Constantine Giannaris | Mia thesi ston ilio (A Place in the Sun) / 1994

a knife in the back

by Douglas Messerli

 

Constantine Giannaris (screenwriter and director) Mia thesi ston ilio (A Place in the Sun) / 1994

 

One of the most interesting of the LGBTQ filmmakers of the 1990s, Greek director Constantine Giannaris was already moving away from his focus strictly on gay and lesbian issues in A Place in the Sun of 1994.

     As he himself described it, the “eroticism” of his early works such as Caught Looking (1991) is here tempered considerably by his focus the issues of immigration that began to plague Greece in the mid-1990s as the Balkan countries’ Communist governments begin to fall, and millions of their citizens migrated to Greece not only for political asylum but for sexual freedom as well.

     The rather smugly set-in-his-ways, handsome, gay Athenian worker Ilias (Stavros Zalmas), whose narrative voice dominates this 45-minute film, notes that his city has changed, the former gay gathering night spots being taken over by the thousands of new immigrants from Romania, Serbia, Kosovo, and Albania, seeking mutual sexual contact and/or and/often both seeking men who will pay for them for their pleasures.

     Ilias is clearly not interested in long term relationships nor even, it appears, in friendships, but is perfectly happy picking up boys each night, often refusing to take them to his home for fear that sometime later they might return to rob him and put a knife in his back.

      If he sounds somewhat like a friendly bigot, he has reasons, as we shall see, for his fears. The first night of this film’s narrative he picks up a cute Romanian boy (Valentino Hagi) and enjoys the sex.

     Sitting in the café the next time we see him, Ilias spots a broodingly beautiful young Albanian, whom he immediately cruises, without success. But later that evening we see the young, Panagiotis (Panagiotis Tsitsas) join him, playing various macho games such as rolling a cigarette Ilias has offered him back and forth on the table, suggesting that before he’ll accept the gift he must make certain that it becomes his own, something that can easily be given back, as if the gift were of no matter to him. So too does Panagiotis play with Ilias’ sexual advances, enjoying the fact that in doing so, he remains in control.

      They go home and have sex and Ilias against all his former principles quickly grows to like the young man, offering him money and, in some respects, even a nightly bed.

       So too does Panagiotis seem to like and respect the older Greek man, needing the money he gives him just to survive but also slowly growing to like him. But still, a product of his macho culture, Panagiotis will not allow Ilias to kiss him on the lips, despite the fact that he allows his hands to stroke his face and body. He wishes Ilias, a clearly sis-gender male, might be a “tranny,” which would make it far easier for him to engage in their sexual acts.

       Ilias falls in love with him enough to even rouge his lips as a kind of compromise. And so the two continue, Ilias offering the advice of an elder, and Panagiotis developing a sort of dependence on his new lover. But that neediness and the resistance to admit it, pushes the relationship to its limits. Panagiotis is constantly in need of more money, and spends long hours in Ilias’ modest apartment watching TV instead of making love. Ilias, now desperately in love with the young man, also now fears that one night the brooding beefcake might still put a knife into his back.

       Given the negatives of the relationship and his latent fears, Ilias finally sends the Albanian boy off, as the camera shifts its focus, following the wanderings of Panagiotis as he attempts to survive, watches a small streetside musical performance by fellow Balkan performers with joy, and hooks up with men in the toilets, making plans to meet one of the young men (Ilias Marmaras) as a “customer.”

      From the beginning of the film, moreover, Giannaris has demonstrated the young Albanian’s dreams and imagination with fragmentary scenes in color, mostly simply snippets of Athens landscape in the bright sun, a world which Ilias does not seem to inhabit. But even these golden reveries do not quite seem enough for Panagiotis who has told Ilias that what he would really love is to work on a boat headed for America, the golden world of so many immigrants’ imagination.

       In the meantime, Ilias discovers just much he misses the boy, as his love becomes even more of an obsession, he roaming the streets in search of Panagiotis, sitting at the same table where he originally met him, etc. All of his time seems to now be devoted to finding Panagiotis, who has seemingly disappeared from the landscape.

      One night while driving through the square, however, Ilias suddenly spots him sitting on a metal railing and turns back to speak with him. The boy returns to Ilias, but he has changed, and is no longer open to Ilias’ sexual approaches. Finally, he reveals that he has robbed and stabbed to death a sexual customer and admits that the police are after him.

