Cuong Ngo | The Golden Pin / 2009

the impossibility of turning a lover into a friend

by Douglas Messerli

 

Matt Guerin and Cuong Ngo (screenplay), Cuong Ngo (director) The Golden Pin / 2009 [15 minutes]

 

The Golden Pin is another film about the difficulties young men and women of Asian heritage have in coming out to their parents given the strong sense of familial expectations and cultural pressures. This work by Canadian director Cuong Ngo focuses on the character Long (Kris Duangphung), a swimmer in love with fellow swimmer Ryan (Ben Bela Böhm), who hasn’t yet been able to tell his parents about his sexuality.*

    This 15-minute film puts the central issue right up front, with Long’s Vietnamese father intoning what must have been a speech heard by his son many a time as he grew up, an intonation of family failures and desires that begins with the reminder that Long is their only son; they wanted more children but were allowed only one. All of his brothers were killed during the war. “You’re the only hope to continue the family line.”

     The centuries’ old heteronormative notion of the family line being continued dominates the young boy’s experience, and is an emotionally heated topic not easily shed even for a gay man. Clearly it’s having a terrible effect on his love life with Ryan as Long continues to date his beautiful girlfriend Vanessa (Lily Nguyen). And early into this work, Long’s family hosts an elegant party, to which Ryan is invited wherein his father announces that Long and Vanessa are to be married.

    A complete shock and sadness registers upon Ryan’s face, but this is not a soap opera, and basically, although there are certainly dark encounters that follow between the two gay lovers, the focus remains on Long and what the decision to obey family tradition means to him as he is forced to suffer the consequences of never being to find the love he really seeks.

      A beautiful sequence in the swimming pool where Ryan encounters him about not sharing the fact of his marriage is not played out as some hostile reprimand, but rather a true attempt by Ryan to try to probe into the wall Long has been forced to create in order to keep his desires in abeyance  in the process of suddenly turning his lover simply into a friend—an impossible proposition revealed in the next moment as the two young men kiss, with Long pulling away, apologizing, knowing that his actions are the wrong ones, but unable to challenge them.

      Lots of long looks in the mirror, stalking the room, staring on photographs of himself with Ryan, and other tropes of inner dilemma follow. But finally, it is his mother (Minh Ngoc Nguyen) who notices that her son cannot sleep and comes to him to talk. She senses his worry about the wedding and relates a long story beginning with the fact that for her wedding she had choose a yellow dress, even though her husband’s family were against it, particularly since her former boyfriend had known about her love of yellow roses. She tells her son a story that she has never before shared with him.

      On the boat from she escaped from Viet Nam, his father saved her life by rescuing her from the refugee camp, presumably through his proposal of marriage. But just a few days before the marriage, her ex-boyfriend showed up in the same camp. Torn between love and obligation, she wrote a farewell letter the night before the wedding to Long’s father, determined to follow her heart. But her lover wouldn’t permit it, and disappeared as he had previously, leaving her the golden hairpin passed on to him by his mother as a goodbye present. They had just attended a classic opera where the Princess refused the King’s order to abandon the warrior she loved in order to marry King whom she didn’t love.

      The King sent her poison, a rope, and a sword. But she chose none of them, stabbing herself instead with an object like the golden pin.

       But I didn’t choose that, she admits. People all have tragedies, but we need to move on. “It’s fate,” she argues.

       It sounds almost as if she is suggesting that he must accept the fate that he is born into. Pausing in her story, however, she holds his face close to hers and argues that she wants him to be happy and to stand up for what he believes, even though it is clear that she was unable to; that she has lived a life basic unhappiness.

       Were every Asian gay boy to have such an understanding and experienced mother. She leaves the golden pin with him, a woman’s object but also a kind of symbolic weapon for his own life or death.

       He arrives at swimming practice the next day to see his lover sitting on a bench in the hall. He turns into the showers instead speaking with him, and soon all the swimmers march out of the locker room, getting into their positions for a swimming maneuver. They all dive in, except Long who stands in place for a few moments, pondering matters, before he finally pulls down his goggles and jumps in. During the credits we watch the bodies swim back and forth underwater across the pool before they finally come up, smiling, the camera moving one by one down the line to observe their faces.

       The film provides no definitive answer to the issues that are rushing through Long’s mind, but somehow it nearly impossible to imagine that he will not not turn back to his swimming friend for a deep hug and a kiss after the others have left. Indeed, any other decision is nearly unimaginable unless he chooses to become a martyr for a cause that no longer has any meaning. His decision is surely a refusal to marry into the same kind of unhappy relationship into which he mother had.

