atlantis2006 Reviews

Heartbeats (2010)

An unexpected menage a trois

[12 January 2012]

Having a threesome often means dealing with very difficult personal issues. If you don't succeed, then this strange relationship is doomed to fail. When Francis and Marie meet Nicolas, a young, blonde, rich and highly intelligent boy, their lives change. Although at first they try to deny it, they fall deeply in love with Nicolas.

Nothing can guarantee a healthy relationship, but here the protagonists embark upon an almost impossible journey. Nicolas acts like an unprejudiced and very liberal young man who doesn't care about Francis' homosexuality or Marie's uptightness. As they become friends, Nicolas transforms himself into the object of desire of both Francis and Marie.

Nonetheless, nothing seems to indicate that Nicolas has feelings towards Francis, after all they have only shared a handful of meaningless –although rather intimate- moments: Nicolas had been roughhousing with Francis in the woods, and also, after sleeping together, Francis had noticed Nicolas' leg rubbing against his own. These are just minuscule details but Francis starts to get obsessed about his young friend. At the same time, Marie convinces herself that Nicolas is the love of her life; she is now worried about Francis advances, and because of that their friendship might come to an end.

Nicolas is very handsome and exudes a sex appeal unlike any other youngster, and it's because of that that he turns into a symbolic phallus, ascribing to the genitality that condenses the nature of the object of desire. To explain this situation better, let's remember that Marie keeps dating other men but she finds these dates dull and completely forgettable. Francis does the same, but as he has casual sex with other guys, he realizes that none of them can be compared to Nicolas. Erotic objects, for man, are frequently aberrant, multiple and interchangeable. This is why Francis can still have sexual intercourse with multiple partners, who have no real defining features, they are, after all, interchangeable and, ultimately, aberrant. Under these circumstances, Francis' pain and suffering can only be subsidized by the tacit competition he maintains with his friend Marie. Jacques Lacan said once that no object of need and/or demand will ever satisfy the desire/subject. This is why Nicolas inserts himself in the realm of the phantasm; id est, he's an idealized figure that can never defy reality nor exist in the real.

The more time Francis and Marie spend with Nicolas, the more elusive and ungraspable he becomes. As they get closer to him, a barrier, a distance, is made evident. When the objects of need are metabolized ('eroticized') into signifiers of desire by virtue of the demand, it's rather obvious that any object will do as "object" of desire, since none will do. When Francis is alone in Nicolas's bedroom and starts smelling his pants and shirts, he cannot stop masturbating, evoking not the real boy but his traits, his invisible presence that has no place in the realm of the real. Nicolas, after all, is the object a, the object of desire, and since he is the target of men and women's libido he's also, in general terms, a nonexistent character.

This doesn't mean, however, that Nicolas' presence or absence doesn't have a profound effect in the lives of Francis and Marie. Director Xavier Dolan creates a fascinating group of characters and a really complex, intense and innovative story. Xavier Dolan is not only a magnificent writer and filmmaker, he's also a wonderful actor (he plays Francis, although he also had a part in another gay-themed production: Miroirs d'été, which I reviewed a few months ago). Niels Schneider gives an astounding performance as Nicolas, and so does Monia Chokri. Not only is the acting great, but the cinematography in general and the soundtrack of this film are truly unforgettable. In the end, as Lacan explains to us, the object of desire is bound to impossibility… and that's what the protagonists learn the hard way. Poignant, sad and powerful, Dolan's film is a masterwork.

The Class (2007)

Libidinal economy in male teenagers

[17 October 2011]

The law of the jungle is fair and kind compared to the law (or lack thereof) of high school. 16 year old boys can act with the utmost cruelty and viciously attack their peers. Contemporary psychologists call this phenomena bullying. And that's exactly what Joosep is struggling against. He's constantly bullied by a group of abusive boys that act under the guidance of Anders, the alpha male, the ultimate bully.

When the boys assault Joosep in the locker room and remove his clothes, leaving him completely naked, Kaspar, a boy that was part of Anders's circle rebels against the abuse and saves Joosep from further mortification. Kaspar then embarks upon an almost impossible task, after all, he is an idealistic adolescent fighting against an abstract threat. He can fend off Anders for a while, but he cannot neutralize bullying as a continued and ever increasing practice in high school.

Anders ridicules Joosep persistently, accusing the defenseless boy of being gay. It doesn't matter if Joosep is gay or not, the important thing is that Anders behaves like every other uncouth teen in the world: he relies on the homosexual phantasm in order to articulate himself in the symbolic order and, more accurately, in a place of power within the lawless dynamic of high school.

Homosexuality is seen as a synonym of the abject, id est, the vilest, the very lowest condition of man. That's why it's also the most common insult among teens in Western (and perhaps Eastern) society. According to contemporary philosopher Slavoj Žižek, we should ask here a naive, but nonetheless crucial question: why does the Army so strongly rejects gays? Not because homosexuality poses a threat to the 'phallic and patriarchal' libidinal economy of the military community, but, on the contrary, because the Army itself depends on a disavowed homosexuality as the key component of the soldiers' male-bonding.

In fact, in any phallocentric society there will be an insatiable need to humiliate the one who who doesn't act as manly as he should. And if there is no such person then every group of men will create this figure, even if it's as a purely phantasmatic projection of their own fears and insecurities. This of course pertains to high-school, after all, adolescence is a difficult age in which the subject must reaffirm both sexual identity and gender role, something that is made all too clear in "Klass".

This flimsy concomitance of extreme and violent homophobia with thwarted homosexual libidinal economy, is evident in high school. That's why it's impossible for the boys to divulge what is really going on in their lives: they cannot explain this to their parents or teachers.

Once a popular boy, Kaspar is now labeled as a pariah, joining Joosep in the murky confines of the land of the "losers" (it's fascinating to observe that this dichotomy between popular kids and losers exists not only in the US but also in Estonia). Thea, Kaspar's girlfriend, loses her patience. Why is he defending this pathetic, antisocial boy? For Kaspar is a matter of honor. If Anders represents power, Kaspar is the heroic resistance.

Anders is completely obsessed with the alleged homosexual condition of Joosep. Although very subtly, Ilmar Raag's film presents a homophobic that could perfectly be a (furious and frustrated) closeted homosexual. Anders displays an obsessive behavior that obtains libidinal satisfaction out of the very compulsive rituals destined to chastise gays. That's why when he fails to create the fantasy of homosexuality through an elaborate scheme of false e-mails sent to Kaspar and Joosper he chooses a more radical approach.

Hazing is a typical masculine ritual. Should this practice be publicly disclosed the very dynamics of the heterosexual normativity would be undermined. Because to consider themselves as straight guys, these boys must depend on a mechanism of self-censorship. Hazing seems to be accepted by adults as long as no one outside school finds out about them. That's why in sports class teachers don't worry about Joosep getting punched. In the same way, Joosep's father gets mad at his son, not because of the hazing but because the hazing has escaped the boundaries of school and has reached their house. The rule is simple: violence can take place as long as it's not discovered.

Anders's new trap seems to work at first, when he captures Joosper and Kaspar in the beach. There, he menaces both with a knife; he then proceeds to put Kaspar on his knees and forces him to receive Joosep's penis into his mouth... while filming everything with a digital camera. The hazing, of course, nowadays can be perpetuated through YouTube, Facebook or any other social network. Anders has planned to destroy the two boys, to make them feel so ashamed that they must either leave the school or commit suicide. But once these images are broadcasted online, the required self-censorship gets deactivated; thus vacating the place of power and creating a counter-power.

In other words, Anders can no longer be the leader, something made clear by the comments of the boys in his group, who feel disgusted at his actions. The homosexual slandering had been fundamental for them insofar as it had only worked in the dimension of the phantasm. Once homosexuality is embodied by the two victims, everything falls to pieces. After Anders has degraded his two victims, he loses all power, and thus empowers Kaspar and Joosper who now feel compelled to exact revenge on the bully.

