which he attends he finds himself attracted to a new student, a soccer jock Ricky (Río Padilla-Smith) who begins the film my asking Andrew if he’ll by some tickets to support the team, stunning the boy for even being approached by the tall beauty. He starts up an eager conversation in which he says all the wrong things but at least strikes up a beginning conversation, curious to what has led to this unlikely meeting.

     His friend Joelle (Elsie Arisa) argues that the jock is not at all interested in her gay friend, particularly given the alienating attitudes of the other students, one of whom even steals the posters inviting their peers to the school dance as they speak. She tells her friend fix his broken “gaydar” and forget any infatuation he might be germinating for Ricky.  “We are the toxic gay duo of Central Valley High,” she reminds him, “and I don’t want you getting kicked down by some shit-kicker jock!” They have already defined themselves and accepted their roles as outsiders.

      Yet what strikes me is that even in this rural Northern California town which Joelle describes as “Dicksville,” Andrew almost immediately contemplates the possibility of asking the affable jock to the school dance. We are most definitely in some post-post-Stonewall territory.

      Like all unconfident gay boys lusting after school jocks—I personally know the territory—Andrew checks his physique out in the mirror, unsuccessfully attempts a pushup, and sits in his room instead fantasizing a romantic encounter between himself and his new obsession, his hilarious, tough-talking union-labor arbitrating mother (Sherri Heller) entering his room at the very moment he has puckered lips up to a soccer ball. She knows that look, and it’s not the studying kind: “You’re sad because you’re scared and when you’re sad you go into outer space inside your head.” Believe me, she insists, I know how you feel: “when I first met an arbitrator I almost peed my myself.” She continues, “But the things that scare you now will make you laugh in ten years,” an old wives’ tale that she has evidently repeated many times.

     But then she’s known as “Ninja Warpath,” never backing down from a fight, and Andrew just has to admit he’s not like his mother. “You came out!” she argues, “that took balls, especially out here in sticks!” This mother urges her son to go after the jock; if nothing else, to “just ask him.”  “Go for it! If you like boys, fantastic. If you like girls...all right. Nobody’s perfect.” It’s time for June Cleaver, of the late 50s and early 60s Leave It to Beaver TV series, to retire her pearls.

       He meets up his hero on an unfair playing field, the soccer field where Ricky is practicing alone. After serving horrendously as the keeper for a short while as the soccer player kicks the ball around, past, and through him several times, Andrew finally gets up the nerve to ask him about the dance. “You mean the gay dance?” he gasps in seeming disbelief.

       Apparently, because it’s open to gay couples it’s been designated as such, which explains the interloper tearing the announcements away from the wall in the film’s early scene. “What made you you think....,” Ricky grabs Andrew, as the wimp cringes, ready for a beating, “.....How’d you know? Was it something I said? You caught me checking you out, didn’t you? I could care less what these hicks think,” he continues, as long as recruiters see him play.

      “So you’re in the closet?”

      The real reason he is ready to turn Andrew down, he admits, is that, even though he’s Latino, he can’t dance.

      Andrews suggests that they don’t have to dance. And he agrees to attend, not as Andrew fears at all ashamed to be seen with him. Recruiters? Well, a great soccer player from Bum-shit nowhere, is maybe not so attractive, but a great gay soccer play from the same place, well that’s worth noting.

      If Just Ask Him is far from a profound exploration of the gay experience, presenting its small tale almost as in a TV clip, in its mix of self-deprecation and daring-do attitude, it charts new territory. And at last, the jock will show up to the dance without a princess on his arm and a crown on his head.

 

Los Angeles June 2, 2021

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

Juan Pablo Gelvez Bustamante | El despertar (The Awakening) / 2020

nobody told me i was gay

by Douglas Messerli

 

Juan Pablo Gelvez Bustamante (screenwriter and director) El despertar (The Awakening) / 2020 [28 minutes]

 

Columbian director Juan Pablo Gelvez’ 2020 short covers well-trodden ground, focusing on a young man, Cristian (Wilmar Bernmúdez) who as a 17-year-old student has basically not even thought about his sexuality. He’s “amigos,” so he describes it, with a girl, Lorena (Camíla García), who seems far more mature and is apparently a couple of years older, treating the boy, perhaps even without is full awareness, as her personal property, clearly the man she’s picked out to marry or at least to be her boyfriend through her college years.

