Alexander Kluge | Abschied von gestern (Anita G.) (Yesterday Girl) / 1966

on a binge

by Douglas Messerli

 

Alexander Kluge (screenwriter, based on his story, and director) Abschied von gestern (Anita G.) (Yesterday Girl) / 1966

 

Alexander Kluge’s film Yesterday Girl begins with what appears to be a kind of refrigerator binge by the heroine, Antia G (played by Luge’s sister, Alexandra); soon discerning her near complete displacement in the world in which she finds herself, one so perceives what Anita’s whole life is somewhat similar, a world in which for a few days she finds herself enveloped in West Germany’s economic miracle, only the very next day to discover herself once more on the streets without anything to eat. For this woman, who has managed to escape from East German hardships and, what she herself describes as a life of fear, she has not yet been able to find a place in the new society.

      In part, the problem is simply that the new society she has joined defines itself almost entirely upon possessions, while she has nothing but her face and figure. Since she has not tested high enough, she can no longer continue her education, and almost all of the jobs Anita is offered—such as a hotel cleaning woman—put her on the level of an immigrant. Is it any wonder that this intelligent, good-looking girl might wish to steal a bag, a sweater, a coat, in order to share in the Western “benefits?”

     What’s more, her beauty obviously breeds jealousy from other employees and often encourages her employers to engage her in temporary trysts, all at little benefit to her in the end. Even in her relationship with a government minister, Pichota (Günter Mack), during which she is treated to champagne, good food, and a temporary bed. She is forced to live in bombed-out buildings and to wash her clothes in a nearby stream. The sex-driven minister can give her no money, since his wife controls the checking accounts!

     Throughout, the authorities—although pretending to concern themselves with figures such as Anita—is absurdly incompetent, completely unable to deal even with her straight-forward answers and questions. Even her school advisor (although she is not legally registered) is unable to or refuses to deal with her pleas for help in her simple daily survival.

     Had Kluge been a different kind of director, the film might have turned into a deeply disturbing sociological portrait of the post-War II German society. But, the director, influenced by Godard and other figures of the French New Wave—and positioning himself in the forefront of the New German Cinema, which would soon after come to be dominated by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders, and others—treats his character’s serious dilemmas as satire.

     More importantly, his remarkable sister actress, dressed nearly always stylishly despite living in hovels, sems almost impervious from the endless series of rejections she daily faces. Not so very differently from Fassbinder’s tragic-comic Franz Bieberkopf, Anita G is determined that somehow things will get better, as she hunkers down in order to try to penetrate the gobbledygook of her professor’s lectures, the lame assurances of love Pichota and others with whom she beds offer, and the attacks by those to whom she owes money.

     At times Kluge, influenced by some of the simplistic tropes of the early 1960s filming—the speeding up frame, the long circling of camera around the oddly positioned heroine (at one point, suitcase in hand, Anita sits alone in a past pasture simply too exhausted to go on), and the use of toy soldiers to represent the larger forces at work—distract from the more cleverly executed scenes of city life. But, for the most part, Kluge brings a freshness to the entire project that allows him to say everything he wants to say without sentimentalizing or strangling his central figure in sociological significance. If Antia represents any number of displaced migrants, she is also exceptional, which allows us to remain engaged in her story and permits us to hope for her betterment.

     Sadly, for this young girl, there is no choice but to abandon her youth to imprisonment—a place where at least she can sleep comfortably and be fed three times a day, and not so very different, after all from her parents and she suffered in East Germany.

     The final scenes of this film are played out with rules of prison being carefully explained to her by more efficient than caring, but nonetheless nonjudgmental matrons, representing many strict mothers who may help birth the lost child into the new society in which she has chosen to live. Too bad she has had to institutionalize herself to get the help she asked from those “Good Germans” she had previously encountered.

 

Los Angeles, September 6, 2016

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (September 2016).

Victor Luvi | e aí, partiu? (So He Left?) / 2022

the thieving magpies

by Douglas Messerli

 

Victor Luvi (screenwriter and director) e aí, partiu? (So He Left?) / 2022 [15.40 minutes]

 

Brazilian Telemílênio’s 2022 production of e aí, partiu reads like a delicious screen test for an upcoming adult gay soap opera filled with various versions of incest, generational warfare, and gay sexual intrigue that one would seldom encounter on US screens.