"Klass" is one of the most honest, heartbreaking, cruel and powerful films I've ever seen regarding teenagers, games of power and violence. Once violence escalates we know that tragedy ensues. Reminiscent of productions such as Gus Van Sant's "Elephant" or Murali K. Thalluri's "2:37", Ilmar Raag gets to the core of adolescence and creates an extraordinary story that dissects the nature of power and violence.

Suicide Room (2011)

Gender roles and suicide

[16 October 2011]

Dominik has it all: a wealthy family, good looks, intelligence and a bright and promising future ahead of him. But why does he feel like he's losing his grip on all of it? Popularity seems to elude him, and although a few girls still want to dance with him in parties, he's slowly succumbing to shyness, struggling against minor aggressions from other students, against the seemingly harmless mockery of his peers.

Adolescence is always difficult, hormonal changes and new feelings can destabilize anyone. Dominik finds himself exscinded, adrift between two possibilities: What does it mean to be manly? And what does it entail to act effeminately? Gender roles are not unwavering, as they change and evolve through times, through the actions of the people. Gendered behaviors are unnatural: the way in which we learn the performance of gender roles (what we commonly associate with femininity and masculinity) is an act of sorts, a performance, one that is imposed upon us by normative heterosexuality. We are like actors in a stage, trying to persuade others that we are either men or women: we do not follow our natural tendencies but rather the dictates of society.

Everything in Dominik's life pertains to the norm; even his parents are ruled by it: they are like slaves following the orders of the marketing industry, in the case of the mother, and the government, in the case of the father. Yes, they have made a fortune, but in order to do so they have obeyed norms for so long that they can no longer feel free. It's this slavery that forces them to assume the heterosexual normativity to the extreme and have sex with anonymous lovers. They need a member of the opposite sex to enforce their roles as productive and successful heterosexual individuals.

And that's what's expected of their son. And that's why he cannot reconcile his existential doubts with the demands of adulthood. In her book about Performativity, theorist Judith Butler asks herself to what extent our acts are determined for us, rather by our place within language and convention. For Butler, identity is an illusion retroactively created by our performances. She defines identity as "a compelling illusion, an object of belief" (not unlike Dominik's interpretation of Hamlet). Perhaps in past decades this was harder to understand, but now let's think about the internet and online communities in which we can recreate and reinvent ourselves. That's what Dominik finds in the "Suicide Room", a virtual environment, a rendezvous point for a group of strangers that rely on 'avatars' and online interaction.

Although slightly insecure, Dominik is first presented as a 'normal' boy. Nevertheless, everything changes after a party in which two girls kiss each other and then challenge him to do the same with his friend Aleksander. The girls are not lesbians but they are subverting the foundations of heterosexual normativity. In the same way, the two boys kiss each other and personify for a few seconds the abject, id est, the homosexual condition. In order to have a heterosexual normativity there must be something that opposes to it.

At the beginning, it would seem like this innocent kiss doesn't disturb anyone. Dominik's friends upload the kiss on YouTube but there are no hard reactions, no negative consequences. It's like a simple, childish joke. That is, until Dominik is wrestling with Aleksander during their judo lessons. Aleksander holds him down, and rubs his body against Dominik, this becomes so arousing for the teenager that he can't help but to ejaculate right there. Aleksander starts laughing about it and Dominik leaves the room instantly, completely humiliated and embarrassed.

Aleksander, maliciously, tells everyone about the "semen incident" on Facebook, and the entire school starts laughing at Dominik. The boy is now under a lot of pressure and he cannot cope with it. That's when he finds a safe haven in the "Suicide Room". Let's remember that gender is completely a social construction, a fiction, and therefore open to change and contestation. In a way, this suicidal group is defying every convention; not only are they attempting to end their lives, but they are also computer generated images that have created an entire world online. This idea of identity as free-floating, as not attached to an 'essence', but instead to a performance, is part of the queer theory. And it's also fundamental in order to comprehend Jan Komasa's remarkable film. In the "Suicide Room" there is a Queen and warriors, and soon Dominik becomes a member of this club. Everyone here has, indeed, a floating, virtual identity. And gender rules don't really apply, as the Queen and Dominik have an intense friendship that can never turn into physical love.

Just as it happened in the opening frames of the film, there are two parallel sequences: the ones in the real world, and the ones in this non-existent place created thanks to the internet. When Dominik tells his parents that he might be gay, they adamantly refuse to give credit to such possibility. As it has been established, they're so deeply embroiled in the heterosexual normativity that no other alternative can be valid for them. By illustrating the artificial, conventional, and historical nature of gender construction, Butler critiques the assumptions of normative heterosexuality: those punitive rules (social, familial, and legal) that force us to conform to hegemonic, heterosexual standards for identity.

Unable to ascribe to predetermined gender roles, Dominik is now a tortured and fragile soul, vulnerable to the influence of this mysterious girl that acts like the Queen of the Suicide Room. But she along with her subjects are no more than phantasmatic projections devoid of any 'realness' or any sexual attributes for that matter. None of this matters to Dominik, who becomes more and more invested in this virtual world, neglecting reality and becoming completely isolated. A true masterpiece from Poland.

Brotherly (2008)

Alcoholic adults and sexually confused children

[4 October 2011]

Deprived of a caring father or a loving mother, two brothers must fend for themselves in the midst of their parents' rampaging alcoholism. It's often said in psychoanalytic theory that the name of the father is the ultimate authority, which inscribes the child into the symbolic order. But what authority can be obtained from a parental figure that lives in constant stupor and drunkenness? Clearly, there is no such thing as a valid name of the father in the lives of these two kids, and perhaps that's why there are no clear rules for them save for survival, which in this case means to take care of each other. As the younger brother, aged 12, keeps wetting the bed, the older brother takes him to his bedroom, and helps him to get naked so that he can clean him up.

The child is very fond of the teenager, and looks up to him. There is no real affection towards mothers or fathers here, only brotherly love. Soon, the proximity of the two kids as they start sharing the same bed awakens something. Sexuality irrupts strongly for the child who experiences his first erection as he feels his brother's body pressed against his.

In a house ruled by two alcoholic adults, these underage kids find a special comfort and refugee in one of western civilization's oldest taboos: incest. There is an in-between area of sexual ambiguity, do they experience sex as a manifestation of carnality or rather as the one instance in which they can redefine their roles without fears or worries about the specular images of adulthood (their parents), and by extension, society? Carefully devised, J.C. Oliva's short film circumvents controversy by offering us poetic images and flashbacks sequences that makes us understand why these characters do what they do, without judging them or exploiting them.

Benny's Gym (2007)

Teen abuse and marginality

[4 October 2011]

Perhaps aggression is inherent to every human being, it's an intrinsic desire of hurting others by no other reason than the opportunity to do so. Alfred is a teenager ostracized by other kids, he gets bullied all the time by Benny and his friends, who beat him up and pee on his notebook. Why is it that these youngsters experience such joy by torturing a defenseless boy? The boys attend the same high school but no education system can prevent what goes on here. Why? Because there is an education that pertains to the norm, to the word (id est, the reality); but there is always something else, something deep that cannot be channeled through the word (id est, the real). It's often thought that the first one is more than enough for the educative system and that's a blatant mistake. The teacher and the board cannot connect with the student. Reason –rationality- is not enough to deal with the pre-rational magma that governs our impulses and prevents us from becoming what we want to be, even if we don't know what that is.

When Benny is alone and spends time with Alfred, he is a different lad. The high school bully shares his secrets, his fears and hopes with the unpopular kid. It's no surprise that certain familial dynamics can create a vicious circle (of poverty, of violence, etc.), Benny's violent father physically punishes his son, not unlike the way Benny does it with other kids in school. An outlandish bond takes place between them. Perhaps, together, isolated from the world and society, from reality, they gain access to the real, that place in which desire is born.