      Instead of throwing him out, as the boy feared, Ilias is now so obsessed with the dangerous boy that he determines to escape with him by ship to another world. In full color, obviously now representing both of their dreams and fantasies, the two drive to the pier; but instead of finding work on a ship, they confront one another is a game of switched identities.

      The very questions which Ilias first asked Panagiotis upon meeting him are reversed as the Albanian now challenges the Greek—“Where are you from, mate?”; “I’m Albanian.” “How long have you been here?; “Two and a half years.” “Got a job?”; “Yes.” “How much do you earn a day?; “5,000.” “Like it here?; “Yes, and you?” as the boy pretends he is an American from Chicago, encountering Ilias at a bar—the two of them now emphatically having switched roles, finally permitting them to come together in a deep, loving hug.

      The film seems to end, accordingly, on a note of reparative resolution as the credits appear. But after the credits we are returned, alas, to the mean world of reality. Both have been arrested, Panagiotis sent to Crete to stand trial, while Ilias still awaits a trial in Athens, his home city, which perhaps can no longer be described as such.

      Much like Montgomery Clift’s character in the George Stevens 1951 movie of the same name, the young Albanian immigrant is only punished for desiring a place in the sun.

 

Los Angeles, November 2, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (November 2022).

André Téchiné | Les Roseaux sauvages (Wild Reeds) / 1994

blowing in the wind

by Douglas Messerli

 

Olivier Massart, Gilles Taurand, André Téchiné (sceenwriters), André Téchiné (director) Les Roseaux sauvages (Wild Reeds) / 1994

 

Yes, this is another young gay coming-out movie. But it is far too much more to describe it as that. The young boarding-school boy, François Forestier (Gaël Morel) of André Téchiné’s film, is certainly ready to discover his sexuality, given his close, non-sexual, relationship with his teacher’s beautiful daughter, Maïte Alvarez (Élodie Bouchez), but he is not only a shy boy, but an obedient farmer’s son, determined to become the best in his class, but also—as his teacher herself confirms—is not only over-eager but too self-confident, particularly when it comes to his abilities in French literature. His math skills are a bit more dubious, as his even more removed classmate, Serge Bartolo (Stéphane Rideau) perceives, who is willing to exchange math answers in return for help in literary essays.

      But these gymnasium exchanges have, actually, little to do with the problems these youths are facing. The film begins, seemingly in loving generic devotion, with a new wedding between Serge’s older brother, Pierre to a young bride, Irène, which in any other film might be portrayed as an absolutely joyful event. But here, we quickly learn, Pierre, a solider momentarily on leave from the French-Algerian war—a former student of Maïte’s mother, Madame Alvarez (Michèle Moretti)—has married his bride only to find a way to escape from the war, and is seeking, through her, a Communist member, a route to hide out for a period of time. She morally refuses him: he is and his family members, after all, are former Algerian residents who oppose Algerian independence. The Communists might have tried to intervene for French men opposed to the war, but he is a member of the Algerian rightest group, and intervention in his case is a sticky situation.

       Director Téchiné says nothing of this, presuming his French audience will comprehend the political situation, but American audiences need to know how difficult the French political situation was, when many French who had lived wealthy lives in Algeria such as Serge and other politically opposed figures, were now suddenly ousted from their somewhat privileged worlds.

      As the young boys, both outsiders, François and Serge, crawl into each other’s beds, finding  temporary comfort in each other’s bodies, things become even more complex, as François, suddenly confronting that he is, indeed, a “faggot”—a scene beautifully realized as he shouts the word out over and over again into a mirror until it finally becomes a declaration of true identity—realizes that his new would-be lover is far more attracted to his virginal female friend, and later, after he shifts rooms, perceives that Henri (Frédéric Gorny), a bi-sexual older student, is just as attracted to his woman friend, is quite devastated by the situations he must confront.

      The death in war of Pierre sends Maïte’s mother into a psychological breakdown: she has, after all, been directly responsible for his death by refusing to help him.  Maïte, now left alone, is even more confused about her possible relationships with men in general.