     This short film written and directed by Victor Luv, bills itself only for what it currently is, a short; but it’s so stuffed with other matter that can see its aspirations. Hardly have we begun the film, for example, than the film’s stud hero, Daniel (Theo Negueíra), dressing himself for his day’s outing, looks at his image in a mirror and kisses it in delight. He is young and pretty, and he certainly knows it.

      Only a short while later in an upscale grocery he runs into his aunt (Anne de Conte) who delights in finding her nephew working as a delivery boy, working his way up the money ladder (the only stairway to success with which she’s acquainted) and is willing to put in a good word with her husband, Daniel’s uncle, for a possible job with him.

      Daniel has lied. In fact, he’s on his way to his uncle at that very moment with a different kind of delivery, of bodily love. Evidently the two have had sex previously, but now the uncle has taken over an apartment that his wife only occasionally uses instead of the usual motel. It’s safer that way.

     The boy’s uncle Roni (Abiu José), unlike so many fictional uncles, is a handsome man in great shape, just the kind of uncle a horny gay boy who hints that work as a male prostitute might want. Presumably with such a fox of a relative, he’s performing gratis or at least cut rate. And the way to go at it it’s clear they boy enjoy the familial canoodling (it’s noted that he’s an uncle only through marriage, and that his aunt is the blood relative).

      But just as we suspected—watching Daniel’s entry to the building (and kissing himself again  in the glass doorway of the upscale escape) from the viewpoint, obviously, of another—auntie, long suspecting his husband of naughty goings-on since their sexual life has long been empty, has hired a detective, who reports back that it is not a woman, but a young man who has entered and left the apartment.

     Auntie has no idea what to make of that until he shows her a photo of the boy, which immediately resolves everything: her husband has hired her nephew to help him in the heavy research of his work. How wonderful, she proclaims, as she admits and explains her betrayal to her hubby.

    Roni doesn’t waste any time, meeting up with Danny boy once more, this time arguing that they should run away together for a few weeks, having had such a good time together. Daniel pauses with second thoughts; but when Roni explains that, because money is no limit, he will provide well for their time together, his nephew quickly warms up to the idea. Roni tells his wife that he has to complete a deal in Milan that may take up two weeks or more, and promising her another new ring, hurries off with Daniel to paradise.

      Since both actors declare amidst the credits that we can keep up with them on Instagram, I presume that the creators are attempting to drum up enough support to create that longer soap opera. I’d love to see the fireworks and more lovemaking between the handsome uncle and the self-indulgent nephew, one so mendacious and other so self-centered that they truly deserve one another as they play out their affair behind their money-grubbing wife and aunt’s back.

      Once more, however, I plead for better English translation. This film was titled in the written credits, for example, as “So, Left” instead the actual meaning of the title, “Then He Left.” I have little idea of what the self-given title might mean except, presumably, “So He Left?.”

 

Los Angeles, September 28, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (September 2022).

Victor Luvi | Longe de Cuidade (Far from the City) / 2022

the return of the prince

by Douglas Messerli

 

Victor Luvi (screenwriter and director) Longe de Cuidade (Far from the City) / 2022 [24 minutes]

 

Telemílênio’s production of Brazilian director Victor Luvi’s Far from the City is a soap-opera fairy tale about a gay man Sávio (Zeck Allves) who has been almost imprisoned in his own father’s home by an evil step-mother Sandra (Bela Lima) who has not only claimed the house after the father’s death, but taken the son’s money left to him by his father.  

     We know the young boy is gay because he sports pink hair and pink shorts, His mean step-mom has just ordered him to clean the floors and dust the walls of their country home, jobs for which he has no time since her central role in life, so she believes, is to attract all the straight men she meets. Sandra challenges him for questioning why he’s never before heard of this new relative of hers? And he expresses his longing for his dead father, which further arouses her anger. She was never meant to be a mother to replace what he has lost!

      She’s expecting a nephew from a wealthy brother or sister of whom she’s never mentioned to  her step-son. And she wants things to be perfect for his arrival. The boy cleans house, but then quickly runs off to his best female friend Fernanda (Elaine Dias)—all troubled gay boys in LGBTQ movies have a best female friend, the species of which once was brutally described as “fag hags”—to whom he tells everything in return for her support. She’s about to leave on her way to a school, having won a scholarship, but she’s worried about leaving him alone with the monstrous Sandra. While they’re talking about the situation, a hunky young man with a suitcase comes by asking for the location of the very property in which Sávio lives, Riacho Grande.

       He points out the direction as if he might be some other house than the one in which lives, although after the young Prince moves on, Fernanda sighs, claiming she has found the man she has been looking for all her life—even though a moment before she was describing her new boyfriend. And finally, even Sávio admits he is most attracted to the newcomer.