In high school, Benny keeps ignoring Alfred, but when they're together everything is different. One night, Benny suggests that he could have sexual intercourse with Alfred, and kisses him passionately. Alfred acts surprised but had been longing for such a moment since day one. Nevertheless desire cannot guarantee a safe-conduct through adolescence… and soon, Benny's abusive friends savagely take it out on Alfred, they even try to drown him in the lake. Benny is a witness to all that, but he finds himself exscinded. Should he attempt to rescue his friend he would expose himself before the eyes of the others. But then, the possibility of losing Alfred forever is more than he can bear.

This Norwegian short film about abuse and marginality demonstrates that youth's problems are the same everywhere in the globe, and that as a society we're failing to keep things balanced. Our focus, as usual, goes to reality and not to the Lacanian real.

Manhattan (1979)

The soul of New York

[12 September 2011]

Isaac is a Romantic guy, his ex wife accuses him of living in the past; his more refined tastes do not blend well with the massive output of entertainment that, according to him, simply keeps confounding the audience and lowering the standards of quality. Even so, he works on TV, until he gets fed up and resigns.

Isaac is also an exscinded individual when it comes to his love life. He has a relationship with Tracy (gracefully played by Mariel Hemingway), a 17 years old girl, 27 years younger than him. He seems worried about having his friends mocking him for such an inappropriate affair. But he obviously feels relaxed and happy with her.

At the same time Yale, his best friend, is cheating on his wife by dating a rather extravagant and vivacious girl: Mary. She is not only outspoken but also very critical of the authors and artists that Isaac loves the most. At the beginning he gets infuriated, and he makes it clear.

Now that Isaac has turned his back to a very lucrative job on a television network, he must focus on finishing his book, while juggling his responsibilities as a father. His ex-wife (a dashing Meryl Streep) has come out of the closet and lives now with another lesbian; she also plans on writing a book about her marriage and how she let go of bisexuality to embrace homosexuality. Befuddled about the notion of having his private life exposed, Isaac is also having second thoughts about his relationship with high school student Tracy.

All the lives, the personalities, all the personal issues collide into each other. That's the beauty of a film like Manhattan. It's constant movement, change, just like life. As soon as one of the characters starts feeling comfortable with a given situation, something new arises. Lovers are there one minute and the next they're gone. This unpredictability is also reinforced by the blunt changes from one scene to the other, the abruptness of such changes provides the viewer with a sense of roughness, of raw-material, almost documentary like, that seems interrupted only by the most sublime musical repertoire. We all know Woody Allen is a music expert, and that is made evident throughout his cinematography.

Shot entirely in black and white, 'Manhattan' transforms the chaotic and overpopulated city of New York into the most subjugating and beautiful urban setting. The black and white also adds a special visual depth, which is fundamental for such a personal project like this one.

When Yale breaks up with Mary she seeks consolation in Isaac. The two of them hit it off and as a result Isaac decides to put an end to his affair with Mary. Relationships keep changing, evolving, not unlike the men and women that are the protagonists of the film. There are moments of unbiased enlightenment, sequences in which true art converges with true pathos. In the end, though, we've been left bereft; because as everyone should know, things are not easy in life, and not even finding the right person, the one human being that can make you experience love, is the answer. Or, in words of more scintillating wit that come from Isaac himself, this is about "people in Manhattan who are constantly creating these real, unnecessary neurotic problems for themselves - because it keeps them from dealing with more unsolvable terrifying problems". But then again, don't we all?

The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985)

Idealization versus the real

[8 September 2011]

I think everyone is familiar with idealization. Idealization is, after all, what we always do. It is how we deal with the real, we adapt it in a way that can provides us with reassurance, with a certain logic. Philosophers like Zizek would affirm that, in fact, fantasy can be stronger than reality. Because, in the end, what is reality but an amount of statements and common sense that we all agree upon? Cecilia, a waitress trying to survive in the middle of the greatest financial depression in America, lives a common life. She barely makes enough money to get by, she's married to an abusive, alcoholic and jobless man. And she has no real future ahead of her, rather than spend her youth, her whole life washing dishes in the local diner.

Her only cheerful moments take place in the cinema. She goes every day and watches the same movie. For a couple of hours she feels transported into a world of glamour, of beautiful men and women, a world in which everything makes sense, a world where happy endings are possible. In an era of poverty, movies are the ideal escapism. Movies are a window that allows the impoverished people to see life not as it is but as it could or should be.

Woody Allen is not only a great director but also a true connoisseur of cinema. Hollywood's films in the 20s relied deeply on spectacular images just as they do now, but what today is CGI (and explosions or big action sequences), decades ago was grand sets, hundreds of extras, complex choreographies, exotic scenarios and so on. That's the kind of films that Cecilia has access to. And as enamored as she is with this world of richness and splendor, she must come to reality and accept the hardships of life.

That is of course, until Tom Baxter, the adventurer, the handsome hero from the film, starts talking to her through the screen. He knows she loves the movie, she's been there every day. And he knows he loves her. And just like that, Tom Baxter is no longer a black and white, two dimensional character, he is now a person walking out of the screen and reaching out to her.

It happens in the movies, but it can also happen in real life: love at first sight. Cecilia and Tom are in love, but she doesn't know how to deal with this strange situation. He is a fictional character, he has never been in the real world, and he carries a certain naiveté but also a certain magic, a sense of wonder that reminds her that being alive, and making choices, is all that matters.

With a very ironic venue, Woody Allen reminds us that Hollywood is a cruel machinery in which profits and lawyers are more important than directors or actors. And once that these businessmen realize that the impossible has happened in New Jersey, they decide to fix the situation. Giles Shepherd, the actor that plays Tom Baxter, is worried about having a duplicate of him running amok in the streets. He has a career to protect, a reputation to uphold. When he discovers that Cecilia knows where to find Tom Baxter he tries to convince his creation to return to the screen, where he belongs, but to no avail.

Psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan used to say that desire towards our 'object a' depends on the phantasm; which in a way means that the object of our desire is never ours, our thirst is never quenched and we are doomed to unsatisfactory pursuits, always. This happens because the object of desire comes to us mediated through a veil that conceals the real, and thus strengthens what in this case is only an idealized image, a reflection of something that doesn't necessarily has to be there although that is all our eyes can see. Tom Baxter is the mirrored ideal that originates from Giles Shepherd, but at the same time, both are the ideal partners for Cecilia. One of them is fictitious and because of that he is also perfect; the other one is human, flawed, but authentic.

As the days go by, Cecilia falls in love with Giles, and dreams of leaving behind an awful reality, a mediocre existence. At the same time, she has some of the most amazing experiences of her life with Tom Baxter, as he takes her into the screen and into the very world she has always fantasized about. He takes her to the exclusive clubs and the mansions she had only seen in screen. He makes her know a new world, visually stunning; a black and white universe where things have a way of always working out in the end.

And then comes a moment, a moment in which she has to make a decision. Will she stay with Tom Baxter or Giles Shepherd? The character or the actor? The fiction or the reality? The ideal or the real? Making decisions is what makes us humans, but then again, pain, hunger, poverty and decay inevitably come with humanity. I won't spoil the ending, but suffice to say that I have never seen a greater, sadder and more significant sacrifice than the one seen here. The Purple Rose of Cairo is truly one of the most magnificent classics ever.

A History Without Importance (1980)

Perverse Polymorphism in Puberty

[29 August 2011]

Claude and Philippe are two young boys that meet in school. Philippe has a group of friends and even a girl that seems to follow him everywhere, but even so he feels progressively interested in Claude, a kid younger than the rest.

As they start spending time together, the line between friendship and infatuation becomes blurry. Confused about themselves and their burgeoning sexuality, a tension remains between them. One afternoon, the two boys are on Philippe's bed, and Claude confesses to him that the train movement usually provokes him an erection, not unlike the one he is about to experience in his buddy's bed. They talk about boys stuff, about wet dreams and, above all, self-pleasuring. Claude asks Philippe to jerk off in front of him; and Philippe explains to his friend that in order to masturbate one must first think of someone or something.