       Téchiné reminds us that youth is a very difficult period, particularly in relationship to sexual identity. But here, we also have deep political alliances that confuse everyone. Both Serge and Henri accuse the good-Catholic-farm boy François of being a coward, and they are right; he cannot comprehend either of their own deep emotional involvements with the political situations of the day. His immersion into their lives is simply sexual. But that, of course, is just as confusing and troubling, revealed so terribly with his visit to a local shoe-salesman—known as a gay man in the local community of Toulouse—who, when François asks him for advice, cannot even remember his feelings as a youth. Youth, it is clear, regarding both sex and politics, cannot rely on the older generation who can offer no significant answers, only simplistic mantras; even the sympathetic Monsieur Morelli (Jacques Nolot) will not honestly answer Henri’s questions about the failures of the Algerian revolution, even after the French have retreated.

     The wonder of Téchiné’s film is that it offers no easy solutions. It is for the young “reeds,” who in their adolescent tenacity, will survive into the future and come to terms with reality, as opposed to the old oaks of Aesop’s fable retold by La Fontaine.

 

Los Angeles, November 3, 2016

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (November 2016).

 

 

 

Mike Sobi | Pancakes / 2023 [animation]

strawberry fields are forever

by Douglas Messerli

 

Mike Sobi (screenwriter, artist, and director) Pancakes / 2023 [6 minutes] [animation]

 

Having just broken up with his ex-boyfriend Eddie sits at the gay bar of Cupid’s B❤️w where evidently everyone falls in love, some meeting up falling immediately into a kissing and sex meetup on the bar floor.

     But Eddie (Kevin Anthony) is sad, and just drinks. That is until Asher (Ethan J. Polensky) joins him.

 

    The next morning Eddie awakens understandably a more than a little hung over. He gets a call from a friend who insists he bringing himself and two others over for lunch, refusing to hear any other answer that Eddies assent. Obviously, this is a friend who insists on cheering Eddie up.

     Eddie gets up, looks at himself in the mirror, and realizes that he is no condition to have guests.

    But then, on top of it, he hears a voice in the next room, the guest from the night before, evidently, who’s busy rolling a joint. The new friend, Asher, has evidently taken the drunken Eddie home, listened to his life story, and slept on the living room couch, Eddie clearly having been three sheets to the wind.

     He explains to the unknown stoner under his blanket that he’s “supposed to meet someone”; “Right, someone,” responds Asher rushing off to dress and leave, as all overnight guests are expected to do, even if they never even shared a bed.

    When he hears about how Asher spent the night in bed, he admits that it’s really sweet of him, the visitor suggesting, “Well, I try to keep my one-night stands standing.”

      His telephonic friend is now suggesting he’s bringing 5-6 people for lunch.

   His one-night stand is halfway out the door, adding, “I don’t know if pancakes are good for hangovers, but it’s all I know how to make.”

      Before Eddie might even protest, the door slams shut. In the refrigerator he finds a stack of rosy red strawberry pancakes, bringing the film back into the color of the beginning scenes.

      Eddie rushes out, dressed only in his bathrobe, to tell his overnight guest to “Wait!” clearly intrigued and thankful for his gift instead of the calls he receiving which demand Eddie pay for the lunch. They get to talking, Eddie admitting he’s not exactly over his ex, which Asher assures him he has told him last night. In fact, declares Asher, he’s still having a difficult time about his ex. Eddie invites him to stay just a little longer, and finally Asher introduces himself, as does Eddie.

     But when he reaches to open the door, giving one another a kiss, both promising “pancakes first,” and Eddie attempts to turn the door handle, Asher almost resignedly describes the situation: “We’re locked out, aren’t we?”

      Let’s hope there’s a nearby locksmith who can open them up to the world of strawberry pancakes.

      This charming animation from 2023 is definitely worth viewing.

 

Los Angeles, March 23, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (March 2026).

Philippe Vallois | Nous étions un seul homme (We Were One Man) / 1979

cuddling with a corpse

by Douglas Messerli

 

Philippe Vallois, Anne Roumeguère  and Rolf Schultz (screenplay), Philippe Vallois (director)

Nous étions un seul homme (We Were One Man) / 1979

 

Although  We Were One Man is in the fact the literal translation of Philippe Vallois’ amazing 1979 film Nous étions un seul homme, it feels like there is something missing in the English language translation. The title in French sounds to me like a possible war-time phrase, suggesting the French fought as one person, as one man, the nation working together as a single unit to rid themselves of the Germans.*

      None of this is suggested in the English language translation, which, contrarily, makes the film sound like it might be something closer to German transgender Charlotte von Mahlsdorf’s 1992 autobiography, later adapted by Doug Wright as the play I Am My Own Wife. Mahlsdorf survived by being true to her gender identification, hiding from the Nazi’s in full sight by living as a woman.