     

*Just a few short and feature films since 2000-2020 which share the Asian perspective (China, Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia, Viet Nam, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Indonesia) in exploring LGBTQ+ sexualities are Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Tropical Malady (2004), Samantha Rebillet’s The Suitor (2004), Tsai Ming-liang’s 黑眼圈 (Hēiyǎnquān) (I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone) (2006), Hong Khaou’s Summer (2006), Josh Kim’s 엽서 (The Postcard) (2007), Vũ Ngọc Đãng’s Hot boy nổi loạn và câu chuyện về thằng Cười, cô gái điếm và con vịt (Rebellious Hot Boy and the Story of Cười, the Prostitute and the Duck) (2011), Liang Hu’s Listen (2012), Hong Khaou’s 轻 摇晃 (Qīngqīng yáohuàng) (Lilting) (2014), Ray Yeung’s Paper Wrap Fire (2015), Andrew Ahn’s Spa Night (2016), Leon Cheo’s People Like Us (2016), Chih-Yen Hsu and Mag Hsu’s 誰先愛上他的 (Dear Ex) (2018), Hao Wu’s All in My Family (2019), Ray Yeung’s 叔．叔 (Suk Suk) (2019), Szu-Wei Chen’s 小傑 (Jay) (2019), Koo Chia Meng’s After Noon (2020), and Alice Wu’s The Half of It (2020). Although, there is no one common theme or issue in this diverse selection of films, conservative attitudes toward sexuality and generational differences in attitude are a common subject. An archetypical film concerning these issues was Ang Lee’s 喜宴 (The Wedding Banquet) of 1993.

 

Los Angeles, June 23, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (June 2023).

Damian Overton | Papercut / 2018

everything to lose

by Douglas Messerli

 

Damian Overton (screenwriter and director) Papercut / 2018 [14 minutes]

 

Actors Josh Kieser and Kieton Beilby play the two film actors, Kane and Gabriel, up for the same award for a performance in a film as recounted in Australian film Papercut, written and directed by the Damian Overton.

     The two men, like other major film actors in the past, are in a gay relationship, but over their drive into the city for the ceremonies, sitting in the backseat of a limousine driven a man named David (Donnie Baxter), they discuss their priorities for their careers and the problems of being in the closet while being involved in an acting career.

     The situation is probably not so very different from discussions between Cary Grant and his lover Raymond Scott, who lived together for 11 years so intimately that the studios finally ordered a photo shoot to tamp down the rumors by presenting the couple as bachelor roommates in their so-called “Bachelor Hall,” a piece aimed primarily at their female audiences in the photo tabloids.

    Given that photographer Jeremy Zerbe was a gay man and shot them in numerous homoerotic poses and Ben Maddox, the closeted gay journalist who edited the spread, slipped in several suggestive captions, it didn’t work; and Grant was forced by the studios in 1934 to marry Virginia Cherrill, a marriage which lasted 13 months before he rushed back into Scott’s arms, the two “rooming together” once again.

     Or certainly such a conversation might have happened between Anthony Perkins and his then lover Tab Hunter, Perkins evidently so career-oriented that when Hunter mentioned that he was being considered for a new role, Perkins auditioned for it, grabbing the role away from his lover.    

     Kane and Gabriel, are also headed for rocky times, as Kane, apparently more highly career-oriented than his lover, at first seems terrified that if Gabriel wins the award he will have to thank Kane, providing further fodder for the tabloids who have already scented that something might being going on between the two given the coy statements Gabriel as made.

      Kane is determined to straighten up his lover the night before by reading him the agent’s riot act: he should read what studio has provided him to say and he should meet up with André (previously Andrew) who will tell him where to go, who to talk to at the ceremony, and how to behave. This understandably does not go over to well with the far higher spirited and “fuck-the-industry” attitudes of Gabriel.

      Kane is so uptight that he afraid even the driver, David, might be overhearing their conversation and knowing who they are, will leak out the truth of their relationship. Gabriel asks him if he knows who they are, to which David replies in the negative. But Kane, we soon discover, is even more nervous for other reasons.

      They are not heading to the awards venue, but stopping by to pick up a woman with whom Kane used to date, Brit. As they hit the carpet, he will announce on twitter that he and Brit are about to married, a marriage obviously arranged by the matchmakers from hell, his female agent and the studio publicists. Kane rotely tells Gabriel what may have to repeat to himself many times each day in order to survive: “She’s the best thing for my career at the moment.”