This assertion makes perfect sense if one thinks about Michele Foucault's observations in his Histoire de la Sexualité, wherein the author affirms that masturbation cannot take place without fantasy, without an image that can exacerbate sexual desire. For Foucault, the first sexual stage in animals is coitus; for humans, however, this first stage is masturbation.

Lacan, on the other hand, would affirm that masturbation is the joy of the idiot, and although there can be many interpretations about this phrase, there is no doubt that in this short film, Philippe assumes the role of the idiot, id est, the role of the subject that can no longer escape from the phantasm, the idealized image of the other boy, precluding him from accepting reality as it is.

Later on, in a sleepover, Philippe starts touching Claude's shoulder and torso; Claude pretends to be asleep but makes it easy for his friend to gain access to his crotch; as Philippe strokes Claude's naked body, a moment of intimacy and clumsiness becomes poignant for the teenagers. Because of the age difference, Claude admires his friend, he feels like there is much he can learn from him, but at the same time he tries to defend his masculine position in the symbolic order Although Claude seems to be what Freud would denominate as a pubescent "perverse polymorph", Philippe wrongly interprets the signs he thinks his friend is giving off. As a result, when they go camping and Claude kisses a girl, Philippe understands what's going and starts crying. The two boys share a tent, and once Claude gets in, Philippe almost loses his mind, he tries to touch the schoolboy and demands for his nudity; he ends up begging to see him nude, but the young boy refuses to indulge in yet another masturbatory setting.

Philippe leaves the tent, desperate, and from that moment on, everything falls to pieces. Whatever's left of their friendship is now shattered, and Claude eludes his older friend. Philippe gets depressed, he stops eating, and he starts calling Claude's home and following his friend from a distance. But nothing works. He has lost him. Claude lingers on, imprisoned as an idealized figure inside Philippe's psyche, and it is Philippe's inability to cope with the real what ultimately ruins everything. The ending, fierce and despondent, proves once again that we might have access to the body of the other, but we never have access to the other's mind; the emotional void, the emptiness in Philippe's heart will forever remain there.

Lost in Translation (2003)

Lack of Communication & Simulacrum

[27 August 2011]

A woman, Scarlett Johansson, is in a five star hotel, beholding Tokyo's skyline. A man, Bill Murray, looks through a car's window, curious perhaps, but above all estranged. Combining a deeply poignant music with suggestive images, the director creates a world, a filmic universe that captures our attention immediately. What Sofia Coppola does in the opening frames is what many filmmakers struggle to achieve in their entire careers.

Throughout the film there is always a feeling of longing for a different tomorrow, and loneliness as the confirmation that the one constant in human condition is discontent. Lack of communication can be seen in the title but it's also an indicator of all that we can't put into language.

Perhaps in the best role of his career, Bill Murray plays Bob Harris, a washed-out actor that used to be a super star and now has to endorse a Japanese whisky. He feels like an alien in Tokyo. But he's also a specular image of the Japanese people's own alienated condition. Westernized to the extreme, the Japanese have lost their essence, they are the living example of how further can people go in order to disallow themselves.

Giovanni Ribisi's character, a professional photographer also ponders on it: Japanese rock and roll groups that have no substance and exist only thanks to the decoration, the false reality that photography and the right publicity stunt can imprint on them. The photographer is there to sustain the alienation process, even if he disagrees with the falseness of it all.

In the same way, Bob Harris has to synthetize in a TV commercial what the Japanese consider the core of Western elegance and sophistication. He is asked to be Roger Moore, Frank Sinatra, he is asked to perform not as the white man he is but as the white man they need him to be. Of course, there can be no words or guidelines for such a taxing acting job. And that's why also it's impossible for the interpreters to translate the instructions given to him. Not only are words lost in translation, but also there is an unnamed need, a 'real' that threatens to irrupt into reality, and as Lacan explains in his psychoanalytic theory, the real exceeds the language, the real can never exist within the boundaries of the symbolic, id est, language.

Bob Harris is an exhausted man that finds alcohol soothing, although just barely. After 25 years of marriage he is unhappy. Between him and his wife no real communication exists. What takes place, however, is a very insistent simulacrum, much in the same way that everything takes place in Japan. Philosopher Alan Badiou's talks about the importance of the simulacrum in postmodern society; if Sofia Coppola's film is more revealing and enthralling than anything else out there is precisely because it embraces contemporaneity to the maximum; this isn't a film about explanations, about outcomes, which would be a modernist approach; this is a postmodern film in the way that it sates our hunger for art, for beauty and for intellectual value while establishing what Derrida proposed in his deconstruction theory: knowledge can never be complete. When Bob's wife sends him a fax, or Fed-Exes carpet samples, or calls him, it's all a simulacrum. They are never able to connect with each other, not even at the most basic of levels.

In the same manner, Charlotte, extraordinarily interpreted by Scarlett Johansson seems to be drifting away. She's married to a successful photographer but she can't figure out what to do with her time. There is no meaning for life, and that thought depresses her and fills her heart with anguish. She tries to get into self-help audiobooks to feel better, to no avail. The entire boom of auto-help material is also an example of Badiou's simulacrum; thousands if not millions of these books are written each year, and yet they are all useless. Life cannot be summarized, standardized and explained so that you can feel better. But despair takes the best of us all, and thus self-help becomes the one and only thing that sells out nowadays.

When Charlotte and Bob meet in the hotel's bar, they recognize in the other the same existential doubts, the same sensibilities, and they feel connected. They are the only characters able to actually communicate with each other. Their bond is intensified when contrasted with the world around them, for example, with Charlotte's Japanese friends who are so absolutely alienated and have tried so hard to look and act like Americans that end up as ridiculous and pathetic creatures. Tokyo is a city that denies its past, its traditions, so much that it's simply brutal to see how its inhabitants behave.

However, there is still some true beauty left (beauty as it would be understood in the Genji Monogatari and other traditional Japanese works of art), and Coppola gives us a glimpse of it, in a couple of moments. Nevertheless, this beauty, this true spirit, is constantly covered by the appalling reality that surrounds the protagonists. When Bob Harris receives the visit of a woman wearing sexy stockings, we are privy to yet another example of westernized acculturation and fantasies, although here the fantasy instead of covering the horror of the real merely exacerbates the void, the structural fissures of Japan's society.

Sofia Coppola's masterwork resonates deeply inside of us because it's one of the most refined and superb portrayals of the human condition in cinema's history. The final scene, of course, proves once again that there is no such thing as a happy ending, and precisely because of that it reminds us that life is just like that, unpredictable, full of suffering but also possibilities of change and, of course, free will. Lost in Translation makes it into my personal top twenty without a second thought.

Give Me Your Hand (2008)

"My brother is what he is"

[16 July 2011]

Antoine and Quentin are twin brothers. They're both young, determined and stubborn. Planning to assist to their mother's funeral, they embark on a journey to Spain. Hitchhiking, walking, illegally breaking their way into cargo trains, their trip becomes longer and harder than expected.

Antoine, however, manages to find some pleasure thanks to the girls he finds on the road. Sexual intercourse seems to be Antoine's privilege, as Quentin remains isolated and totally immersed in his drawings. Even so, the twin brothers seem to share a special bond. Closeness and intimacy, at first, seem to come natural to them.

They almost embody the idealized brotherly relationship as seen in Sophocles Antigone. Antoine and Quentin are 'autadelphos' to the extreme, not only have they shared the mother's womb but they also share every physical trait, identical to one another in physical appearance they are completely different in everything else. According to Saussure's linguistics, these brothers would only be able to articulate themselves into the symbolic order by functioning as mutually supplementary properties. Here the signifier (the body) is the same, but the signified (the personality) is completely different.

The hardships of the excursion take a toll on the brother's already strained relationship. But even after constant fighting, they agree on working in a farm the necessary days to pay for a train ticket to Spain. One night, Quentin finds in the fields a young man that looks very interested in him. They go skinny dipping and afterwards they have sex in the middle of the woods. Antoine, worried about his brother's absence goes out looking for him and finds him naked with the other boy.