      Yet given the context of Vallois’ film—in which a slightly crazed French peasant, living alone outside a small village in an abandoned farmhouse, discovers a German soldier who has been wounded, drags him home and nurses him to health—such wartime jargon, if it existed, is terribly important. Although that French fool, Guy Rouveron (Serge Avedikian) eventually develops a deep mutual relationship of love with the Nazi soldier, Rolf (Piotr Stanislas), the title is not simply celebrating their eventual sexual entwining, but strangely argues that they too rose up as a single force, French and German, to fight for the freedom to express not only their sexual desires but their personal oddities and obsessions. Their war is a highly personal one that must be fought out between the two of them with little support of the beings surrounding them.

     Indeed it is the oddity of Vallois’ couple that makes his film so very memorable. By all regards you might never imagine an odder couple (even Neil Simon’s Felix Unger and Oscar Madison had more in common). A former young Hitlerjugend Rolf, as a handsome blonde, muscular, statuesque, blue-eyed beauty, looks the part. He daily exercises, takes in the pleasures of nature, and walks a stray dog he has found and trained. Even he admits that throughout most of his life he has been a been educated in how to think and behave without ever questioning the values which have gone into his becoming a perfect Nazi killing machine. Rolf is rational, logical. and strong, despite the taunts of his new French acquaintance Guy, who insists that he is stronger. The only thing that seems to be missing is his gun, a weapon that Guy has instinctually taken from him and hidden away in the rafters of the old farmhouse.

     Guy surprisingly—given his almost gaunt, runt-like stature and a body that is constantly leaning forward in potential motion—is the stronger of the two, at least in his willfulness regarding Rolf. And it is the mad insistence of his own reality that keeps Rolf from simply leaving and returning to his military unit in the front. Moreover, as I have hinted in words such as “crazed” and “mad,” Guy is anything but logical; in fact, there is good evidence by the end of the film that he is truly insane, formerly locked away in an asylum which, when the Germans arrived, the staff abandoned, leaving their patients to their own destinies.

    Madness, of course, is a relative thing, particularly in times of war, and Guy, at times, seems as rational or perhaps reversely as crazed as those around him in the nearby village. Many of the women, including the local prostitute and the love-starved young woman of this tale, Jenine (Catherine Albin)—both of whom have given their bodies willingly to Guy, whom some describe as the town idiot—are punished by the violent males, severely in the prostitute’s case, for their offers of pleasure to the enemies of normalcy: the Germans, the morally degenerate, and in Guy’s case, the mad. At moments one has to wonder whether the determined punishments of such minor crimes are not madder than the acts of the outsiders they fear. But being occupied in war allows them few other opportunities for serious contemplation.

     With his new friend, Guy now begins to clumsily commit to daily work-outs, nature walks, and other activities which he has never imagined. For his part, he offers Rolf the ability to work by sawing down trees for heating tinder and to participate in other farm chores.

     Guy also is considered as a kind of naïf artist, some of his artwork pasted to the farmhouse wall; when he discovers Rolf looking at photographs of his own family members, Guy immediately gives them a place of honor on a narrow ledge serving the equivalent of a mantelpiece. Later, Guy even makes the terribly bold move of bringing his bed into the same room where Rolf sleeps, just to enable, as he explains, their fondly regarded conversations.

     The several long scenes of their almost comic workouts and treks through nature evoke a sense in Vallois’ film of the many similar arcadian and often comical passages in François Truffaut’s Jules et Jim (1962). This film owes a large debt to Truffaut’s movie, including Guy’s later attempts to offer up one of his weekly visits to Jenine to Rolf.

       But Rolf, previously unused to thinking, has increasingly been curious about things he is discovering about himself, including his growing attraction to the impetuous, constantly-in-motion, Guy. And Jenine, herself, observing during her regular deliveries of food and wine to the couple, the near bucolic world in the two now live, plots a way to bring them closer.