        So astounded is Gabriel, that he can only marvel at the stupidities coming out of the mouth from the man he thought he loved, responding with sarcasm instead of pain and anger. When Kane announces, “Look, I just want to make super clear that I’m straight now,” his lover responds: “Well, you didn’t seem that overly straight last night when my dick was in your mouth.”—words that once more send Kane into a fit, afraid as he is that David might be listening.

     Throughout the sequence of events, Kane keeps repeating that, on the top of their careers as they now are, “They have everything to lose.” But what he doesn’t realize is that in putting his career before all else and in determining to return permanently into the closet; as a fake heterosexual he will indeed be losing everything, including the love of a seemingly clever and handsome man, Gabriel. Without intending to be ironic, Kane simply expresses the situation: I want to say goodbye to whatever we had. It’s just been going on for way too long.”

      At one point when Kane is terrified that they’ve been overheard, as David asks “You gents all right back there?” he declares, “We’re fine, just talking about “footy” [soccer].” When David asks what team he supports, he has no answer except to say “the blue team.” For the first time, David opens up to tell them that he was once a professional soccer player who loves the game but evidently suffered an injury at his prime. He speaks a truth that passes right over Kane’s head, but is certainly applicable: “One day you’re at the top of your game and the next driving a car full of strangers to the city.”

      When they finally reach the spot where he plans to meet Brit, Gabriel passes on the pre-cocktail party, suggesting he’ll move on to the awards venue in the limo. Indeed, Kane is relieved to be freed from having any longer to deal with his now ex-lover.

      Once he leaves the car, Gabriel asks the driver to take him back to where he picked him up. He takes out the speech hidden in his pants cuff which he had told Kane that he had never written—probably filled with appreciation and love to Kane—and tears it up.

      David looks sadly in the rear-view mirror, saying “I loved your film by the way. You’re much better actor than your friend.”

      It terrifies me that such conversations are probably still happening every day in Hollywood, as well as the London, Paris, Mumbai, and Sydney film communities.

 

Los Angeles, October 19, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (October 2022).

 

 

 

Mike Lemon | Touched / 2003

two men in desperate need for a hug

by Douglas Messerli

 

Mike Lemon (screenwriter and director) Touched / 2003 [25 minutes]

 

After dinner with his female friend, Mike (Bob Bowersox) determines, since it’s been a long while since he’s actually touched another man, that he should stop in at a local gay bar, even though he realizes the chances of, as he puts it, a “middle aged pudgy man,” still being attractive any longer to anyone in the bar are slim.

     To his surprise, a very attractive young man begins cruising him almost the moment he enters.

     Even more surprising the young man, Michael (David Duzenski) comes over and introduces himself. Mike buys him a rum and coke. Michael, it turns out, does even know for sure if he is gay, but has come because he’s curious. Although Mike is gay, he admits that he didn’t come out until age 45 explaining that he was married before for 23 years and had 7 children.

     Michael also admits that he is married at least for a couple of years; he’s currently 24. He has one child. He describes himself as a mason.

      But when the younger man asks the elder what he does, he surprisingly answers—as we later discover, surprising even himself—“I’m on a spiritual journey.”

      When they take a cab to Mike’s place, however, things begin the change. Suddenly Michael grows silent suggesting that because of Mike’s comment about his being on a “spiritual journey” he can no longer do what he was first intending to, to “kill him.”

      Mike takes the comment with an odd serenity. “Why?”

      Michael’s answer is equally strangely oblique and intriguing: “I don’t know. I just knew I had to kill someone, and when I saw you I knew it was you.”

      “But why would you want to kill someone?”

      “Because I have to. I hate people. My life sucks.” He soon begins screaming, “And I really fucked up, really fucked up.”

    He takes out a picture of his daughter Samantha and his former wife, explaining that he fucked that up over a year ago. He takes off his coat and shows Mike the needle marks. “They left me. They had to.” They’re now with her parents and they have a restraining order against him, so that he can’t even see his daughter. He was fired from his job and he’s been on the streets for months. As he describes his plight: “It’s hell.”

“If there’s something I can do…” ends in another shouting session, with Michael saying the obvious: “What the hell could you do. Nothing! So shut the fuck up.”

      Almost immediately he calms down, however, apologizing. “I get so angry,” he almost whimpers. “I don’t know what to do.”

     He turns to go, with Mike assuring him that he doesn’t have to go, Michael repeating that he “has to, or he might hurt him. I don’t want to but I might.”