With a mindset conquered by the heterosexual normativity, Antoine is unable to cope with the fact that his brother is homosexual. In the classic Greek tragedy, Antigone confirms that she loves her brother despise he was a traitor to Thebes, she reaffirms "My brother is what he is", and she loves him even more than life itself. He is what he is. And she accepts him for it. Antoine, however, cannot accept homosexuality, he can't see his brother as he is. And so, a few hours after the fateful encounter, he betrays his brother.

While eating in town, a man approaches Antoine, trying to seduce him. He quickly tells the man that for 100 euros he can have his brother, who is already waiting in the bathroom. The man pays and goes into the bathroom, and abusively tries to undress Quentin, who defends as best as he can. Antoine leaves the place and returns afterwards, only to find his brother's backpack on the bathroom's floor. He is nowhere to be found and it's only then when Antoine realizes what he has done.

Relationships amongst brothers are always complicated, there is much love and hate, constant conflicts, but usually nothing escalates as dangerously as it happens in Pascal-Alex Vincent's film. Antoine has a ghastly nightmare: he sees Quentin covered in blood. He starts feeling guilty, and he starts remembering other occasions in which he had purposefully neglected his brother.

He has but one choice: to keep traveling to Spain. Just before reaching his mother's town, he runs into Angel, a young man that tries to help him (curiously, Angel is played by Fernando Ramallo, famous for his interpretation of a gay teenager in Krampack); finally he arrives on time for the memorial. It's only fitting that the possibility of the brother's death is bound to the mother's funeral. It all boils down to Lacan's symbolic death. The burial place is the first symbol in which humanity can reorganize itself. Animals live and die anonymously, so to speak. For humans, unity and irreplaceability must be protected and remembered through language, that's why we speak of the dead, why we erect monuments and place tombstones, thus creating what Lacan called "a second death" that pertains to the order of the symbolic.

The final scenes of "Donne-moi la main" are unforgettable because of the lack of communication, loneliness and true desperation that the director transmits with strong images. At the beginning of the film, we had two brothers trusting in each other, sharing their frustrations and joys, expressing their feelings not through conventional language but rather through gestures, physical contact, silences and movement. At the end of the film all that remains is bereft, loss, rage and violence.

Dear Friend (2011)

Coming out in the 60s

[2 July 2011]

Christian and James are best friends and spend most of their time together. Unbeknownst to the other boy, Christian has deeply fallen in love for his friend. There are boundaries, however, that according to some unwritten norms should not be crossed. So even as Christian wants to go beyond the limits of friendship, he is aware of his friend's obedience to the nom de pere, the name of the father, id est, the fatherly authority that has the final say. When Christian tells his friend "You don't have to do everything your old man says" he expects James to, effectively, step out of the father's commands.

But how can one subvert the mechanisms of power? There are rules and categorical imperatives out there, and somehow we must learn to survive without bequeathing upon ourselves our true nature. It's 1965 and Christian knows that homosexuality is technically illegal in England. However he finds within himself enough courage to surpass the pre-established limits. As philosopher Alan Badiou would define it "Courage is the name of something which is not reducible either to law or desire. Courage is the name for subjectivity which is irreducible to the dialectics of law and desire in its proper form". When the two boys arrive home a bit drunk and lay together on the same bed, Christian attempts to kiss James.

James reacts badly and Christian decides to sleep on the hallway, away from his friend. The next morning, the two boys have quite a heated argument about what happened. Christian assures his friend that his feelings must have been obvious "Like you didn't know", are his words. James, nevertheless, feels uneasy and insults his friend, calling him queer and sick. Christian's father arrives just in time to see the boys arguing, and then James shouts "Your son is a poof". The revelation of Christian's homosexuality will come as a shock to the father, and of course, his reaction is as bad as one could possibly imagine.

Determined to abandon the house, Christian packs up and leaves. However, remorse and guilt had weighed greatly on James so he decides to return to his friend's house. It is in that moment that the two of them coincide. After an initial outburst of violence, there is a final embrace between the two boys. They have reconciled with each other and, more importantly, they have reconciled with the truth.

With stunning visuals and clear story-telling, Sophie Boyce's short film successfully turns a common dilemma into a more appealing material. Let's not forget that in today's world we seem to be eternally concerned with an ideology of happiness. The imperative is clear: Be happy and enjoy your life and so on. In artistic creation we often see the opposite of that kind of ideology in the obsession with suffering bodies, the difficulty of sexuality, and so on. Nonetheless, we need not be in that sort of obsession because the question of art is also the question of life and not always the question of death... And if something remains undisputable in the short film's conclusion is that life is all that matters. This is, indeed, a reaffirmation of life.

Baby Shark (2005)

Lack of communication in teenage dynamics

[2 July 2011]

Perhaps the best Pascal-Alex Vincent's short film to date, "Bebé Requin" neatly weaves three stories of teenage relationships and the lack of communication in postmodern society. And by postmodern we could understand 'fragmented', that yearns for the whole. Here such fragmentation is related directly to the advent of technology. In the first story, a boy and a girl sit together semi-naked whilst the boy entertains himself with online gaming (technology). The cries of death come from the game as a mumbled cacophony that fills the room. There is not a word spoken between them, and when the door ring bells, they're forced to get dressed. A boy has come to visit them. And while he stares taciturnly into the screen, he seems to make a decision and "breaks the ice", so to speak.

The recently arrived boy removes his shirt, unzips his pants and walks towards the other boy, demanding to have his penis sucked. Of course, there is no reasonable reaction from either the girl or the boy. They continue to sit down, he continues to play and only ventures that the distraction is going to make him lose, even so he briefly practices fellatio on his friend, although the girl refuses to do the same. They are deeply concentrated on the screen, which is only mirroring the indifference of our time. But what does our era enjoin us to do? We must either survive through the simulacrum or succumb to the real, this foreclosure bequeaths us or sustains turning away from communication. When the girl refuses to provide pleasure to the boy, he hits them both with his skateboard. Once he's gone, we still see the boy and the girl, faces covered in blood, sitting on the couch, and he's still playing with the same feeling of boredom in his eyes.

The second story is a hyperbole of the lack of communication, as a teenager tries, day after day, to talk to another boy. He talks and talks and talks, and he never receives an answer; his interlocutor barely looks at him and keeps on walking. As philosopher Alan Badiou would explain, communication transmits a universe made up of disconnected images, remarks, statements and commentaries whose accepted principle is incoherence. And it's only through the incoherent ramblings of the lonely teenager that we understand the relevance of true rapport.

In the third story, the male body is the center of the narrative. Quoting Badiou: "We will call 'body' the worldly dimension of the subject and 'trace' that which, on the basis of the event, determines the active orientation of the body. A subject is therefore a formal synthesis between the statics of the body and its dynamics, between its composition and its effectuation". It's only fitting, then, to observe the body duplicated, in this case, in twin brothers that carry out different dynamics. After all, one of them is gladly involved in a sexual relationship with a girl, and subsequently the other one is furiously jealous. When one of the brothers hits the other in order to supplant him during the intercourse, it's made clear that the "active orientation of the body" can easily surmount the established boundaries.

Why is this short film a work of art? As Badiou would define it "Art is not the sublime descent of the infinite into the finite abjection of the body and sexuality. It is the production of an infinite subjective series through the finite means of a material subtraction". Pascal-Alex Vincent successfully blends subjectivity with sexuality and provides us with an honest insight into the heart of adolescence.

The Doom Generation (1995)

Phallic joy and the failure of heterosexuality

[23 June 2011]

The last film in Araki's Teenage Apocalypse Trilogy builds upon the premises laid out in "Nowhere" and "Totally F***ed Up". And what better way to end a trilogy than with a threesome in the making? The three protagonists of this production are Jordan White, interpreted by James Duval who once again conveys all the confusion and insecurities of adolescence, Amy Blue, his sexy girlfriend and Xavier Red, a wild, aggressive and assertive guy they meet on the road.