      As Rolf gradually begins to identify his love for Guy, tensions arise, mostly because of Guy’s inability to assimilate himself to the world in which he actually lives and his confusion arising from being molded by what the society around him deems as normal behavior. In many respects he is like Rolf before arriving in the brave new world in which the German now discovers himself.

      Accordingly, when Rolf attempts to translate their ruff-housing hugs into an actual kiss, Guy suddenly pulls away, confusing and angering Rolf who completely breaks off what he has now presumed was a developing romance.

      Disappearing, like the camouflage uniform he keeps trying to recreate, Rolf literarily moves off, returning to nature, and even hiding himself within it—much to the anger of the even more clueless Guy. Guy now only gets momentary glimpses of his friend, as if seeing him through the lens of a surreal-like kaleidoscope.

     Their separation leads to a violence one would never have expected of the innocent Guy, who threatens his only friend with a knife and ultimately kills Rolf’s beloved pet dog. Nonetheless, it is clear that Rolf has now become the stronger, physically, mentally, and most importantly, emotionally.

      When the two finally reunite, sharing in a large drunken meal provided by the window-spying Jenine, something finally begins to click in Guy’s hazy sense of self. When he announces that he is about to make his weekly visit to his girlfriend, Rolf begs him to stay, finally confronting him with Guy’s lie that before coming to live in the isolated farm he was living in Niagara Falls in the US—almost a Freudian choice of location, one might argue, given its association with love and marriage—the two finally breaking through the barriers that have been preventing them from their desires. Suddenly they ecstatically come together through sex in a manner that clearly they—and, at this late time in the script, we—might never have imagined.

      As the two lie together satiated by their lust, the peeping-tom Jenine joins them, as if to assert her role in working to unite the two against the outside forces they face. She is not seeking to join them in sex but simply to receive their embrace for giving them a helping hand.

     Yet even though the Allies are nearing this still Nazi-held region, the forces demanding regimented behavior still occupy the territory as Jenine’s father and a local partisan leader, who having suddenly become aware of Rolf’s existence in their territory and of his attachment to Guy, break in to find them in a symbolically conjugal bed.

     Jenine is sent home for later punishment, Guy left behind in recognition of his innocent idiocy, while Rolf is taken away with the intention of a painful cross-examination and execution. For perhaps the first time in his life, Guy moves quickly with conscious intent, retrieving Rolf’s hidden pistol and following Rolf and the local tribunal members.

     Scaring them away with a wild shot, Guy now carefully aims and shoots his lover in the heart, proving once again Chekhov’s maxim that if you show a gun in the first act of a play who have to use it in the last.

     His assassination of Rolf is obviously more humane than what the others had planned for him, and by killing his friend he can now also claim the body, taking it back home with him to bury it in an earthen hideaway that Rolf had dug out when he buried his dog.

      Guy carefully places the body into the branch-and-leaf-covered dugout and crawls in with it, cuddling up the Rolf’s corpse. Now no one can ever take away his beloved other, as the two have literally been transformed into one.

      If this seemingly bizarre, slightly necrophiliac act seems a strange way to end this stunningly original work of cinema, it’s the only way it could have properly been concluded. For Guy’s act is now a true act of madness that totally sacrifices the body to the heart in a way that, perhaps, not even a military act of bravery can express one’s commitment and love to family and country.**

 

*I asked several of my French friends about this, writer and art dealer Jean Frémon that he’d never heard to such a phrase applied to the War.

**This reminds me a little of the central image that the great creator of monstrous visions, James Whale recounts through the character portraying him in Gods and Monsters (1998) when his World War I lover was shot and killed just outside the trench where Whale was trapped, forcing him for days to stare out at the body impaled upon a protective wire fence. If only he might have been able to retrieve that body, bring it into his trench and sleep with it in his arms for a night perhaps Whale would not have been haunted with horrific images for the rest of his life.