     Mike insists that he trusts him, Michael almost unbelievably asking why.

     Mike explains that he had no idea why he want to the bar, that he hadn’t been there for more than a year and had no intentions of ever going again. My feet just took me there and we arrived at about the same time. The only one he saw was Michael.

     Michael agrees, he felt the same way.

    “Is there any doubt that we were supposed to meet tonight?” He wonders whether there could have been anyone else at the bar who said what he said, and cannot explain why he said it.

     His next question is perhaps the most important of all: “How long has it been since you’ve been held my someone?” Michael cannot even answer, but Mike responds in kind, “Me too.”

     He wonders if before Michael leaves if he can just hold him, no sex or games involved.

     The moment Michael hugs him, he breaks into tears, and together the two retire to the bed, Mike hugging the younger man who cannot control his emotions any longer.

      It’s now almost morning, and Mike dives Michael back to the spot where he met him, handing over a large some of money, Michael at first refusing it, but upon Mike’s insistence finally does so, telling him that he saved his life and awarding him a gentle kiss.

     Mike calls his female friend, leaving a message: “I just wanted to tell you, I touched someone.”

     Evidently based on a real story, this can only remind any gay individual who has had many encounters with others, that once in a while, there is still a special someone with whom you truly communicate, not even sometimes sexually, but meaningful, helping one remember what human love is really about.

 

Los Angeles, September 15, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (September 2026).

Alexandra Seal | Wait it Out / 2018

marked for life

by Douglas Messerli

 

Armistead Johnson and Alexandra Seal (screenplay), Alexandra Seal (director) Wait it Out / 2018

[19 minutes]

 

Matt, a freshman in high school (a rather unbelievable Armistead Johnson, given his age when this film was made), with the word “Fag” inked on his forehead, is seeking advice his high school drama teacher (Mark Sam Rosenthal), who, although he thoroughly sympathizes with the boy—after all, he admits that he too is gay—suggests that his abuser will not be returning back for the next year, and advises Matt to simply “wait it out,” advice for a freshman that is nearly impossible to hear.

     Flash to NYC a few years later. Matt, now dressed in a suit, sits in the office of his quite obnoxious publisher, who hands him a copy of his newly printed book, Wait It Out, declaring that it will certainly become one of the best sellers of the year, although she is simply unable to take any time out to listen to his promotional suggestions.

     He returns home to find his female apartment sharer being fucked by a true lug-head of a body builder, who, when Matt, wonders what she has eaten that day (a protein shake, which he scolds her for, tossing out a package of almonds for her to eat), proclaims of a new diet, the fasting diet, in which, he explains, you don’t eat anything, and amazingly the fat just melts away.

     The reactions from high school students are phenomenal, so his publisher proclaims, but they don’t actually convert yet into actual sales; she has hooked him out with interviews to establish who he now is since he as long-ago bullied high school. Given what we have already seen, this does not seem to be a very good idea, since Matt has not apparently advanced in his life excepting by being fixated on his high school bullying.

     When she asks what he actually does every day, he replies that he goes to the gym, updates his social media where he claims over 4,000 Facebook friends (not possible, since Facebook closes it after 4,000). He is not in a relationship; he has no personal friends. So we see immediately that this will be a serious problem.

      Even when his roommate, entering a date site, attempts to hook him up with someone, our awkward hero can’t tolerate any of the offerings. He might as well be asexual. All he has worked for is utterly meaningless in his own life.

       She finally sets up a blind date with one of her trainers, Brad (Dave Coleman), a total stud. I would have fallen immediately into his lap upon seeing him at that age. They do meet up at a Mexican restaurant whose food doesn’t seem to please either of them. But there is a rapport, and Max suggests they go off to get a coffee and start everything over again. He is read to pay, but Brad insists, handing him his credit card, where suddenly Matt discovers that his fell name is Bradley Stern, the same boy from his Overlook High School childhood who had so bullied him.

    Suddenly Matt grows outraged, suspecting it is all some kind of sick joke, not even possibly perceiving the possibility that this man, now gay, has changed, since Matt, in fact, has never grown an iota, no changed from the moment he was bullied in his freshman year.

      To the equally now furious roommate who has hooked Matt up, Brad argues that he didn’t, in fact, even recognize him, insisting that in high school was a jerk, but now is a very different person. She explains where he lunches every noon, and arranges a meeting.

      Meanwhile, Matt has even grown paranoid, imagining that the has met up with him because of reading his book and recognizing his changed character name.

