Xavier Miralles | Letargo (Lethargy) / 2015

freeing tilikum from the past

by Douglas Messerli

 

Xavier Miralles (screenwriter and director) Letargo (Lethargy) / 2015 [21 minutes]

 

Marc (Jorge Velasco), an actor devoted to his film career, has just broken up with his partner of several years, Álex (Genís Lama Montosa), who in the sad lethargy of their broken relationship is having difficult with their shared dog, Tilikum, named after the oldest whale still in captivity, whom the owners still refuse to return to the ocean.

     Tilikum is sick, vomiting, and Álex rushes him to the pet hospital where they diagnose the animal as having contracted Leishmania, a mosquito-borne disease that is incurable, but can be controlled with medicines and loving care. Except in this case the dog is totally attached to the missing lover, who can’t possibly take animals on his movie locations, and has brought the dog home almost as an accessory to what was then, as Álex argues, “our perfect life and our perfect flat.”

      Even Álex, however, perceives the dog as a genius for having brought Marc back home, if only just for a night, where he once again appears to be desperately in love with Álex, as the two have sex, comfort their sick dog, and watch one of the rare snowfalls of Madrid.

      But it is, just as before, an illusion. When Álex awakens, the TV is again on full blast, Marc having left a note that he has just received word that he is to have another audition and will be back in two weeks. Álex attempts to feed Tilikum his much-needed pill, but this time the dog refuses and bites his caring owner’s finger. Álex tries to explain what, obviously, the animal cannot comprehend, that the man to which he is so attached doesn’t truly care about him or the man to whom he’s entrusted his former pet.

     Not once in the time since Marc has left has he even called Álex. His night of love is all pretense.

     But finally Álex’s lethargy is over. He packs up his bags, and puts Tilikum into the car, stopping by a pet store to buy him treats and a great many new toys. Where he’s heading, we have no idea, but it is clearly into a new world where perhaps both Álex and the captive dog might find a new sense of peace and other possibilities in their lives, as the film moves from the dark scenes of the earlier frames into full light.

    Spanish director Xavier Miralles nicely manipulates a pet dog into the role of a surrogate child the gay men might have nurtured instead of a dependent animal, the child perhaps feeling just as displaced by one of his father’s sudden disappearance. And it is the for the sake of the animal / child that the more passive of this former couple finally realizes that he must take responsibility for building a new life. After all, even if Marc brought him home, it was he, as he explains to the pet-store owner, who named him, and it is he who is now responsible for his charge’s survival and love.

 

Los Angeles, December 24, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (December 2024).

Andy Newbery | Heartstopper (Season 3) / 2024

expressions of love

by Douglas Messerli

 

Alice Oseman (screenplay), Andy Newbery (director) Heartstopper (Season 3) / 2024

 

After two seasons of wonderful introductions of the characters to one another which resulted in love and the discovery of the possibilities that it represented, suddenly in Season 3, we meet up, just a little, with reality.

    The first episode of the season appeared to be the perfect opportunity for love to be promoted, all the central characters let loose on a day-trip to the beach. Elle and Tao can hardly keep their hands off one another, but even that seems slightly troubling to the transgender woman who realizes that Tao’s love is obviously obsessive. Ever since Darcy has moved in with Tara, it’s been a full-time chore to not only live up to their expectations of their relationship, but to deal with the daily existence of another in your life at 17 or 18, not quite what you might have expected at such at such early age, and Tara wonders how she might make it clear to her lover that it might be better to move in with her open-minded and totally receptive aunt, particularly given Darcy’s mother’s absolute rejection.

     Charlie is determined, but as always terrified in the process, to express to Nick that he truly loves him, fearing—obviously terrified of the reception of any such expression—that he might again be rejected. This is the cycle that Charlie cannot escape, a constant fear of rejection. When Nick finally convinces Charlie, after long hours of his remaining behind like a lost fish out of water, to join him in the ocean, Charlie admits he has something he wants to talk about, as does Nick. But Charlie always afraid to go first with his confession, allows Nick to express what he hopes will be the commitment to their relationship.

     Although Nick is totally committed to Charlie, the boy can’t even grasp his love, when he admits his fear is that his lover has an eating disorder, the fact of which Charlie immediately rejects, hurt, moveover, by his realizing that he now can’t now possibly express he needs for a declaration of love.

    Finally, in Nick’s bedroom, Nick having gone off to shower off the sand of their outing, does Charlie take the opportunity, through a closed door, to dare to tell the truth: what he really wants is an expression of love.