       Renan makes his way to the gate where Sandra greets him, more interested in how he’s changed and grown up, evidently, than in letting him in or, despite his several mentions that he’s sweaty, suggesting a drink or even a shower. Renan must finally ask to be invited in.

       Finally, when Renan returns, Sandra orders him to make dinner, but they’re out of gas for which she blames him.

        Renan sits outside in a pout with bare chested Renan coming to his side to ask if he’s okay, but Sávio dare not complain. Renan tells him that Sandra was not spoken of well in his house, and was seen as a slacker. But Sávio is afraid she might hear. And indeed, Sandra is watching, wondering what the two boys have found in common and determining almost immediately to rectify the situation. The two hug, and Renan assures him that at least while he’s there he has a friend.

       Renan finally gets his shower, but Sandra stands nearby, a voyeur, stroking her stomach in obvious desire.

       Later that evening, Renan enters Sávio’s bedroom to continue their conversation of earlier on. Sávio admits that she makes his life hell, but is afraid that if she discovers Renan in his room she will throw a tantrum. As if to further allow his friend room to breathe, he tells him that in his family her nickname is “fast panties,” which delights the both of them. Renan asks if she’s ever attempted to “come on” to him, but Sávio only laughs saying that she hates him and besides…he pauses, Renan filling in the words, “What? Don’t you like women?” He admits but suggests that no one needs to know it, and Renan promises to keep his secret, adding “I can tell you a secret: me too!”  But they realize she may be listening in (she is in fact), and they quietly plan to meet a short time later outdoors.

     I’m so glad that that Luvi included this scene so that we truly know these boys were gay. I can’t imagine how we might have even suspected it previously!

     Renan waits on the nearby park bench but Sávio does not show up, Sandra having locked him in. Instead, Sandra herself appears, at first simply praising his looks, but quickly attempting to seduce him. When Renan finally reveals he not at all interested in her and that he has been waiting for Sávio, she suddenly opens her purse, pulls out a knife and goes after him. Doesn’t every evil stepmother carry a knife in her purse?

       In the next scene we see a discussion between Sávio and Fernanda in which he reports that Sandra attacked Renan and has confessed to having done something similar to his father. Renan is in the hospital, his family having come to take him home when he’s better. He admits that he has not seen Renan since and doesn’t even know what hospital or in what city Renan is. Fernanda admits that she is sad about leaving at this very time, but Sávio admits he’s just obtained a job and will work to save up enough money in order to escape.

      Sometime later, Sávio is working at his new job behind the counter when Renan suddenly appears. The two greet and talk, Sávio taking his break. The two continue their conversation, Sávio amazed that Renan came back, hardly able to resist asking why, in the first place was Renan was sent to his aunt. Renan admits that his mother found out he was gay and sent him away from the city. After a great deal of hesitation, Sávio finally admits that he had imagined, in his times of deepest loneliness somehow living with Renan.

       Renan claims he wished he too have been there to take away Sávio’s fears. The two kiss intensely, Renan suggesting that his friend will now be late for his lunch break. Sávio wonders where he is now going, and Renan says while they were kissing he stole the key to his house and will be waiting there when Sávio finishes work. The pink-haired boy, it seems, has found his Prince.

       This work is so negligible that I can’t suggest you rush out to see it, but since it’s fairly difficult to find I don’t imagine that many will be seeking it out. IMDb doesn’t even list it. I have kept my promise to try to be as thorough as I can.

 

Los Angeles, September 4, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (September 2022).

 

Juan Sebastián Valencia | Kisses to Kevin / 2022

the route to a man’s heart

by Douglas Messerli

 

Juan Sebastián Valencia (screenwriter and director) Kisses to Kevin / 2022 [14 minutes]

 

Kevin (Michael Gould) is a little strange. He has several jars of buttons, beans, quarters, tiny doll-like ghost figures, etc. on the counter of his bed, an old Victrola in the corner, and plastic stars hanging from the ceiling. But the handsome young man is great in bed, as Sam (Mackenzie Rasmus) who’s just had sex with him makes clear in his concurrence with Kevin’s “wow”: “Wow indeed.” He’s been a little late in agreeing to join in sex with Sam, who apparently has tried to get him into bed for two years, Kevin believing that “your body shouldn’t be shared with strangers.” By this time Sam almost has become a friend. But now that he’s there, why does he want to leave so suddenly?    