Together they will embark upon a journey that, without a clear destination, will bring forth certain aspects of their real 'selves'. At the beginning of the film, Jordan attempts to penetrate his girlfriend to no avail. But this is not a reference to impotence. It is rather a reaffirmation of what Lacan would denominate the nonexistence of sexual rapport. Amy tries to give directions to her insecure boyfriend about what to do with his penis. Obviously, sexual joy here is phallocentric. But let's not forget that the phallus is a signifier, and even the model of jouissance is bound to be seized in the idiocy of the practice that attests to it. A phallocentric perspective exemplifies the non-rapport in the Other.

To declare that the jouissance is phallic is fundamentally to state it is solitary. That clearly explains why is it that Jordan and Amy are unable to consummate their passion, remaining as virgins. According to Lacan, the axiom "There is no such thing as sexual rapport" obeys to a basically solitary jouissance. When Jordan asks Amy "Don't you think sex is totally strange? Just the whole idea of it" he is essentially explaining how difficult it is to decode sex in the symbolic order, because sex can neither be translated into words nor discarded as simulacra (which happens very often in postmodern society). Amy then responds "I think maybe it's more powerful than we'd like it to be". And she is absolutely right about it.

As soon as Xavier enters into scene, sexual dynamics are fiercely disrupted. Xavier is sexually overwhelming, he invades the personal space of the boy and the girl, disregarding gender divisions. When Jordan and Amy are taking a shower together, Xavier looks at them and masturbates. Masturbation is very relevant in "The Doom Generation", after all, what could best exemplify the solitary jouissance? Amy describes Xavier as a living support for the sexual organ, and Xavier has no problems in acting as a "walking penis", so to speak. He is rendered as the phallus, and because he is the phallus he becomes desirable for Amy and Jordan.

According to Freud, the man possesses the phallus, for Lacan, however, the woman can also have it (let's remember that phallus is not a synonym for penis). In both cases, as embarrassment, as lack, a substitute to be looked for, yet essentially, sexuality will be there conditioned, determined. To have the phallus is to be afraid of losing it; to not have it is to seek for it. All this is demonstrated when Amy engages in sexual intercourse with Xavier, thus creating a specular moment, an instance which reflects a previous one, in which Jordan masturbates while he sees his girlfriend and his new friend copulating (dynamics that bear some similitude to Cristopher Munch's Harry + Max, so it's not surprising to see this filmmaker credited at the end).

Nonetheless, one of the most fascinating aspects of the film is the feeling of impending doom that permeates reality over and over again. Amy will summarize it in one phrase: "there is no place for us in this world"; whereas Jordan will only inquire "ever felt like reality is more twisted than dreams?". "The Doom Generation" is as surreal as other Araki's films, and it picks up on a certain leit motif present in his cinematographic work: religious zealousness and all it entangles. From Amy's mother (a fervent scientologist) to billboards with messages such as The Rapture is Coming (a "doomsday" of sorts according to certain religious sects as explained in "Nowhere") or Prepare for the Apocalypse. Of course, there is also the constant emphasis on 666, the number of the beast; every time the characters buy food or have to pay for something, the price is exactly the same 6 dollars with 66 cents. 6.66. The film is thoroughly filled with what Genet would call paratextual references, here the "writing on the wall" is very visible, in every wall, in every store and gas station they visit.

Reality seems to be seeping down under their very noses, although as Xavier reminds them: "I saw it on TV so it's gotta be true, right?". But there is little or nothing they can grab a hold on. And this capricious dynamic is reinforced by the fact that Amy is an interchangeable object a (object of desire), as a fast food employee confuses her with an old flame and chases her down, something that also happens with an enraged lesbian, and a gay man. All forms of sexuality (heterosexuality, male and female homosexuality) enable the completion of yet another trio.

When Jordan, Amy and Xavier are finally ready for a threesome, something of the order of the real irrupts and dramatically changes everything. A violent group of men captures the protagonists, and threaten Jordan very seriously with removing his genitals. But what could castration mean? A rapport should be posited and established, from a subject of one sex to the phallus, and would not get inscribed by a rapport to the partner sexed differently. This is the value Lacan bestows on the universal allotted to the castration complex. Thus the Old Testament conjectures that Sodom will suit the man and Gomorrah the woman. If castration was metaphorical at the beginning (Jordan's inability to maintain an erection) here it takes a more literal approach, which is only fitting if we consider that sexual rapport for the protagonists will forever be impossible.

A Single Man (2009)

Life and Symbolic Death

[23 June 2011]

It's your last day. What would you do? For professor George Falconer the answer is easy: retrieving important documents, closing bank accounts, writing letters to his friends as well as his last will. With unflinching actions and melancholic gestures, Colin Firth creates a most enthralling character, imbued by the sheer emotion of loss and yet adjusted to the repressed feelings he considers necessary to suppress even in his last day. After losing his partner and lover, there is no deterrence in his decision: he will kill himself at the end of the day.

How then could he spend his last 24 hours? Many would have extravagant and unordinary ideas, but the truth is that George Falconer upholds his daily routine facing this day as any other. He wakes up, takes a shower, gets dressed, drives to university, teaches his last class and decides to join his old friend Charlie (amazingly interpreted by Julianne Moore) for supper. Tom Ford's remarkable film takes Christopher Isherwood's novel and turns it into a tour de force in which emotions and the human condition are on full display.

Everything seems different when you realize you are watching things for the last time. And so George finally lets go, acting and speaking to people in ways he had not even considered before. Through constant flashbacks, the viewer catches a few glances of the relationship George had with Jim. They had been together for 16 years and if not for a fatal accident they would still be together. Can life lose all meaning once we lost our loved ones? It certainly would seem like it; George finds himself not only disgruntled but also devoid of any hope. He dreads tomorrow. And why should he inflict himself with the torture of existing, day after day, if existence has proved to be so painful and dire? Some answers can be found in Slavoj Zizek and Jacques Lacan theories; more specifically in the notions of real and symbolic death. Evidently, we will suffer a biological death in which our bodies will fail and eventually disintegrate, that's what happens with Jim. This death occurs in the Real, and it entails the obliteration of our material selves. But we can also suffer a Symbolic death that has nothing to do with the annihilation of our actual bodies, but rather the destruction of our Symbolic universe and the extermination of our subject positions. Whenever people remember our names, remember our deeds and so on we continue to exist in the Symbolic even though we have died in the Real. Therefore, Jim is not truly dead as George remembers him constantly, but here evocation does not provide the necessary narrative of closure, the grieving process remains incomplete.

There is a fissure that separates the two deaths which can be filled either by manifestations of the monstrous or the beautiful. A concept that a Spanish hustler rescues during a conversation with the professor "Sometimes awful things have their own kind of beauty". That is why the presence of Kenny, Nicholas Hoult's character, is of supreme importance. He is not only the embodiment of beauty but he also provides the companionship George so urgently needs. Only through Kenny and the bonding they start developing will George experience an epiphany ("A few times in my life I've had moments of absolute clarity, when for a few brief seconds the silence drowns out the noise and I can feel rather than think, and things seem so sharp and the world seems so fresh"). A revelation in which he will understand why is it important to let go of the past, to put the pain away and to take a real risk: to accept life and keep on living.

Mysterious Skin (2004)

Coping with sexual abuse: Perversion versus Fantasy

[6 June 2011]

It all starts and ends with a little league's pedophile coach and two kids: Neil and Brian, who unbeknownst to their parents are the victims of a sexual predator. But what is the authentic aftermath of this encounter between the man and the 8-year-old children? The repercussions of sexual abuse will affect greatly the lives of Neil and Brian, but in so many different ways that one could almost wonder if they shared the same experience. As a matter of fact, being sexually abused is such a traumatic event for Brian that he blocks it out of his mind unable to cope with the real, and he then proceeds to fill in the memory gaps with a fantasy of alien abduction. Recurring to such self-defense mechanisms is quite a normal psychological strategy, but it also mingles well with a recurring theme in Araki's cinematography.

