Douglas Messerli | The Love That Cannot Be Spoken, Heard, or Seen [Introduction]

the love that cannot be spoken, heard, or seen

by Douglas Messerli

 

It’s interesting that in the short time that LGBTQ directors have been able to begin making pictures fully focusing on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender love that a fairly sophisticated group of films have been made in the 21st century regarding men who are physically impaired by being blind, deaf, or mute. One of these, unfortunately, treats the issue a bit more like a comic routine rather than a serious exploration of the difficulties these individuals have in finding gay partners in an already lonely world; yet in each of the seven films I discuss below (one simply an expansion of an early version), I am moved by the basic sense of positivity and hope these directors display in the inevitability of deaf, blind, or mute individuals pairing up with others who, although they don’t have those impairments surely have as many if not more others. In almost all the films I discuss below, it appears that those without the ability to hear, speak, or see are more loving and simply beautiful figures than their partners.

     The schoolboys David and Leonardo of the Mexican director Roberto Fiesco’s film David and Brazilian Daniel Ribeiro’s I Don’t Walk to Go Back Alone and The Way He Looks, as well as the slightly older figures of Brett, Alex, Aaron, Niall, and Mike in US directors Rory Dering’s Pittsburgh, Andrew Keenan-Bolger’s Sign, Julio Dowansingh’s Louder Than Words, and Aleksei Borovikov’s Glances are all true beauties who shine much more brightly than their companions. And through them I felt deep love and empathy—without pity or worry—for their characters. And despite the difficulties these individuals obviously daily face, they have all found ways to bring great joy and love to their worlds.

      Certainly there are probably other films on homosexuals who have problems with locomotion and mental difficulties before and after the ones I have selected. The important thing is that within a culture that has been historically so connected with physical beauty and mental agility that these issues are beginning to be explored. And I look forward to more of these sorts of films in the future.

 

Los Angeles, October 23, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (October 2025).

Julio Dowansingh | Louder than Words / 2017

a body in movement without sound

by Douglas Messerli

 

Julio Dowansingh (screenwriter and director) Louder than Words / 2017 [16.30 minutes]

 

Ansel (Luke Farley) is a guitar player new to the arts school he is attending. Upon his arrival to the school’s central building he discovers that the music hall is locked for the month, and is given, at least at first, a rather chilly greeting when he meets ups with the dancers Kenya (Apryl Wilson) and Niall (Marty Lauter), particularly when he asks for rain check when they invite him out for dinner.

   Luke is now dependent upon using a corner of their space, Kenya seeming somewhat off-putting, although Niall soon after appears to be more inviting.

      For the rest of the next few days, he sits in a corner as Niall performs his modern ballet movements, only later discovering that the reason the dancer has remained so quiet was that he is deaf, the obtuse Ansel responding, “Wow, that’s insane…and you…dance?” asking the question as if the two might somehow be at odds with one another. Kenya suggests that Niall is pretty good at reading lips too, hinting that he might have

found Ansel’s question somewhat offensive. But Ansel, obviously not picking up on the matter suggests to Niall that he should get his bicycle fixed (the chain seems to be loose), but when Niall responds with a simple salute, suggesting “Thanks I will!” Ansel seems unable to comprehend anything and immediately escapes, suggesting that he has no apparent interest in trying to better know his new friend.

      The next day as he helps to put up some new posters, Ansel does ask further questions, however. “When did you lose your hearing?” for example, Niall seeming to suggest that he lost his hearing at the age of 4. Ansel asks one more question, a seemingly interesting one, “Are you and Kenya…” Niall interrupts to mouth the word “no,” but then puts his fingers together in a way that one suspects means “we’re just friends” but also reads to a non-signer as if they might be very close, perhaps contradicting his first mouthed expression.

      The next day after strumming a few bars Ansel goes over Niall and sits upon the floor where he is working out to ask him “Can you hear the music?” Niall waves his hand to suggest that he sort of hears it, and the guitarist asks “How?” which Niall pushes his open hands to the floor in a rhythm pattern as if to suggest that it might be in the sound waves.

      When Ansel leaves later in the evening, Niall goes to his guitar and plucks a few random and atonal chords, putting his ear to the instrument to see if he can indeed hear the music. Ansel returns in the background, observing his attempts.

