a guide book to using others to impose order and power
by
Douglas Messerli
Jonathan
Palumbo and Andra Romano (screenplay), Andrea Romano (director) 9ème étage
droite (9th Floor to the Right) / 2022 [16 minutes]
Lorenzo,
an Italian-born masseur-physiotherapist (played by director Andrea Romano)
living in Paris is looking forward to his date in met on line, Marvin (Mexianu
Medenou). He’s showering when Marvin calls and explains he already outside the
building, Lorenzo giving him the precise instructions “9th Floor to the right.”
The tall and striking black man Marvin
arrives, however. with a filthy homeless man, Thomas (Matthieu Sampeur), who he
has found outside the building on the street and has brought him along to their
encounter simply so that he might shower.
Lorenzo is shocked, and at first refuses,
but Marvin argues that all the man needs is 5-minute shower and embarrasses his
new date by insisting that he has it all in control. Yet Lorenzo, although
hardly being able to refuse, is not at all allayed. As Thomas heads into the
shower, Lorenzo snaps “Do you do this often?”
Suddenly, of course, he has brought the
issues of both class and race to the door of his new supposed friend. And I
know this issue fairly well since when I first moved to Los Angeles, my Sun
& Moon offices were located in a high rise that had locked bathrooms; in
those days in that neighborhood in 1985 there were perhaps even more homeless
than now. If you recall those were the Ronald Regan days, when suddenly
hospitals and other institutions were closed down, forcing their patients to
the streets, to say nothing of the loss of jobs and benefits in a time before
we even had Obama Care. I let in several people I saw every day on the street
just to use the bathroom, but soon received a memo from the management making
it clear they were not allowed any such egress of their facilities. I still
continued occasionally, just out of empathy in a day before the city provided some
port-a-potties and weekly showering spots for these folk had been forced to
defecate in public. But finally, I was personally threatened by the management,
and forced to stop any such sympathetic gestures.
But, obviously, a private residence is a
place where such intrusions are almost unforgiveable. The man looks almost sick, suffering from a disease.
Marvin, it turns out, runs a start-up,
connecting companies with Instagram influencers.
Thomas, having finished with his shower,
appears naked, the two men opening the door at that very moment when Thomas steps
out from the shower. The gay gaze is obviously from director’s frame.
Lorenzo rushes to get a towel, Marvin
commenting, once they have closed the door, that Thomas is good-looking, a fact
which Lorenzo simply denies, Marvin teasing him of being jealous, a strange
thing indeed for someone to say that has shown up as a kind of Grindr date.
Thomas interrupts their sexual small-talk
asking if he has a T-shirt and socks he might wear. Lorenzo offers him both.
But then it goes even further when Thomas
asks Lorenzo if he has something to eat, Lorenzo quite stupidly asking “Are you
hungry,” with Marvin responding, “Of course, he’s hungry.”
He goes to the refrigerator and brings
back what’s left of a delicious birthday cake, a piece of which Thomas
immediately devours.
But Lorenzo is clearly pissed, and no
gentle stroking from Marvin can relieve the tension and the sense of intrusion
in his daily ritual that it has already involved. Yet Marvin and he do lay back
for a moment, Lorenzo still turning away. At that point Marvin, rests his hand
on Thomas’ leg, who stands up in distress and confusion.
Now we have entered an entirely new
dimension, wherein we realize that the supposedly empathetic Marvin has brought
back the homeless boy just for sex. His was not a reaching out of sympathy but out
of a sense of his power. Marvin calls him crazy, as Thomas speaks out, “Okay a shower.
You want my fucking ass!”
Lorenzo who has not noticed the hand-resting
event, is startled, upset beyond all else at this point, particularly when Marvin
begins to deny his action.
“Okay, a shower, but then you enjoy your
time; we’re chill. What’s wrong?”
By this time, we realize that everything
is wrong including our own perceptions of who Marvin is, and how he has been
manipulating the entire situation for his own pleasure, the fetish that some
gay men have for homeless boys now having been placed on the table, so to speak.
When Lorenzo finally tries to step in to
make it clear that he had nothing to do with Marvin’s intentions, his new “friend”
turns the problem on Thomas, even offering him 5 euro for his hot body.
As Thomas leaves, Lorenzo quietly explains
that he had nothing at all to do with this, while Thomas answers, as a lady
leaves an apartment with her son in disdain of the situation. Thomas answers
that he didn’t want to scream. Both, however, recognize the horror of the
situation.
As Lorenzo goes to clean up his bathroom
shower, a kind of fetish itself, he tells Marvin he can leave any time he
wants.
Marvin follows him, trying to re-encourage,
at least, with their sexual rendezvous, but Lorenzo turns angrily away. Marvin t
still cannot comprehend, “What’s the deal here?” and Lorenzo tells him it’s
over.
As Lorenzo’s would be lover turns back to
ask once more what Lorenzo’s name is, the Italian responds “Forget it.”
Both men have been reprehensible, Lorenzo
for not immediately offering his hospitality and friendship to the homeless man
because of his own fetish for cleanliness and the order of his world, and even
more so Marvin for his abuse and sense of empowerment over those in dire
straits. But it does appear, at least, as Lorenzo now sticks his fingers into
the cake, slowly devouring its deep chocolate, has learned something from the
series of events, a realization of his own fetish and separateness if nothing
else as he moves to the balcony, eating the cake with his fingers, which one
might describe as getting “dirty.” He has presumably been awakened while, in
this case, the black entrepreneur has not.
This short French film has deep dimensions
of political and social meaning where so many others simply focus on gay issues
and sex. This work provides a much-needed spotlight on some of the failures of
the gay community with its search for endless pleasure: cultural, financial,
and sexual.
Los
Angeles, July 24, 2026
Reprinted
from My Queer Cinema blog (July 2026).