     Cristian seems quite popular and has a substantial group of friends who help establish a sense of the status quo among his peers. That is until a 19-year-old newcomer finally appears. Dilan (Camilo Cornejo) is a far more knowing individual who, after their class is cancelled, is invited to join Cristian and the others as they spend the afternoon and most of the evening celebrating at a local arcade and drinking. Despite the constant attentions of Lorena and another girl who’s hooked-up with Dilan find a deep rapport, at the movie house the new kid even moving his hand ever-so-slightly to rub against Cristian’s hand even though his girlfriend has long ago rested her head upon his shoulder.

     In short Cristian seems to be getting two messages that he doesn’t know what to make of: everyone around him sees him as obviously heterosexual while he finds himself increasingly drawn to Dilan.

     When the next day they plan for a group bicycle outing to which only the two boys show up, the relationship develops as, back in Dilan’s room where Cristian almost submits to his first male kiss, he rushes off with the usual fears and statements about it “being wrong.”

      But clearly for Cristian, after a painful day or two later, it has become a kind of mania, as he has attempted to escape from Lorena and find a way to talk to Dilan, without success.

      That evening, as the group gathers again in the bar, Lorena makes her most desperate move yet, engaging him in a long kiss during which he imagines as a kiss with Dilan. When the boy finally shows up a moment later, Cristian bolts from the group to head to the bathroom and the usual “wash up,” which has now unfortunately become the standard trope of demonstrating the sexual anguish of young men about to come out.

       As he begins to return to the group he comes face to face with Dilan and without further hesitation plants a big kiss on his lips, a moment later backing off and breaking down in tears, confessing his love for his new friend. Dilan wonders why he hasn’t simply told him previously, obviously demonstrating that he has no comprehension of how difficult it is for some to simply admit their strange, new feelings.

       Nonetheless, it appears that Cristian’s coming out has been relatively easy. About to celebrate his 18th birthday, he invites both Lorena and Dilan to his home, after blowing out the candles announcing that he has something to tell everyone. His mother looks pleased, presuming obviously that he about to announce his engagement to Lorena. But instead he declares his love for Dilan, declaring that he is gay—a shock apparently to all, except his friend.

       His mother refuses to even hear about, immediately sending the other boy away and ordering her son to his bedroom, who retreats in embarrassment and sobs.

       Perhaps what most distinguishes this rather amateur film is that Cristian’s father suddenly appears to comfort his son, admitting that since his father was never there for him that he refuses to be such a person, not only accepting his son’s love for someone different than they have expected but for his courage about announcing it, assuring him that his mother will also soon come around.

     Certainly it is a treat to get a new LGBTQ film from Columbia, and this might be a truly wonderfully upbeat movie to show young people today fearful about coming out. But I do wish such student and amateur works might be able to find more capable English translators. Not only are the usual problems evident here, the confusion of all articles (“his” for example confused with “she”), but the syntax is often so garbled and formally expressed that one has to become one’s own translator in English, trying to bring the text into recognizable sentences while still attending to the images. But, of course, I curse myself for not being fluent in other languages.

     In this case, however, the DVD did not even provide any credits. Although I was charmed by the fact that the director evidently was so proud of his product that he also produced a movie about the filming of the movie, which introduced me in Spanish to the actors, a film I found quite by accident on YouTube.

 

Los Angeles, September 2, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (September 2022).

 

Chucho E. Quintero | 100 metros estilo libre (100m Freestyle) / 2013

remains of a day

by Douglas Messerli

 

Chucho E. Quintero (screenwriter and director) 100 metros estilo libre (100m Freestyle) / 2013 [17 minutes]

 

Like most of the commentators about this film, I found this work rather boring and pointless, a possibly gay story that is afraid to actually commit to the sexuality of which it hints.