      When finally, Brad comes to apologize, he can’t even believe that Brad is now gay, and when he asks if the question, a co-worker—describes him (Matt) as bully—Matt still defending his position as an “anti-bully.” But since he has never allowed change in his life, he is, in fact, the new bully in town, insisting upon a traumatic past that he long ago should have overcome. If we haven’t before, we now become completely unsympathetic with our “so called” traumatized high school boy who has never grown up. And the film, accordingly, loses any weak appeal it might have previously pleaded. I have to admit, I’d long before lost all interest in what is basically a weak TV comedy routine in the manner of Will and Grace, never one of my favorites.

     Brad attempts to explain that he came out in college. But doesn’t at all have any meaning for Matt who believes that Brad obviously does not know the “gay” community, as it he were suddenly their major spokesperson. He rushes off.

     He turns back, adding, “I mean we’re a living and open community that embraces everyone, but not you?” If there was ever an example of bigotry, Matt has capsulized it in a few seconds.

     This time Matt storms home to discover his roommate in bed with yet another man, Reynolds (. Somehow he can assimilate the very worst of heterosexual society, without ever being able to embrace another gay man.

     When he explains what happens, Reynolds suggests that what Brad did took courage, showed “balls,” but Matt cannot imagine such a response so self-infatuated he still is with his high school struggles. By this time, I was simply ready to turn off this ill-conceived comic confection.

      Reynolds finally admits that what Matt has done has nothing to do with understanding. His reaction, as he points out, is pure anger. Together both his friend and Matt mock her boyfriend. Who asks a question: “So you had this guy apologize to you for something that happened years and years ago, and you had the nerve to not accept the apology?” Reynolds repeats, as he moves off in disgust, “Who’s the bully now?”

     Finally realizing what he has been doing, Matt reapproaches Brad, apologizing this time for his own behavior. Brad argues that he accepts it, with one condition, that he go out with him on a second date.

     Sorry, I can’t quite believe Matt’s confession nor Brad’s continued interest in the fucked-up man. But then, this glib film advertises itself as a romantic comedy, and like the stick on treatments of the censored days, it cannot resist going into fully unbelievable territory. Do I see Matt and Brad as having any future, definitely not. Matt was a loser in high school and remains one as a pretend adult. Brad has moved on. If your strategy is simply to “wait it out,” you may find yourself never again experiencing the world around you.

 

Los Angeles, September 14, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (September 2026).

 

Michaël Dacheux | L'amour debout (Love Blooms) / 2018

discoveries about the self

by Douglas Messerli

 

Isabelle Bourdon, Michaël Dacheux, and Emmanuelle Jacob (screenplay) Michaël Dacheux (director) L'amour debout (Love Blooms) / 2018

 

There are have been far too few and generally dismissive reviews of the 2018 French film, which I, watching it again the other night, quite enjoyed.

     Most certainly, the plot of the feature film from the very beginning is basically about rejection. Martin (Paul Debreil) has moved to Paris from his native Toulouse to attempt to reestablish a relationship with his childhood sweetheart, Léa (Adèle Csech), who has evidently proceeded him from their provincial home to Paris several months or even years before he sheepishly turns up in search of something he imagines might still be there.

     But, in the meantime, she has become an informed tour guide, beginning in the first scene with what a found as a rather fatuous reports on the former Paris market place, Les Halles, tragically closed in 1973, now turned into a shopping and cultural center whose several architectural monstrosities she praises. To give her credit, however, she later takes a group of far more interesting tourists to see the various homes in which Paul Verlaine lived before meeting Arthur Rimbaud.

     The tour is a long one, and when she finally finishes, she attempts to explain to the still naïve boy that she has found a new life in Paris, and, despite their former love, has longer has any room in her heart for their childhood friendship.

    Fortunately, Martin has his brother and sister-in-law who are even willing to put him up in his own room. But with two children, a noisy and busy house, it is not the kind of place this true cinephile, who back in Toulouse sponsored a film series of his most beloved films which few students bothered to attend, might find peace, let along even imagine how he might proceed in making his own movie. He attempts to get a room in a cheap hotel, but finds so sympathy there either, who suggest that he get an apartment.