Neil, on the other hand, fills in the gashing void with an idealized image of the pedophile. After all, during an entire summer the two of them spend many nights together. Neil actually functions as an accomplice, helping the coach to lure in unsuspecting boys, thus creating a perverse bond between them. Perhaps one of the greatest accomplishes of Scott Heim's novel is to invert the roles, creating a pedophile that seems to be nicer and more caring than the boys' parents, while at the same time embedding at least one of the victims with an attitude that one would find difficult to sympathize with. Araki's film, of course, thrives because of that: the complexity between the characters relationships. This is not, after all, a lesson of morality. Here the coach leaves the town, with an untarnished reputation, and leaves behind Neil, a very obsessed boy who admits later that "it's a huge part of me. No one ever made me feel that way before or since [...] I was his one true love".

Perversion seems to be the one predominant constant throughout Neil's life, but as Lacan would define it, a perverse individual is the one who assumes the position of the object-instrument of the "will-to-enjoy" (volonté-de-jouissance), which is not his own will but that of the big Other. In this case, Neil accepts to serve as a garish tool of pleasure for the coach, and years later, as a teenage hustler, he has no quandaries when it is his turn to be the instrument of joy of the other (namely his clients). Emotionally detached from everyone, only a girl, a friend from childhood, remains as his one and true humane anchor. His mother, after all, has always been a carefree woman, constantly hooking up with men, and paying no attention to his son; that's why when Neil is about to depart to New York, she looks at him and utters "my baby, all grown up", not as a typical motherly affirmation but rather a discovery: time flew by, and she wasn't there at all.

Brian's dreams are a reminder that another boy was with him the night of the alien abduction, consequently the insecure boy starts the search for Neil, and learns of his whereabouts just after Neil has left for the big city. It is then that Neil's friend, Eric, a very flamboyant gay kid, befriends him. Brian is quite a timid and introversive teenager, perhaps as a result of having a very dominant mother and an absent father (even before he abandons the family, he was only there to state how disappointed he was at his son). Eric describes him as "weirdly asexual" (even without knowing how Brian had violently rejected a UFO obsessed woman that intended to caress his penis); indeed, Brian is unable to reclaim sexuality for himself, and after having always lived in a world of his own he finds in Eric's friendship everything he needs to break out of his shelf.

As a male prostitute, Neil finds the horror of the real in New York, and he will soon realize how dangerous his line of business can get. Back in town, Eric is preparing himself to let go of the one reality that has sustained and nurtured his psyche, but can he embrace the real if Neil tells him exactly what happened that fatidic night? Araki brilliantly depicts this honest, heart-wrenching and unruly story, taking advantage of the exceptional acting qualities of Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Neil), a daring and talented actor that has worked in many interesting independent films, such as Brick, The Lookout or Latter Days (a gay themed movie). This actor finds in Brady Corbet (Brian) the ideal partner; Corbet creates a subtle but fascinating character, completely different from his roles in Funny Games US or Thirteen, proving not only that he is a great actor but that he also knows how to choose the best directors to work with.

Nowhere (1997)

Sexual rapport doesn't exist

[6 June 2011]

James Duval once again plays the role of a sexually confused teenager named Dark. He has a very outspoken mother who requests of him but one thing: to stop the self-abuse. Indeed, in the opening scene we find Dark in the shower ardently stroking his penis as he reimagines some of his sexual encounters with Mel, his bisexual girlfriend, and particularly a moment he shares in the locker room with Montgomery (played by Nathan Bexton).

Just like in Araki's Totally F***ed Up (part of the Apocalypse Teenage Trilogy), the story revolves around a cast of troubled teenagers. This is a generation of youngsters that take the imperative of joy to the extreme, they live their lives as if the world is about to end, and everything they do is of the utmost intensity.

There is sheer perversity in Shad (played by Ryan Phillippe) and Lilith (Heather Graham), both devotees of bondage and sadomasochism. When Shad is all tied up and about to be dominated by Lilith, he adopts a particular position in the sexual structure: here the subject makes himself the instrument of the Other's jouissance. The pervert is the person in whom the structure of the drive is most clearly revealed, and also the person who carries the attempt to go beyond the pleasure principle to the limit "he who goes as far as he can along the path of jouissance".

Sadism motivates the Teen Idol's actions as he seduces a girl who is totally infatuated by his specular image (namely, the notoriety and fame derived of his TV appearances). As a sadist he locates himself as the object of the invocatory drive, not only brutally hitting the girl but also raping her.

The imperative of joy also takes its toll on the homosexual couple formed by Cowboy and Bart; Bart is a drug addict beyond recovery, despite all the efforts his boyfriend does to help him. Perhaps the only normal couple, albeit "in the making", would be formed by Dingbat (played by Christina Applegate) and Ducky (Scott Caan).

But everything is sort of in the making, as these college kids can't seem to make up their minds. For example, Dark confronts Mel as he is uneasy with her promiscuity (and bisexuality). "Sometimes I feel so old fashioned", he confesses. It would be fair to state that theirs is a case of sexual failure because the object of desire, insofar as it is incarnated, never accedes in turn to the Other sex. And this is a translation of Lacan's proposition "there is no such thing as sexual rapport".

Dark expresses a restrained concept of what is properly sexual. Thus it concerns the rapport to the Other sex, to the Other body as sexed, and specially as sexed differently - body to body, sexed body to sexed body. In so constricting the range of sexuality, in focusing on corporeity he demonstrates that sexuality is utterly undone or not constituted. At the time of sexual jouissance, the rapport one counts upon, the rapport that should be there takes the form of failure. That is why Dark grows more and more comfortable with Montgomery's presence; Dark's object of desire is shifting towards a sexed body that mirrors his own: a male body. Lacan's expression of "corporeal excerpt" serves to qualify what he calls the object a. It entails a debasement of the Other, having it demeaned from the status of Other as such to the rank of the object a of drive. And this is the path Lacan follows when he announces that there is no such thing as sexual rapport.

Every couple in the film is a living manifest of this sexual failure, unable to connect to the other, they live desperately and on the verge of destruction. It isn't surprising, then, to witness the suicides of two characters partly prompted by religious zealousness. Suicide here is also a successful attempt of the real to break into reality which coincides with the constant irruption of the alien, not only as a headline that proclaims that space aliens are kidnapping children but as a very 'real' manifestation of an alien monster that only Dark and Montgomery are able to see.

The alien serves as a metaphor of the uncanny double, originated as the mortifying aspect of narcissism when it is not limited by castration. Narcissism presupposes to mask death itself. Nevertheless, here the alien is responsible for the death of a few college girls, and once Montgomery disappears Dark fears the worse. When something of this object a (id est Montgomery) of the phantasm appears in the real, on top of the frame, disrupting it and therefore disrupting the 'scene' that so far has contained it, the effect that ensues is marked by angst. Such is the case of the alien monster who appears always between moments, between sequences, almost taunting Dark, on the fringes of reality and the real. Araki's masterful representation of the manner in which the phantasm is framed reveals the importance of what many viewers might consider random and capricious appearances.

When Montgomery shows up in Dark's room, stark naked, they start talking. Montgomery affirms "I got kidnapped by space aliens". It's not long before they decide to share the bed (yet another hint pointing out the sexual failure). Dark and Montgomery move through a difficult zone, they can't "pull it out", they're doomed to let go of the conceptual inveigling that Lacan has accomplished, and that always articulates jouissance with castration, that is a phallic function. When Montgomery experiences an abnormal seizure Dark asks him "Tell me what it is", which is an impossible question because, after all, the real exceeds language. Whatever is wrong with Montgomery, no language could express it. The after credits final scene is the perfect closure for Araki's narrative, as it reinserts again not only the failure of sex but also the complete failure of language.