    Nick, taken aback with the sudden revelation, runs after Charlie, barefoot through the cold streets to tell him that he does, in fact, truly love him without any of the reservations that Charlie imaginations between them.

    But in this third year, problems are the issue of the day. Nick, with his family, is forced into isolation in Menorca, while Nick suffering at home begins to realize, through his computer peeping that he is anorexic and having eating disorders, punishing his body for his own neglect. Even his sister Tori, without any love of her own, turns her dark passion on her brother, notifying Nick that Charlie is suffering in his absence. In a distant phone call to Nick, Charlie finally admits to his eating disorder, and Nick feels helpless as he turns to his sympathetic and knowledgeable aunt Diane (Hayley Atwell), who explains that he cannot be responsible for Charlie’s illness, and must encourage him to get professional help.

     But Nick and Charlie are not the only in this season with complaints. Isaac, now realizing that he is asexual and aromantic feels left out, naturally, with Charlie’s infatuation with Nick and his increasing distancing of himself from his old friends, along with Tao’s full commitment to Elle. Although Nick returns, the Charlie he finds is becoming increasingly weak and lethargic, even though he plans a special birthday for his boyfriend at the zoo, where finally Isaac becomes brave enough to express his hurt, and Elle, realizing that Tao is pushing all his fears of abandonment from his father’s death upon his love for her, attempts to wake him up to his neglect of both Isaac and Charlie.

    By episode 4, Charlie is finally able to talk to Nick about his problems, Nick insisting that, with him in support, he should address the problem to his parents, who facing the boys hand in hand as Charlie confesses his dilemma, finally realize, to Tori’s relief, that their son needs the help of doctors. After months of waiting, Charlie is finally permitted to enter a clinic where he is diagnosed with not only anorexia nervosa but obsessive–compulsive disorder. And Nick is now faced with the emptiness of his own needed companionship as Charlie is treated, as always in this teenage fantasy, by the “help of kind doctors,” as Wikipedia expresses it. This is after all, a fantasy, in which almost everyone is kind and gentle, forgiving and penitent. No one in this world, even Charlie’s sometimes restrictive mother, whom after he recovers, he angrily stalks away from in order to finally come to the full fulfillment of his love with Nick in sex, is truly evil. Even in Season 2, The New York Times reviewer Jesse Green was rightfully carping (along with his crying) that after two years it seemed highly improbable that two young teenagers still had not fucked. And Season 3 continues the delusion, as every time they attempt any kind of penetration, mothers, sisters, and, in the Nick’s case, even mean brothers intrude. Only when Charlie rejects his mother’s strong insistence that he wait until after the always intrusive GCSE tests which determine one’s position in the English education society, do the boys get it on. Thank heaven. No other teenagers who I known have waited for three years to express their full love for one another. Sorry, I never permitted myself to meet someone who I might immediately have wanted to get into bed.

     Tao and Elle have previously done so, but also with great trepidation, particularly given the fact that Elle is still quite sensitive about her female transformation. But even more painful, given that she has become a rather noted on-line artist, a TV interview pretending to discuss her art puts the young teenager in a position of supporting transgender affirmation. The pain of being seen as a figure of representation instead of a human being with a gift is transforming, even if it results in tears and deep contemplation. Perhaps only Elle realizes just how important of a choice she has made and the consequences she will soon have to face, particularly given the fact that the US president elect has just declared that we are a nation now of only two genders.

     Darcy, who evidently didn’t do so well in her GCSE tests, has a hard time in keeping up with Tara’s intellectual endeavors, which may even include an education at Oxford.

     The intellects of this world, Nick, Tara, Elle, and Imogen (Nick’s former girlfriend who now identifies as non-gender) take a trip to the colleges and universities trying to attract them. The local university Nick though he might attend, is not nearly as appealing as the University of Leeds, where he can get a good education and an open scholarship for his rugby expertise. Tara hates Oxford, and seeks somewhere else, and Elle decides she really wants to go to Paris or Berlin to study art. Imogen is still quite confused about here identity, let alone her educational opportunities.

     But what is clear for the new Season 4 we are now promised is that the distances these lovers will obviously move away from their youthful loved ones will be problematic and in some cases devastating.