     Sam is clearly one of the numerous “fuck ‘em and leave ‘em” kind of guys; as he puts it “I don’t date,” evidently meaning he’s interested only in one-night stands. Kevin tries to lure him to stay a little longer, having some fresh baked brownies he’d be happy to serve.

     Kevin is angered, however, that he thinks that just because he’s invited him for brownies that he’s inviting him to date! But Sam sees it as a healthy sign that he hooks up with a lot of guys  since he perceives himself as not being that sociable. Which is actually a perceptive realization since many gay men with constantly changing partners use sex as a substitute for true communication.

      Kevin also describes himself as “not that sociable,” but even his observation that if Sam leaves he will missing the best brownies in LA, with caramel and hot fudge, shows just how truly inviting his personality is, which Sam finds to be “really annoying,” as he leaps back into bed ready to wrestle his friend into another go-round. He suddenly pulls back, however, realizing that he is truly drawn back to Kevin. The two lay for a moment mulling the consequences.

       But Kevin can’t contain himself, “You want me to heat them up.” “Only if you have ice cream.” “I do,” which results in Sam’s confession that he’s obsessed with ice cream.

       Kevin leaves to bring back his treats, while Sam is left to take in the gestalt of the room, the mobile of colored star-like figures, the fan gently blowing, the jars of mementoes, a photograph of what must be Kevin as a child dressed up as a ghost. If the room is somewhat childlike, it is also charmingly expressive of the individual who lives there. Sam clearly finds it comforting and restful, as he nearly sinks back into sleep.

        At that very moment Kevin arrives with an absolutely stunning star-shaped brownie with a scoop of, we soon discover, homemade peach ice cream. When asked if he’s a professional, Kevin replies he’s always dreamed of one day opening a bakery. From Sam’s reaction, the taste must be as heavenly as it looks since the musical score suddenly sings out a chorus of sighs and exclamations.

       Sam finally talks, asking the obvious question, “If you’re not a baker what are you wasting your time at?”

       Kevin turns out to be a nurse, the same profession as Sam’s father, who met his mother as she was serving her residency as a doctor. He goes on to relate that they’re now retired and travelling.

       When Kevin asks what he does, Sam admits to being an accountant at SONY pictures, which truly impresses his bedmate, who suddenly pours out a series of questions from “can he go on tours at any time” and “what’s his favorite movie?”

        And Sam evidently has a favorite movie, actually from Columbia pictures (now a subsidiary of SONY), which, he reveals, was why he went into accounting; but when Kevin asks which movie, Sam suddenly grows quiet and repeats his routine of “I’ve got to be going.”

       “This was nice,” he reports after pulling on his pants, “Maybe I can be the accountant of your bakery one day.”      

     “I’d like that,” Kevin answers moving in for one final kiss, which Sam rejects, suggesting that if he’s going to be his accountant he can’t be giving him kisses.

       By this time, if at first Kevin seemed a bit strange, we are in total agreement with him when he asks “Why are you so weird sometimes, Samuel,” a name Sam doesn’t like, but which he still permits Kevin to call him, sounding like his parents. “You can call me Kev, so it doesn’t sound like my parents either, but I’m not sure I would want you as my accountant anymore.”

       The challenge surprises Sam. “Not unless you kiss me.”

      “Kev, I don’t date. We hooked up, the brownie and ice cream were amazing but....you’re so damn cute.” He pauses yet again. “I don’t date,” Kevin insisting that he doesn’t either. But as he’s talking, Sam picks up one of Kevin’s jars, the one filled with tiny goblins.

        “What’s up with all this ghost stuff?”

        Kevin mumbles, “I was obsessed with Ghostbusters when I was kid.”

        Suddenly Sam is once more atop him, about to return to a series of sexual advances, “Really?”

        “You just said no dates, no accounting, no kisses.”

        “I feel like I have to pay for the best brownie in LA.”

        The two have, after their short date at Kevin’s place, obviously started something more than a one night fling. And we now know the name of Sam’s favorite movie.

 

Los Angeles, May 14, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (May 2022).  

John Schlesinger | Sunday Bloody Sunday / 1971

the cough

by Douglas Messerli

 

Penelope Gilliatt (screenplay), John Schlesinger (director) Sunday Bloody Sunday / 1971

 

It is strange that the John Schlesinger film I saw in 1971, at the time of its release, was completely different from the disk of Sunday Bloody Sunday I saw on Netflix yesterday. One scene, in particular, symbolizes how mistaken I was during my first visit to this work.