     Given a slightly surreal moment of supposed memory, we perceive that the swimmer Polo (Eliott Reguera Vega) must have previously been involved with Mina (Carolina Lecuona), who has since been in a relationship with Polo’s best friend, Domingo (César Zegbe Jones); so the relationship between the two men is a truly fraught one, evidently disallowing them to openly express—given the macho attitudes of their world, particularly the sports world of Polo—their true feelings.

     Yet, Mina seems to recognize the undercurrent between the two, and even poses the question of what Polo will do now that Domingo is heading off the college? She would like him to return to her, but clearly that is now a thing of the past; and it appears that Polo is so in love with his friend that all he can do in the last couple of days of Domingo’s existence in his life is to pout.

     As one of the film’s amateur critics bemoans, couldn’t there have been just a simple sign between the two, a hand left a little too long on the other’s arm, a momentary kiss, even a goodbye hug? As it is, all we have is a moment when Domingo appears to be checking out his friend as he showers after swimming practice, and a somber promise to go to the beach together during the holidays. But even their inability to express their feelings is seen through a fog in this short work. What has their relationship been? Have they ever expressed the love they feel for one another? Or had Domingo’s commitment to Polo’s former girlfriend Mina resulted in a sort of unspoken, unfulfilled threesome?

     This is most definitely the “remains of a day” sort of work, but unlike the character in the film of that name, Polo and Domingo do not even attempt to express their regrets or their sublimated feelings. The film ends in mid-air, with the two of them staring off into a space in which there is nothing there—although at least Domingo stares ahead, while Polo looks only to the side.

     Moreover, the socio-economic difference between the two suggests that there will never be a possible return to even a sublimated relationship. While Domingo heads off to college, Polo is left working as a car-washer, even if he is practicing for the Olympics as a 100m freestyle swimmer. And given the slow pace of his movements throughout this film, we doubt he will ever even get to the other side of the pool.

     Mexican director Chucho E. Quintero’s short movie might have been a poignant statement of loss, but since we have few clues about whether these two men ever had a real relationship, we can only perceive it as a cinema of lost desire, of lost hopes. Polo seems to perceive that the rest of his life will simply be empty, and in that sense he is like any hometown boy famed for his prowess at sports but with nothing to show for it when the others around him leave for new lives. I know of just such a local sports beauty who, having no one left to love, took his own life, hinted at in this film as Polo walks straight down the railroad tracks, a train hooting in the distance.

 

Los Angeles, July 29, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (July 2025).

 

Lior Soroka | Banim (Boys) / 2020

running to love

by Douglas Messerli

 

Lior Soroka (screenwriter and director) Banim (Boys) / 2020 [14 minutes]

 

In Israeli director Lior Soroka’s Boys, 17-year-old Nadav (Eitan Gimelman) is determined for his compulsory military service to fight in a combat unit, despite his mother’s strong arguments that given his studies in Arabic he would be far better off in the Intelligence Corps.

     The film begins with his military checkup and the officer’s reminder that before he can serve in the combat forces he must get the permission form signed by his mother (Keren Tzur), who continues to argue that it just doesn’t suit him, Nadav clearly angry about that assertion and what it might suggest.

      He leaves the house to join in a workout with his running coach and several other boys, apparently an extracurricular activity having nothing to do with school. Nadav seemingly performs quite well until one of the others argues, during a rest that stop, that he runs “like a pussy.” The boy grows angry, and for a few moments they push one another, Nadav landing on the ground with a slight hand injury.

      The coach (Itamar Eliyahu) gets him some ice for the hand, and they chat, the coach wondering why the boy is so angry. Nadav’s only response is “he pissed me off,” before finally admitting that he had just fought with his mother over his military sign-up. 

     There is something gentle and pleasing about the coach, Nadav looking at him with a mix of fatherly worship and sexual longing.

     We see Nadav in his bed masturbating soon after, the very transition of the film hinting at a link between the coach’s gentle ministrations and Nadav’s desires. His mother knocks on the door to check up on him, ruining the moment as her son quickly turns out the light.