         Soon after, as Niall makes a spin, Ansel moves forward and asks him to “show me some moves.” He asks Niall to show him how to “make that spinney thing you do on your toes. The dancer repeats the spin, as Ansel removes his overshirt so that Niall can position, raising his hand, placing his feet into the proper stance. Ansel responds, this should be simple and attempts the spin, falling flat on the floor, Niall also falling to the floor, laughing in silent “belly laugh.”  Ansel helps him up suggesting, “I guess dance just isn’t my thing. As the two handsome boys stand face to face, Niall moves toward Ansel with the clear intention of a kiss. Immediately Ansel backs off, insisting, “I should get going,” as we walks off. Niall, embarrassed for the come-on is nearly emotionally devastated. He has evidently thoroughly misread Ansel’s sexuality.

      In the next scene we see Ansel sitting with his guitar in the room, several pieces of paper crunched up beside him. Kenya enters, grabbing one of the crumpled pieces, asking “Writers block?” “Do you want to talk about?” she further probes. But Ansel, true to his inability to properly communicate, responds “Not really.” She watches attempting to write out another note, asking it she might see it. She looks at the paper. “He’s freaking out, you know.”

       Niall answers that he knows, that he hadn’t wanted to offend him, and she suggests that he simply talk to him. But in the next frame, Ansel has obviously chosen to wander off yet again and as we see Kenya trying to comfort Niall, he responding in what is still apparent self-recrimination. He turns momentarily away from her in anger, and she leaves, Ansel, unknown to Niall, taking her place. When Niall turns, he is face to face with his former friend who suddenly signs, “I’m sorry, N-A-I-L-L,” speaking the words “that’s all I’ve learned so far.” Niall attempts to sign an answer, but Ansell grabs his head to bring it near and suddenly kisses him before walking off once more, leaving Niall with his jaw open in amazement.

        Clearly, the two are interested in one another sexually, but Ansel simply needs more time to learn how to communicate, to express his love to the other. It is obvious that the musician is terrified of a body in movement without sound.

        Julio Dowansingh’s film is quite complex and fascinating in its exploration of the difficulties that deaf individuals obviously face in dealing with those who cannot or will not learn their languages. It’s too bad that the cinematographer couldn’t visually equal the intensity of the script filming the work as he did in such muted colors that it might as well have been in black-and-white.

I have somewhat brightened the colors of the stills I chose so they might be read upon the page.

 

Los Angeles, August 21, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (August 2022).

Aleksei Borovikov | Glances / 2020

face off

by Douglas Messerli

 

Aleksei Borovikov (screenwriter and director) Glances / 2020 [7 minutes]

 

As Sunset Boulevard’s Norma Desmond might have argued, faces say everything. But when someone stares at us for too long, particularly when we don’t know the individual, we become confused and even agitated. What is the person looking at? Why does his stare continue? What does he want? What does he see of especial interest? And, of course, a stare in most cultures can represent sexual interest.

     In this case a handsome young man, Mike (Enrique Escarpita), sitting at a table in a restaurant, seems to be looking at the back of a man’s head, which the man’s table mate, a girl (Olivia Long) apparently mentions to him. When she leaves, Mike moves to the other side of the table to better observe what has been happening, literally behind his back.

     At first he seems curious as well, but quickly does become agitated, particularly when the young man staring at him raises one side of his lips with a slight smile. Sean (Ryan Pikofsky), the man being looked at, finally moves to the stranger’s table and pours himself out a mug of tea. “Listen, I don’t know what you’re trying to do here, but I’m not about this.”

    It’s one of only two moments of speech in this short 7-minute film by US director Aleksei Borovikov, but it says a great deal. It presumes that the strange his attempting “to do” something, to make a connection or perhaps sexually insinuate himself into the man’s life. This phrase “I’m not about this,” presumably suggests he is not interested and most certainly not gay.”

      Mike continues to stare, but looks down and aside troubled by Sean’s presumptions. Finally, Sean tries again to get at the heart of the matter: “What’s your problem? Can you talk, can you speak?”

       Sean takes out a small notebook and writes out the words: “I can’t talk.”

      The two men continue to sit face to face for a few moments without words, Mike opening his lips ever so slightly, hinting at a hope or possibility of communication. Sean looks back first from one side and then the other as if checking out if there is someone else to who his new friend’s stare might be meant or perhaps just making sure that no one is watching what is happening between them.

      And slowly, gradually, he begins a light smile, Mike returning it, Sean’s smile turning into something like a grin. The two have become friends. We don’t know either of their sexualities, but perhaps, if there is sexual interest between them, it can proceed. In any event, an odd relationship between the two has begun. I certainly wouldn’t be surprised if Sean invited Mike out for a drink or even a visit to his apartment.