     Yet Charlie, terrified of playing drums for a local rock group is able to go on and perform quite effectively, even when Nick, stuck in traffic, cannot get the concert in time to support him. Tao is already wondering if he might not get an extra job to help make enough money to travel back and forth to Paris or Berlin. Nick has planned out the four-hour train ride from Truham to Leeds, although he shutters at the distance; he too, as Imogen and Elle advise him, must now look to his own well-being. Even Tori finds another boy, Michael, to who she might offer up the deep love she has saved up for her brother.

     Perhaps given all the turmoil these young lovers have now had to face in their lives a new director such as Newbery was necessary. Tears still welled into my eyes, perhaps even moreso since I recognized these simple characters were now undergoing more complex dilemmas. Even though they are all sexual perverts and sinners in the eyes of the religious establishment, these babies are still suffering over the most overwhelming and miraculous experiences they will probably ever have in their lives. Perhaps only the elderly luncheon dates of Mr Ajayi and Mr Farouk might provide these youth lovers with another alternative. But even they, surely, would give up their elder romance for such delightful misadventures of youth. To two men nominate Charlie to become head master to the younger men in his school. We in the US don’t have such mentors; but I might have wished there was a Charlie to guide me through my early years.

 

Los Angeles, December 23, 2024

Reprinted from My World Cinema (December 2024).

Max Rifkind-Baron | Talent Night at Auschwitz, Bunk Five / 2018

defying performance

by Douglas Messerli

 

Max Rifkind-Baron (screenwriter and director) Talent Night at Auschwitz, Bunk Five / 2018 [17 minutes]

 

The brilliant short film by Max Rifkind-Baron takes you down hallways of horror and terror, self-revelation, and problematic parental relationships that are almost impossible to separate out from the dramatic / operatic cinema the young director presents.

    Beginning with a scene from Micah’s (Max Bartos) imaginary talent night performance at Auschwitz, the Grand Duchess Menorah, wearing a crown of spoons, singing on talent night with other performers—including the Magician Queer (Malin Barr), the Juggler (Dam Urdang), and Heim the Human Domino (Res Mishina)—the clearly transgender performer sings what she herself describes as “a savage show,” with a bevy of clever lyrics (so quickly rendered that they’re hard to follow in the student-produced film where the sound is somewhat muted) that also demand a limited knowledge of Yiddish theatrical rhymes: “Kiss the Menorah / I’m Hard to Ignora,” as well recognizing the gay paeans of escape, “Let me go, let me be, let me free!”—a double whammy of outsiderness.

   We shift immediately with the fall of the magical red curtain to a motel room where the boy, Micah, in the musical (Bartos) holed up with his father, Robert (David Winning), a man who appears to be utterly ignoring his son (possibly transitioning into a transgender woman) who is desperately trying to explain to him that while the musical pretends to be a talent show, it’s only a façade that expresses so much more than just the Holocaust, but “is about accepting you for what you are as an individual, love and bravery, sacrifice, and overcoming obstacles.”

      The father appears to be attempting to ignore what his son is trying to tell him, making a phone call in the very midst of Micah’s excited explanations of his would-be performance.

      Another of these hurdles seems to be the missing mother, who herself is a “survivor” (someone who survived the German Concentration camps), who even Robert has to admit would perhaps not be able to appreciate Micah’s imaginary show.

      In the motel room with walls of war-time sandbags and just possibly a Carlos Almaraz painting on its wall, dinner arrives, served up by the hotel owner, evidently a lesbian who is highly attentive to Micah and his father, permitting Micah to even show her a magical card trick. He admits that he’s just a beginner, and that when his mother returns, a true magician, she will teach him more of the art.

      But it is a sad proposition since it appears the mother has left both her husband and the boy behind, after what we can’t quite determine what appears to have been yet another tragic occurrence on the beach she once loved, where perhaps it appears that Micah was molested by a figure rising up out of the sand to piss, the father singing, in the mini-opera of guilt and horror, of his own cowardliness in not protecting his son. A highly muted voice at film’s end suggests that “it was the worst mass killing on record,” the director’s camera revealing an ancient handgun from another era in the sand.

      What we are to make of this is vague at best. Was Micah involved, the perpetrator, the victim?

     In a sense all of these figures are victims attempting to escape their own endlessly punishing pasts. At least Micah does it with the style, humor, and a grace that his parents cannot even recognize as a salvation.

 

Los Angeles, December 23, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (December 2024).