      In the car on the way to school the next morning, Nadav hands the form to his mother, who again refuses to sign it, Nadav arguing that all of his friends are serving in the combat group, she suggesting that he has nothing to prove, the boy growing even angrier, insisting that she “must” sign it before leaving the car abruptly, his mother attempting to call him back.

     Nadav soon after stops in his tracks, texting the coach to ask if he might come by, meaning to his house. It’s apparent that he’s seeking a father’s approval. But we also recognize that there is something else happening to Nadav that even he can’t explain to himself. The military decision is an irrational one based on a macho conception that he evidently feels he must live up to. While his mother suggests he has nothing prove, it appears that in Nadav’s mind he has a great deal of proving to do.

       The boy shows up quickly at his mentor’s door. They talk for a few moments about the man’s short-lived military career, before he suggests that perhaps Nadav’s mother is right. “Those intelligence geeks make loads of money in civilian life.” A moment later, the coach asks about his hand, and a second after that we see him tenderly stroking it, as the two suddenly move into a deep kiss, repeating it again and again.

        The camera shows Nadav running down the middle of a street; but with the film’s continual return to the sexual moment—their intense kisses and the looks of pleasure on their faces—we recognize that Nadav is not running away from something but toward his own future. The sexual encounter has freed him, and when he returns home, with his mother’s invitation he joins her on the bed, she writing out sentences on his back as she did when he was a young child.

         He reads her words: “I luv you,” and smiles, feeling comforted. When he returns to his room, he notices that she has signed his military permission form. But from the look on his face, now having something to live for and nothing to prove, we feel he may not seek out combat duty after all.

         This is another of the few handfuls of films that openly embrace the idea that sometimes a young boy needs the love of a slightly older man, a gay mentor to show him that out of the lonely and oppressing adolescent years that all LGBTQ individuals, in one way or another, suffer.

         Since his graduation in Film and Television from Tel Aviv University in 2019, Soroka has directed and acted in several noteworthy films, and is certainly a new talent to watch.

 

Los Angeles, June 20, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (June 2023).

        

Santiago Zermeño | Agua (Water) / 2020

on the run

by Douglas Messerli

 

Santiago Zermeño (screenwriter and director) Agua (Water) / 2020 [14 minutes]

 

A young man, Camilo (Daniel Bolaños), momentarily shares a lunch with several men, who, like homophobic heterosexuals world-wide, mock and berate one another with sexual humor: “What’s up Camilo, have you scored some pussy or do you keep using your hand?” But suddenly there is a call for another rower, and it is time for him to return to work. He is a rower of flat boats on the Xochimilco jetty, the famed tourist spot of the floating gardens near Mexico City.

     His phone rings and he tells the caller that he’s working, please don’t call him at work. Within the next few frames, as the telephonic friend finishes fucking Camilo, we realize why the sensitive young man has demanded that he not call him at work. He now repeats the request, suggesting his friend doesn’t realize how difficult it is with his fellow workers, who make many a homophobic joke.

     No sooner has he spoken, but another rower, Beto (Zezé Ramos) passes by, and Camilo is sure that he has seen him with his sexual companion, evidently infamous in this strange floating world, and that the news will soon be all over the lake.

      Indeed, when he returns to work, he spots Beto talking with the other rowers, laughing and gesturing, Camilo now certain that the conversation is about himself.

      Returning home, he demands his sister help him to find some money as he packs for a getaway. She wonders what he’s done, what trouble he’s gotten into. But there is no response, he simply reassuring her that he is not in trouble the police, and asking her not to mention the incident to his father.

      When he meets up with Beto the next morning, he confronts him, slugging him for having shared what he’s seen with the others. But Beto is confused, angry for the sudden attack. It is clear he has not seen or suspected anything, but now quite suddenly realizes that his friend has been taking out time to engage in sex with the man who lives in a nearby shack. The word is now spread with relish.

     Camilo goes on the run, and the film ends with him on a downtown Mexico City street with obviously nowhere to go and no money. The next step for his young teenager is obviously for him to prostitute himself in order just to survive.