 

Los Angeles, August 18, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (August 2022).

 

Dennis Shinners | Area X / 2007

becoming a man

by Douglas Messerli

 

Dennis Shinners (screenwriter and director) Area X / 2007 [15 minutes]

 

The first few frames of this film remind me a bit of Paul Morrissey’s Forty Deuce, which begins at the location of this work, the New York City Port Authority Bus Terminal, where one of the characters of the Morrisey film has taken up quarters in a terminal bathroom where he hooks up with gay johns.

    In Area X a hustler named Marco (Antony Raymond) is on the phone trying to settle a deal, whether if be a sexual meet-up, a promise to provide services, or some other shady matter we can’t tell. But it’s clearly not going well, and he’s run out of his last quarter, forcing him to enter the bathroom to beg a quarter off someone on the toilet, who finally drops it, only too late for Marco’s call.

    We soon encounter a young boy, fresh off the train, Paul (Matt Schuneman) who’s somehow found his way to underground area known by station authorities as Area X, where a bar serves for hustler meetings with their equally disreputable customers, most of them old men, such as the figure that appears later in this short film (Anthony Galluccio).

     But now sitting at the bar is a handsome young boy, who Marco simply can’t resist. Charming and savvy to the young kid’s likely problems, he listens to Paul’s truly bizarre story. Still at home, but working a job in construction in order to pay his way through community college, he discovers that his values and ideals collide with his father’s, who can’t imagine why he hasn’t yet married.

     One day, his dad inexplicably picked him up from work, again grilling him about his love life and soon after picking up a female prostitute, who as Paul relates it, didn’t even know if the old man or the boy is to be her customer. Neither did Paul, who—in the manner of the central characters in short films such as Gregory Cooke’s $30 (1999), Cameron Thrower’s Pretty Boy (2015), Taisia Deevva’s The Cure (2023), and Denis Laikhov’s The White Crows (2023)—quickly perceives, however, that this is a macho challenge for him to “become a true man,” the father dropping him and the distraught girl off at a seedy roadside motel and handing him two hundred dollars, insisting he not return home until he has become a man.

     Paul used the money to get to New York City, and is now there, ready to pay for a couple of rounds with his newfound confident.

     Marco has already argued that the only the kid is going to survive in the city is to become a hustler, like him, who when things go well can make a lot of money; and it’s clear he knows he has a “gay” pigeon on the hook, soon after luring the cute boy into the john for quick sex. It takes the boy a full trip back to the bar to clear up the bill for him to realize that although he has now truly “become a man,” his wallet is missing with no way to chase after the endless street travelling Marco “Polo.”

     And the next scene finds Paul playing out the very role that Marco has argued that he should pursue; he has no choice, he believes, but to sell his body to find enough money to find a place to sleep.

     I was there, in much the same place in 1969, determined to stay in New York without a dollar in my pocket; but I was clever, offering up my daily services as an office worker or typist until I lucked my way into a gem of a job at Columbia University. But most gay boys like Paul don’t have the luck or evidently the intelligence to get away from the Port Authority Bus Terminal as quickly as their legs can carry them. And I never visited Area X.

 

Los Angeles, October 23, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (October 2025).

Sarah Smith | Black Hat / 2019

the two of us

by Douglas Messerli

 

Phillip Guttmann (screenplay), Sarah Smith (director) Black Hat / 2019 [15 minutes]

 

Shmuel (Adam Silver) is a pious Hasidic Jew living in Los Angeles who everyday attends schul everyday as part of a minyan who celebrate the Torah with their Rabbi Ernest (Shelly Kurz).

    The Fairfax Avenue area of Los Angeles, in which supposedly this small synagogue exists (although many do in that area, the scene inside the schul in this movie was filmed Venice), along with a wide range of other small shops and bars, and theaters, including the famed Beverly Cinema (now owned by film director Quentin Tarantino), the cleaners where Shmuel works, a grungy gay bar named the Plaza, and restaurants, as well as the side streets lined with lovely brick and stucco-constructed houses and apartments.

    Leaving the morning ceremony, Shmuel forgets his traditional shtreimel, the black hat of the Ashkenazi sect. The rabbi calls out to him after the ceremony that he has once more left behind his hat, also taking the opportunity to invite Shmuel and his wife Naomi and their child to dinner, Shmuel explaining that his wife and child are in New York visiting her mother, and that he must hurry off to work.