     Yet, he has no money. Fortunately, as he leaves the hotel he runs into another former student from Toulouse, Tristan ((Thibaut Destouches), a young and eager, also very handsome, now PhD student of science, who quickly invites him to share his small apartment, offering first the couch, but finally luring him to share his own bed. If this hints of sexual delights, drop your hopes for such a situation, since the sleep-walking young man, is still a virgin and seems to be fairly asexual, long before such an identification was ever discussed. Based on Freudian theory, where he argued that sleepwalking attempts to fulfill unconscious wishes, mostly, he argue, an “effort to return to a safe, comforting place from childhood,” modern psychoanalytic theory often describes it as the primitive urges of the Id and the restrictions of the Superego.

   As I childhood sleepwalker, who once donned my winter coat and attempted to return to the cold out-door weather of Iowa, I would argue it was, for me, mostly an attempt of escape from the normality of my life. Although I always returned to my bed, I was desperately trying to explain to myself that I needed to move off and away. It finally leaped in my conscious mind, and I did precisely that, insisting my father send me away to another country during my senior year of high school. I never came back as the same person who left, and I think to his last dying day, my father believes it was the result of my political, religious, and sexual rebellions. I would imagine that Tristian also was attempting to enter a world of which he was terrified, since he had for so long immersed himself in scientific thought. Even he admits that he admired Martin, when he was a younger student, for his resolve and tenacity of show films that no one seemed to wanted to watch.

     One of the most painful moments of this film is when Martin hears that his bedmate is a virgin, he sees it was an almost saintly condition, something with which Tristan can die in bliss. I think this is simple bullshit. To not have been able to put the body into living the experience sexual activity is almost unimaginable, something like abandoning one the most delightful pleasures and meaningful activities of one’s life. Virgin’s are not saints; they are the most failed of human beings, I argue.

    But then Martin is confused about his own life, soon after beginning to realize that he is also attracted to men, and admitting to his bedmate that he has had same-sex relationships in the past, while trying to reassure him that he has no intentions of attempting any sexual activity with him.

      He does begin a workshop, with his brother’s help, on explaining to students how they might curate, as he had, a film series. But they cannot even imagine why they should want to do that, and why he is requiring such an arduous task of watching so many movies. Film theorist Jalal Toufic (whose first book I published), once described to me just such a rebellion of his students at San Francisco State University.

     It takes the interruption and explanation of their current teacher to try to make one particularly stubborn student why understanding why and how they the love some films more than others is crucial if you are all interested in movies. In short, film-going is not a passive activity. But the teacher’s actions, once more leaves Martin without any ability to explain his own reasons and methods.

    The teacher, however, has important connections with the French film world, even revealing that he personally knows one of Martin’s most beloved actresses, Françoise Lebrun, to whom he is soon introduced after a special showing of her major film at the Cinémathèque française, also meeting her next-door apartment dweller, Bastien (Samuel Fasse), with whom he almost immediately falls in love.

   Yet upon their first sexual get-together, Martin rushes away without consummating the sexual act, too confused still about his sexuality.

     Similarly, on one of her tours, Léa encounters a somewhat older avant-garde composer Jérôme (Pascal Cervo) who lives on a barge. She visits him, but also moves away after a kiss, not sure she wants to more forward because of the age difference.

      Both, determined now to stay in Paris, seems strangely out of sync with the residents of the “City of amour.”

      Françoise, however, goes shopping for a new couch, suggesting Bastien will help her carry in upstairs to her apartment, with the help of the volunteer Martin.

      The two men struggle with the couch, finally delivering it up to her apartment, both collapsing in Bastien’s nest door apartment, and soon after joining one another for sex, Martin obviously having come to terms with his sexuality.

     Léa, moreover, decides to continue with her relationship with Jérôme, who ultimately hosts a barge party for a Parisian celebration, replete with fireworks, Léa inviting Martin and his friends Bastien and Tristan. It appears at the party that Tristan hits it off with Léa’s roommate who works as an airline stewardess, so perhaps he will not have to suffer the curse of sainthood after all.

      Jérôme finishes his choral symphony, in which Léa now performs, inviting Martin to the performance. The two meet cordially and pleasantly afterwards, both having moved on in lives with acceptance of love and worlds outside of their childhood infatuation.

     This movie is also nicely punctuated with beautiful music by Schumann and Ravel throughout.

      Love Blooms is most certainly not a showy film, and it suffers, as do its characters, from all shorts of unsurety and fears for the future. But it is truly a beautiful and hopeful film, reminding us all again how we must abandon our notions, at times, we acquired in the past and boldly move forward into new love and perhaps even different sexuality. Why this lovely 2018 film has been so critically ignored is truly inexplicable.

 

Los Angeles, September 14, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (September 2026).