     The message Mexican director Santiago Zermeño’s short film conveys, accordingly, is not only that homophobia and gay bigotry are still alive and well even in the most cosmopolitan areas of the world, but that it forces young gay men into a kind of paranoid state where their every action appears to them to be shouting out what they are most attempting to hide. Paranoia and bigotry always go hand-in-hand in such patriarchally-controlled societies where every story told might be interpreted as evidence against anyone who behaves in a manner outside of the strictures of that world—a reality explored by Franz Kafka time and again.

     In a sense, Camilo has created his own evitable casting out of this seeming paradise, which may possibly someday be for the better, for the present can only represent the worst nightmare imaginable for a boy on the run without a place in which to even sleep.

 

Los Angeles, February 14, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (February 2023).

Michael Blanchard | Out / 2020

what wasn’t spoken

by Douglas Messerli

 

Michael Blanchard and Aldo I. Gallinar (screenplay), Michael Blanchard (director) Out / 2020 [16 minutes]

 

Jason (Christoper Breitinger), like so many young gay boys of his age, is in a relationship but has not yet told his parents nor any of his friends outside of his and his lover Alex’s (Steve Brogan) shared female friend Laura (Lauren Henning), a photographer who asks if she might show pictures she’s taken of the couple in a gallery. Even that possibility terrifies Jay.

     Tired of the public rejection of his love, Alex confides in Jay that it is time he tells his parents. Having told his own folks, he suggests things have to change, that he cannot continue the way things are if they’re going to make a go of their relationship as they both desire.

     Jason finally gets up the nerve to tell his mother, who, like many mothers, already know of the child’s sexuality. He explains that he’s dating Alex and his parents have been told about their son’s sexuality and Jason felt that she should also know, crying in the release of having finally admitted the truth. She encourages him to be who is and promises to be there to support him in the morning when he tells his father.

      Meanwhile, Laura gives him copies of the photographs she’s chosen, but asks not to open them until he’s told his father, as a reminder of who he’s fighting for, no matter how his father responds.

      So far this film seems almost uninteresting in its placidity, the plot going basically forward without any the difficulties we might imagine in the coming out process.

       As evening approaches, the time when Jay’s agreed to speak his father, the mother calls Alex’s mother to ask her over for her support, guessing that it may be difficult for her husband. Indeed, it is, as he typically responds to his son’s statement of being gay as a joke, and then simply says that as long as Jason lives in his house he cannot be gay. He’s too young to make such a decision, and he will not permit it.

       Broken-hearted, the boy returns to his bedroom, opening the perfectly innocent photos of him and Alex together, simply enjoying one another’s company. But he and the audience realizes that it will now be extremely difficult for that simple relationship to survive.

       In the midst of all this the film cuts to Alex’s house, where his parents appear to be arguing, but since the plot has continued within Jason’s world we have not made too much of the event.

     But now suddenly, Jason hears his mother and father calling out to him to immediately come downstairs. He leaves his bed confused and fearful of why his presence has been called for. But when he reaches the stairwell he observes his father attempting to carry up Alex, bruised and beaten. His father calls out for his help, and he runs to his friend, pulling him into the living room couch where he holds him, his father and mother looking on, this time both approvingly.

      Obviously, Alex has not previously told his parents and Jason’s mother’s call to them alerted them to the truth. Alex’s father was the brutal monster that Jason feared his own father might be, seriously beating his son. Jason’s father announces he simply found him standing at their front door; but it is clear in his amazement and worry for the boy that he has learned a lesson as well. And seeing his son holding his friend in love appears to help him realize the errors of his own decision.

        We learn nothing further of the situation, and have no idea what will become of Alex, although we can suspect that Jason’s parents may attempt to provide him a home and solace. What one might have further wished, however, is that either of Jason’s parents have called the police to report the abuse of Alex. No parent should be permitted to react in such a homophobic manner, whatever parental rights they claim.

       Finally, it is clear that Alex will need to get his own life in order. Telling lies to achieve what he wants from his lover are not a good basis of a relationship. But the film does not take us in that direction.

       This story presents us with a punch of the dark reality that we know to be part of many young boys’ and girls’ lives when they attempt to tell truth about their sexuality—or in this case even when they don’t.

 

Los Angeles, August 16, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (August 2022).