     We suspect, and it is soon confirmed, that Shmuel is suffering from far more than a slight loss of memory, that his distraction has to do with other desires, and as night arrives we see him, dressed in his traditional garb in which he wears in his neighborhood where he might easily be recognized.

     But soon he darts down an alley, changing clothes and hiding his peiyot or more commonly payes, his traditional long sidecurls under a fisherman’s cap. His black coat and hat safely hidden away in a bag, he darts into the bar past a couple of chatting boys outside, one of whom, a black man named Jay (Sebastian Velmont), he clearly finds attractive. Nervously, however, Shmuel makes his way into the bar to be served up a drink by the bartender (Carolyn Michelle), who knows his favorite beer, Rolling Rock, clueing us in that he has become quite a regular.

     Turning around for a moment, he spots another man closer to his own age sitting alone (Bryce McKinney). But Jay soon reenters the place, joining Shmuel at the bar and soon inviting him into the curtained-off back room where it is clear open sex takes place.

     Jay moves off behind the curtain, with Shmuel soon following, the two meeting up with Jay removing his cap, stroking his lover’s payes before gently tucking them behind his ears and moving in for a deep kiss.  

     When Shmuel leaves, we note that when he goes to pick up his waiting bag of clothing, the black hat drops out without him noticing.

     The scene shifts to the next morning with Shmuel in bed, realizing that he has slept beyond his usual time. He quickly dresses and readies himself to hurry off to the synagogue, only to discover that he is missing his shtreimel. Desperately he rushes off the Plaza, but iron bars have been rolled across the doorway, signifying that it is closed.

   He arrives, fairly abashed, to the worship, only to be greeted by another of the minyan, the other conservative-looking man from in the bar the night before, who graciously hands over his hat, which our frightened believer receives with relief and widened-eyes, realizing that he now has a friend within the schul itself.

    When Lutheran-born director Sarah Smith was asked in an interview with Sophie Duncan & Caris Rianne about her experience of incorporating the most traditional of Jewish sects within her movie about gay sex, Smith answered: “It was important to me that we see the complexity in Shmuel’s struggle with who he is as a gay man and his religion, and through his religion, his relationship to G-d. It was also important to me that we not demonize the Hasidic religious beliefs, that we highlight Shmuel’s struggle, but try not to cast blame for his struggle.”

 

     She argues that she hopes the viewer’s of her film come to the realization that the strange outsider that Shmuel represents to many who know little about his religion are in many ways like all of us. 

 

“Through Shmuel’s story we aspire to raise the notion that these often mysterious and misunderstood religious individuals, typically only seen by the outside world on street covered by hats and sheitels, are perhaps more complex—more like us—than we previously imagined. We all, to some extent struggle with our identity, and I think this is something anyone can identify with and ultimately, my hope is we foster empathy and understanding.”

 

Los Angeles, October 22, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (October 2025).

 

Siobhan McCarthy | She's the He / 2025

playing it straight

by Douglas Messerrli

 

Siobhan McCarthy (screenwriter and director) She's the He / 2025

 

I started out watching director Siobhan McCarthy’s (they/them) film She’s the He with a few winching moments as its two central figures, cis-gender boys Alex and Ethan, best friends and already thought be gay by the homophobic bullies in their school, decide to pretend they’re tans just to get inside the girl’s locker room of this obviously very liberal, open-minded California high school that would make any Maga maniac tremble in horror. Here, even the coach protects the gay boys.

     All right, I said to myself—knowing just from the title of this film that something different was going to come of it—this work is taking on the genre of bad high school boys and girls that goes back to Sixteen Candles (1984), American Pie (1999), and even earlier movies that McCarthy has perhaps never heard of besides the obvious references to the movies which admittedly actually influenced them, such as Mean Girls (2004), She’s The Man (2006), and Superbad (2007); they also cite the TV series Malcolm in the Middle (2000-2206) and Czech director Věra Chytilová’s 1966 comedy Daisies.

     But just maybe this film was going to possibly imitate the genre more that in transformed it, I feared, particularly given the character of Alex (Nico Carney, he/him) the more dominant of the cis duo, who convinces Ethan (Misha Osherovich, they/them) to go along with his plans just so that he can convince pretty girl Sasha (Malia Pyles) that he truly loves her and that he’s not really gay. Little did I know that in real life Pyles (famed for playing in the HBO series Pretty Little Liars) identifies as queer.