     

Los Angeles, March 3, 2021

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

Édouard Molinaro | La Cage aux Folles / 1978

dragging out the dragons

by Douglas Messerli

 

Marcello Danon, Édouard Molinaro, Jean Poiret, and Francis Veber (screenplay, based on La Cage aux Folles by Jean Poiret), Édouard Molinaro (director) La Cage aux Folles / 1978

 

Édouard Molinaro’s 1978 movie La Cage aux Folles is the kind of LGBT masquerade which liberal straights absolutely adore. How could they not given that this travesty nicely plays up the Rainbow Coalition’s agenda by portraying the narrow-minded vision of the establishment—in this case the Charrier family, Louise and Simon (Carmen Scarpitta and Michel Galabru), the latter of the two who represents the conservative government’s ministry of family values—while re-establishing the fact that two gay men can very effectively raise a child, in this case their handsome son, Laurent (Rémi Laurent), while at the same time awarding its audience with an outrageously campy spoof whose central action is located in a gay drag cabaret. It succeeds in attaining its viewers’ sympathy quite easily by serving up gay, transvestite figures who most of its core audience might never encounter in the real world, thus making them feel absolutely safe to emotionally dote on the symbols these absurd characters presumably represent. I apologize for forgetting to mention the fact that as pure farce this work is also occasionally funny. Yes, at moments even I laughed each of the couple of times I’ve viewed this.

      I often try to forget the fact that the outrageously effeminate male at the center of this family, Albin Mougeotte who performs under the stage name of “Zaza Napoli” (Michael Serrault), swishes and sways across every room he crosses as if he were maneuvering his steps upon a moving camel’s back while screaming out at the slightest of surprises and delights as if he had just spotted a herd of mice heading in his direction. I have nothing against effeminate men but actors, gay or straight, who perform as if in a Punch and Judy show while supposedly embodying a semi-naturalistic comic figure simply don’t tickle any bone in my body—let alone the funny one! 

    The partner of this jittery gasping machine, in this case Renato Baldi (Ugo Tognazzi) who finds his always exasperating lover to be a load of laughs, accordingly, simply confuses me, as if instead of playing someone who might represent a modicum of sanity he has instead wandered in from the audience who get their chuckles from this really rather drab portrayal of human beings as one might imagine them if one lived on Saturn.

      While I often used to agree with Roger Ebert’s kinder assessments of the films he’d seen, this time round I agree with his former fencing partner Gene Siskel, who wrote: “For me, La Cage aux Folles was over soon after it began. It's all so predictable. This could have been a Luci & Desi comedy routine.” Ebert, who could not bear with the empty stereotypes of Andy Warhol’s films, found this “cage of madwomen” to be filled with "comic turns in the plot [that] are achieved with such clockwork timing that sometimes we're laughing at what's funny and sometimes we're just laughing at the movie's sheer comic invention. This is a great time at the movies."

       The “great time” Ebert was apparently enjoying has to do with a rather simple plot. The son of the owners of this disreputable cabaret wants to marry the daughter, Andrea, of the moralistic Charriers. The family insists upon meeting the cultural attaché to Italy—the position Laurent has  cooked up for his wayward father—and his mother before they can proceed with the wedding in which Simon now sees as a favorable alternative to the fact that the current head of government, whose administration Simon represents, has just been discovered dead in the arms of a prostitute.

     Laurent’s birth mother, who hasn’t set eyes on in years, is simply not the maternal type, she admits, despite Renato’s pleading that she attend the dinner. But what to do with Albin-Zaza and their black barefoot butler, who hired by Albin, is more comfortable with wearing women’s beachwear? And what to do with their living and dining rooms that were surely decorated by a legion of mad interior designer queens?

  When Albin attempts to resolve the problem by showing up in housewife drag, chaos is afoot, especially when unexpectedly the two mothers (biological and emotional) congregate in celebration of Laurent’s impending marriage and the journalists for a gossip paper have planted themselves at the Baldi front door.    

     Even if the celebrants below look a bit like the visitors at the bar in of Star Wars the audience can easily predict the inevitable solution: put the hypocritical Charriers in drag and drag the dragons out the downstairs door.

     The wedding is a small affair even if the easily offended Albin fills it up with his self-absorbed howls, to which movie audiences apparently screamed with pleasure—as presumably the producers also did since the film sold over 5 million tickets in France and another 3 million in Germany, and the US remake (about which I’ll write sometime in the future) was also a roaring success.

 

Los Angeles, October 14, 2020

Reprinted from World Cinema Review and My Queer Cinema blog (October 2020).