George Pedrosa | Casa de Bonecas (Dollhouse) / 2023

the pink queers of the amazon

by Douglas Messerli

 

George Pedrosa (screenwriter and director) Casa de Bonecas (Dollhouse) / 2023 [16 minutes]

 

The three sloppy, piggish, heavily tatted boys of the Amazon who inhabit this celebration of polyromanticism—like the long ago but still delightful ode to the gay land of no inhibitions sung by the wonderful Kay Thompson in Funny Girl (1957)—“Think Pink”: with pink cellphones, cameras, drinks, the hair on their heads, the stockings (with shades of carmine, the sheets in purple) in which they lace up their legs when moving into drag mode, their fingernails and underwear, and even a laser light one of them willingly swallows as they enter into a lusty threesome animal-like orgy.

   Luty Barteix, Chico Gonçalves, and João Vinicius descend, however, not so much into their sexual organs as they do a gloppy, sloppy, gooey mess of liquid like purple emotions, replete with Halloween costumes in which they haunt one another and flaunt their S&M sexuality to the mentality of their own created machinery, while spewing up a yellowish-green drug-induced spittle.

     I suppose Brazilian director George Pedrosa, recognizing that Brazil has become one of the last bastillions of gay outré filmmaking thought perhaps that his movie would be a turn on for young men tired of the flesh, but I doubt it succeeded in seducing anyone to its mesmerizing visuals other than the terribly, terribly bored.

     This is a dollhouse you most definitely don’t want to get locked up in. Even Nora might not have escaped its necessary adulation to its long-haired satanic Dionysus.

 

Los Angeles, December 23, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (December 2024).

Luke Day and Nathan Fagan (Luna) | Skin to Skin / 2021

after sex confessions

by Douglas Messerli

 

Nathan Fagan and O (screenplay), Luke Daly and Nathan Fagan (as Luna) (directors) Skin to Skin / 2021 [10 minutes]

 

This film by Irish directors Luke Daly and Nathan Fagan (working under the name of Luna), relate the sexual encounters of a O, a man primarily involved in the LGBTQ world of quick, overnight hookups. Yet, he finds them sometimes far more fulfilling that longer-based relationships, since, he argues, in that moment after sex, these men and one woman reveal and confess some of their most intimate experiences and “shameful” thoughts knowing they will probably never see their sexual partner ever again.

     Centering on Yasmin De Barra, the film, in startlingly lit images recounts four of his such experiences, which he describes as a world of private codes and expressions. The first one they revisit has died, just before Christmas. He was sick for a while with emphysema. It was like watching someone die by drowning. Actually, as he got sicker, so the narrator declares, he became more dependent, replacing the awkwardness between them with a closer feeling of relationship. It was pretty difficult, but there was something really nice about it too. “It’s fucked up to say, but you keep hoping that it will be over quicker. And then when it’s over it doesn’t feel real.”

    The second man, who was going on Grindr three or four times a week was discovering a strange mélange of individual, young, old, married. Some who declared no kissing, no cuddling. There were some weirdos obviously. Some are creepy, others aggressive. When his friends ask him if he’s attracted to them, he responds, “No,” but they are apparently attracted to him, and that’s what turns him on.

      A third young man from Brazil reveals that as a child, sleeping in bed with his mother, his father set the house on fire, killing his mother in the process. My mom was gone and I had to mourn her, and then my Dad was gone to. I had to mourn both of them.

       A woman describes her father as looking like a mountain ranger. But his attentions to her began at age 13, and she began to cut herself, feeling that if she created the pain perhaps she was still in control. I couldn’t control it when others hurt me, but I was in control of my own pain (she shows the markings of her cuts). I used to hate them, but I sort of like them. They’re like a map of journey, or where I came from.

       If they are just faces, names, and bodies, there is something “much more,” and deeper declares the narrator involved in serial sex hookups.

     When I was living in New York City, a good-looking young man of 22-years-of-age, in a time before Grindr and internet hookups, I too took various men to bed almost every night, most certainly in the first half-year of my New York stay. And I too didn’t at mind the anonymity, the transitory nature of the individuals I met. I don’t remember long after-sex conversations; perhaps I was too young to actually perceive the significance of their quick statements before they dressed and closed the door behind them or I did the same. But, yes, in those few moments, I did feel that I had gotten to know them in a way that you might not get to know a good friend for months or years.

      This hybrid documentary is a moving testimony to a world that is seldom fully discussed, but obviously very much of contemporary LGBTQ experience.

    

Los Angeles, December 22, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (December 2024).