     Yet it didn’t take too long for me, even without a press kit, to realize that just perhaps Carney was actually a trans male (he is a trans male stand-up comedian) who, in this instance, was playing a cis gender bad boy pretending to be trans woman. And the movie, itself, particularly after Ethan hooks up with Forest (Tatiana Ringsby, also known as Tatchi, she/they) who in McCarthy’s film seems like a sensitive femme lesbian who truly has a thing for Ethan even before he pretends to be trans.

     Forest offers makeup and costume suggestions (as Tatchi does online) to help him transition, and before you register that the two are falling in love, the already long-haired Ethan begins to like what “he” sees of “herself,” and realizes that perhaps she actually is trans.

     The women in the locker room are only too pleased in this world to invite trans women into their private spaces, going as far as to permit them entry into Sasha’s own house at a party for women only. At the party, Alex attempts to get to know Sasha better and in the process—particularly when she shares her private longings for a man as sensitive as the trans Alex—he accidentally admits that he is neither gay nor trans but is definitely interested in becoming that man.

     The admission gets him and Ethan kicked out of the party at the very moment that Ethan, for the first time in her life, was really beginning to like who she has become. When her mother, soon after, discovers her arriving home in a dress, wearing makeup, and in a different hairdo, she rejects the son upon whom she has for so long, after her husband’s departure, depended on for male support.

      Alex may be a “bad” boy, but his heart is truly in the right place, and planning to room with his bestie Ethan when go off to college, and with graduation coming up in just a few days, he is now faced with the enormous problem of explaining not only that his own intentions were pure, but that his best male friend Ethan has realized he’s a she.

      He visits Ethan’s mother, promising to become her male “replacement” if needed. She politely declines him, but his comic gestures certainly put her into a different frame mind which we are now certain with be able to accept the changes to her former son.

      Don’t worry it you’re now a little bit confused, so is everyone in the movie, and it gets only worse as the school’s real homophobic jocks, hearing what the gay boy duo (in their mind they’ll always be gay boys) achieved, they decide to also break into the girl’s locker room. Who can save these lovely maidens?

     It doesn’t strike Alex for a moment that they may very likely be able to save themselves, as he joins up forces with Ethan, Davis (Mark Indelicato, openly gay)—a handsome loner who everyone believes “turned” gay just to get closer to the women, but in fact turns out to really be gay—and the mechanical genius Forest’s creation, a “graffiti bombing gun,” in order to ward off the school jocks (most of who in reality are also played by gay or trans men; trans actor Emmett Preciado is their leader) who the Trumpites warn us are flocking to the girl’s bathrooms nationwide. It is finally, the women, however, who lobbing their bloody tampons at the intruders like hand-grenades win the day, and force the men to go on the run in utter disgust.

   Nearly all these actors, despite the raucous plot that often overwhelms them, give wonderful performances; but particularly Ethan, as he truly discovers his own beauty within himself—in a manner which Eddie Redmayne could never quite conjure up in The Danish Girl (2015)—his eyes darting back and forth with the wonderment of transformation Sasha and Forest help him undertake, elevates his role to new levels. We fully understand how, unknowingly, this is what he needed—as he watches the frizzy haired slightly pudgy boy become a true feminine beauty—to discover herself alive in the world for the first time in his/her life.

     Similarly, critic Siddhant Adlakha writes in Variety:

 

“…One needn’t get bogged down by wistful reflections on the state of the world when discussing She’s the He, if only because Carney channels a young Steve Buscemi and delivers such an enormously funny performance that he swallows the movie whole. His conception of Alex is a blast. It’s both a satirical portrait of toxic, over-eager teenage masculinity (with interjections like “bro!” and references to “getting pussy” galore), but at the same time, makes for a surprisingly empathetic look at young men who fall short of masculine expectations, and the ways in which they overcompensate. To have a trans man in this role is both a meaningful reflection on what elements (and struggles) of manhood are learned and adopted, as well as a downright gut-busting parody of the type of bro-y teenager that usually appears in Hollywood’s teenage comedies.”

     By film’s end, the two bad “boys” have reconciled, even if they determine that perhaps it might be better not to share the dorm room after all.

     If on the whole the film is at times far too cartoonish for my taste, one must admit that this movie is filled with heart opening itself up to us with every maddened beat.

 

Los Angeles, October 22, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (October 2025).