      Having overslept, and late for her promise to care for the Hodson children and dog so that their parents might escape their noisy British suburban household for a weekend, friend Alex Greville (Glenda Jackson), quickly makes herself a breakfast.

 

    I recall the original as a quiet and calm affair wherein she, almost with great regulation, makes coffee and toast. This time round I realized just how crazed and hectic was that same breakfast of leftover coffee, with cigarette butts strewn around the floor, and a sink full of leftover dishes. In short, Alex seems the last person in the world you might wish to invite over to care for a baby and two precociously aware young girls—particularly since she plans to also spend much of that “bloody” weekend in bed with her boyfriend during a governmental crisis and its quite prescient suggestions of the Northern Ireland Bogside massacre a few months later, when 14 people were shot and killed by police during a march against internment without trial.

       It’s so very strange that I should have seen Alex’s manic rush as a careful and civilized event, accomplished even with great grace when Howard and I, in our second year of our relationship first saw it. Roger Ebert’s opening comments to his 1971 review of the film state something I originally missed:

 

              The official East Coast line on John Schlesinger's Sunday Bloody

              Sunday was that it is civilized. That judgment was enlisted to carry

              the critical defense of the movie; and, indeed, how can the

              decent critic be against a civilized movie about civilized people?

              My notion, all the same, is that Sunday Bloody Sunday is about

              people who suffer from psychic amputation, not civility, and that

              this film is not an affirmation but a tragedy.

 

     In fact, the movie begins that way with the almost Dickensian household which Alex is about to care for representing a kind of exuberance of married life. The Hobson’s know of Alex’s affair with the handsome Bob Elkin (Murray Head) and might even secretly approve of their divorced friend’s new-found love; although they say nothing, their children are rather curious and overtly interested in the relationship. Even their over-large pet seems perfectly happy to intrude. Moreover, despite her disordered life, Alex is a good baby-sitter, mostly caring and attentive to the children. If things are not quite right in this world, Schlesinger hints they might almost be “civilized,” or controlled if nothing else.

     Yet, this talented director certainly provides numerous clues that something else is going on. It’s hard for today’s young, perhaps, to recognize just how intrusive was the rotary phone long before the constant pings and musical intrusions of cell-phones. Again and again, the director interrupts moments of love and caring with old-fashioned phone calls and with images of rotary dialing, to say nothing a busy-body phone operator (Bessie Love) who almost makes Lily Tomlin’s satirically obnoxious AT&T phone opera seem like a saint.

     She and Bob seem to be in love, and together they perform briefly as a nice pair of parental substitutes. But the circles of those endless rotary phones say almost everything.

     The social circles they inhabit are much larger than larger than the Hobson’s suburban retreat, as we soon see Bob rush away to London to his other lover, the much-besieged and over-worked doctor, Daniel Hirsch (played with panache by Peter Finch), a role offered first to Alan Bates and Ian Bannen. Bates had other filming assignments, and Bannen was wary of the deep kiss with which he meets his bisexual partner, Bob.

      This is one of the first true films of absolute bisexuality, with Bob openly admitting to liking sex with both women and men, and with both Alex and Daniel willing to accept the limitations of their loving sexual encounters with him. Both are pained by the temporariness he devotes to them, but both have also been clearly hurt in the past by others. Alex is an unhappy divorcée, and Daniel is a Jewish gay man with a history he cannot reveal to the community with which he is still very much intertwined, shown by a brief encounter with a former lover who is a heroin addict and a bar-mitzvah at which he is constantly questioned as to why he has never yet married, with members of his family hinting that sometimes less is better than nothing.

      Both have chosen basically empty relationships to salve their lonely and empty lives, which their “civilized” circles will not ever truly allow, and the rather self-centered Bob, a rather mediocre “light” sculptor, will never truly permit. He’s on his way to New York where he hopes to extend his flimsy career.

      Bob, in short, is a temporary phantom of love for both the pained Alex and Daniel, a pretty boy they have latched onto just to have some possibility of joy in their otherwise desolate lives. Neither are adept at truly loving, and both are scarred by their pasts. Unintentionally, Alex allows one of her young charges to run ahead with the family’s large dog, resulting in an automobile accident which kills the beast.

      The film ends with Daniel’s personal confession and the beginning of a doctor’s joke, trying to deny his own loneliness—“I am happy, except for missing him”—and ending with the old Jewish joke “Doctor, I came about my cough.” The cough, of course, is everything, the beginning of the end.

 

Los Angeles, February 29, 2020

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (February 2020).