Dennis Shinners | Barrio Boy / 2014

making love with scissors

by Douglas Messerli

 

Dennis Shinners (screenwriter and director) Barrio Boy / 2014 [8 minutes]

 

Into a Brooklyn barrio barber shop run by Quique (Garcia Dennis Garcia) and his cousin (Peter Olivera), and watched over with the mean eyes of Rafa (Andrew Flores), evidently a hanger on of the establishment who won’t let the Hispanic relatives alone, strolls a lovely looking Irish boy, Kevin (Dan Leonard), who the moment Quique sees him becomes his dream lifetime lover.

     Quique convinces the young Adonis to let him wash his hair, and as he cuts it, comments, in an inner dialogue how he would love to seduce him, take him into his bed, and live with him forever—all immediately and in the present.

     Rafa evidently senses something is up, although on the surface Quique behaves with all due propriety, since the moody disapproving onlooker decides to take a stroll outside. Inside the shop, Quique is in heaven.

     But too suddenly, the cut is finished; the boy pays, is given a strong hug, and leaves, Quique’s dream totally unsatisfied. But Cuz observes, he’s left his hat behind, Quique rushing out to see which direction the beauty might have gone. No one is in sight. But at least with the hat in hand, Quique can hope that the boy might possibly return, come back another time and make the magic happen.

       Dennis Shinners’ Barrio Boy is about the dreams gay men have daily, drooling over cute young boys, straight or possibly gay, without results. Dreaming is one of the greatest activities of a closeted gay man living with a community inhospitable to homosexuality.

        This film would be the perfect companion in a showing of Mexican director Roberto Fiesco’s excellent short film Trémulo (Trembling) (2015), which also takes place in a barber shop, where gay desire is truly realized.

 

Los Angeles, December 22, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (December 2024).

Federico Cianferoni | Romana Gioventù! (Roman Youth!) / 2022

malaise among the joys of roman culture

by Douglas Messerli

 

Federico Cianferoni (screenwriter and director) Romana Gioventù! (Roman Youth!) / 2022

 

O the angst of Roman youth, particularly Luke (Michele Favaro) who is convinced that a young Haitian girl—who perceives him as a young man living in Rome as being extraordinarily wealthy, given not only the Western financial stability of the center of Italian culture, but the available history, food, and other general pleasures—is mistaken, he is not at all financially stable, but part of an Italian underground of creative resources that have no opportunity of expressing their full talents. Sitting on the bathroom stool, he is determined that not only what he is trying to produce is shit, but that he can no longer create anything of worth, and if fact cannot even any longer shit nor produce his shitty art.

   His friend (Alan Cappelli Goetz), while they dine on coffee and endless sweets, tries to make him realize not only how lucky he is but how any movie he might make only helps create garbage in a world already swimming in it. Better do something politically valuable, he argues, suggesting he stop eating tuna and other trawled fish. But Luke likes fish (who wouldn’t in Italy?), the artichokes he daily buys in the market, the beans, strawberries, pizza, carbonara, Carciofo alla giudia (a specialty of the Trastevere, the old Jewish district of Rome, where the artichokes are deep fried first at a low temperature to soften them, and then fried at a higher temperature to color and crispen the flower-like leaves. I’ve eaten this memorable dish in the old Jewish district of the Trastevere and I highly recommend it.) What’s a Roman youth to when there are so very many daily temptations. Even being caught in traffic in Rome reveals it’s endless beauty, so proclaims our would-be artist.

     Poor boys, what they have to suffer, watching a professional film crew make another film right outside Luke’s apartment window! Luke seeks psychological analysis for his problems of feeling neglected in the overabundant society in which he lives, without ever being able to comprehend what that poor Haitian girl might have truly been envying.

     The movie goes on like this until the boys, dressed in their tighty whites do a long dance of desire and love, surely as a prelude to delicious sex.

      O those poor Italian beauties! What they have to suffer is nearly unendurable!

     This lovely satire might also almost serve as an invitation to enjoy all the pleasures of Italian culture, while also winking at the movies of Antonioni, Rossellini, Pasolini, Visconti, Bolognini, Fellini, Bertolucci, and others. Yes, in Italy, it is hard for a young man to live up to the greatness of his own culture’s history, particularly when he becomes far too aware of it, and luxuriates in its pleasures. The past, as director Federico Cianferoni makes clear, is too much with him in Roman culture, and it is truly hard to escape into a world of what the new might represent.

 

Los Angeles, December 21, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (December 2024).