Dear Pillow (2004)

Idealized images in masturbatory fantasies

[6 June 2011]

What happens when a confused teenager starts hanging out with a veteran pornographer? Well, suffice to say that every conversation they have revolves around sex. But what is sex in the end? Is it the required intercourse to get the female partner pregnant or is it something far more complex and symbolic? Michele Foucault wrote on his Histoire de la Sexualité that there are two clearly differentiated sexual stages. The first one is, of course, sexual intercourse; but the second one applies only for humans, and that is masturbation; masturbation inspired, or spiced, by fantasy.

In the Victorian age, as Foucault so aptly explains, sex was a concern, and masturbation was deemed as an illness, an unnecessary expenditure of vital forces. But what was even more distressing is that it was fueled by fantasy, and masturbatory fantasies, of course, would not bode well against the rigid moral codes of society.

Is masturbation no longer a taboo? Wes probably wouldn't think so, as he gets fired for jerking off during work hours. The teenage boy feels absolutely ashamed when his father finds out about this incident. Now, with more free time Wes decides to accept Dusty's invitation to have a few beers.

When Wes partakes in Dusty's hobbies, he understands some of the inner works that make the pornography industry thrive. Ultimately it all boils down to one thing: fantasy. In the same way that Wes's father finds bondage an arousing practice, Wes is unable to achieve self-satisfaction without borrowing his father's adult magazines. Dusty will explain it to him better, coining the term possession; Dusty literally says in one scene "possession of the image of the ass".

The possession of the image and nothing else. Because the human mind needs fantasy, even if there is another human being in front… What Lacan calls the phantasm is also expressed in the obsessive search of Wes's father: his vast collection of pornography has but one trait in common… the porn actresses share some resemblance with Wes's mother. The phantasmatic image is there to fill a void, a lacking that can never be truly replaced. And that also explains why the father has had no sex in over two years.

Wes is tired of being a virgin, and his horniness translates into highly erotic stories he writes and shares with Dusty. The boy wonders if he might be able to get into the adult magazines industry; and Dusty advices him to have sex first so that he can write more authentically. Of course, Dusty is homosexual, and Wes, having some homoerotic encounters with a friend his age, cannot be sure what is it that Dusty wants from him. When Wes talks to Vera, a specialist in "sex phone" (again another sort of fantasy that reinforces masturbation) he admits that anal sex turns him on. Perhaps dusty crosses the boundaries when he asks Wes and Vera to star in a home-made porn video. But ultimately, it is a necessary requirement, after all, what can be more masturbatory than that?

The Cement Garden (1993)

The irreplaceable sibling - incestuous love

[28 May 2011]

The Cement Garden Andrew Birkin's film has it all: intense characters, controversial situations and unusual concepts, which shouldn't come as a surprise if we keep in mind that it's based upon a novel by Ian McEwan. The protagonists are Jack, a 16 year-old boy and Julie, his sister, barely a couple of years older; then come the youngest sister and the youngest brother. The four of them live with their parents, in a somehow bleak house, completely isolated from other neighborhoods.

Jack spends most of his time avoiding his home duties, such as cleaning up his room, and instead devotes most of his hours in a secluded spot in which he hides a worn out adult magazine and toilet paper. His mother actually confronts him and tells him, following the pseudo-scientific approach from Victorian age (which Foucault so aptly analyzed in his History of sexuality), that his moodiness and messiness is a direct result of self-abuse, and that should he continue practicing that he would end up extenuating his body.

One afternoon, the father is pouring cement into the garden and asks Jack for help, but while the father keeps working on the garden, the young boy is in the bathroom masturbating enthusiastically, with precise visual transitions, the director manages to apprise the moment of Jack's orgasm with the last breadth of the father, as he succumbs to a heart attack. Later on, Jack will tell to his sister "Besides... not my fault he died", answering a question that no sibling had dared to ask up to that moment.

The absence of the father marks the downfall of the family. The mother is unable to step out of her room, depressed as she is, and order and discipline soon turns into chaos and disarray. It's in this context that the constant taunting between Jack and Julie turns into something else. What at first begins as innocent flirtations soon brings up more tantalizing repartees. In one occasion, while Jack is on top of Julie, tickling her, she starts grabbing him in a very distinct manner and comes to an orgasm.

As the mother falls deeper into depression and illness, the fear of being discovered is diluted and thus the incestuous fantasy acquires a firm grasp on reality. As Lacan analyzed in his Antigone seminar, the death drive moves the Greek heroine towards the desire invested exclusively around the body of her deceased brother. In "The Cement Garden", the protagonists start cajoling themselves around this death drive that disappears and leaves only a very real desire and a very real erotic drive. "My brother is what he is" would say Antigone, and in a similar way Jack will tell her sister that if people love him then they will take him as he is.

In Ancient Greece the term "autadelphos" (autos: "same"; adelphos: "sisterly," related to delphus: "womb") would mean something irreplaceable. As Antigone says in Sophocles' play, if she would lose her children she could always get pregnant again, if she would lose her husband she could always find another man, but if she loses her brother, who could possibly replace him? They are, after all, creatures that have shared the same womb and nothing can compare to that. In a similar fashion, the passion between Jack and Julie defies all social norms and regulations. They are irreplaceable for each other, and as the house starts falling apart, they start getting closer and closer.

The absence of the father also means the absence of the nom de pere, the ultimate authority that inscribes the subject into society, that commands his offspring to occupy the male or female position in the symbolic order. Without this authority, male and female positions are interchangeable whether ideologically or practically, as it's made evident by the authority invested upon Julie, who has the full responsibility of being in charge of the house (a role that would be traditionally ascribed to a male), or by the youngest brother's obsession in wearing wigs and skirts, not only dressing up as a girl but also sleeping on the bed with another boy his age, pretending to be Julie and Jack. When Jack intends to stop this peculiar practices, Julie has but one answer for him: "You think that being a girl is degrading but secretly you'd love to know what is it like, wouldn't you?", and in a very tantalizing way places a most effeminate ribbon on his brother's neck.

Crossing all boundaries, subverting the heterosexual normative and assuming incest as something that feels natural and real, Birkin's film announces from the very beginning a dreadful end; perhaps it would be interesting to compare the novel's ending with the one in the film, because after all, once all is said and done, as Lacan would phrase it "…is important to note that one only has to make a conceptual shift and move the night spent with the lady from the category of pleasure to that of jouissance, given that jouissance implies precisely the acceptance of death — and there's no need of sublimation — for the example to be ruined".

Follow You Follow Me (1979)

Masturbatory dynamics in teenage friendship

[25 May 2011]

Peter and Joseph are best mates, they go to the same high school and they see each other often after class. Until parental pressure puts the friendship on the brink of collapse.

The true nature of the boys relationship is never made clear, Peter is an outgoing and popular student, whereas Joseph is shy and goes unnoticed by his peers. Peter has expressed once and again his interest in girls, but Joseph seems to be preoccupied with something else. When the two boys are kissing girls at the same time, Joseph seems uneasy when it's his turn to kiss his date. Nonetheless, these subtle differences do not prevent them from sharing intimate moments. For example, when Joseph asks Peter the meaning of "wanker", his friends proceeds to not only explain but also provide him with some adult magazines. As they discuss about masturbation one thing remains clear: fantasy is the motor behind all masturbatory acts. Both kids start confessing what it is that arouses them, and they even describe their fantasies to each other.

This shouldn't come as a surprise, as Foucault has explained at length in his History of Sexuality, Victorian society would seek to forbid and eradicate masturbation because it was an unnecessary expenditure of energy and especially of thoughts. Imagination always takes part during masturbation, and the fantasmatic scenarios of self-pleasuring were simply deemed as morally reprehensible and ultimately injurious.

Unlike other productions, Roger Lambert's short film never deals directly with the homosexual subject. The boys' parents have problems with banks and factories, respectively, and that's the reason why they decide to put an end to their children's friendship. The homoerotic subtext here is merely hinted at, as the scene in which Joseph wakes up in the middle of the night, with tears in his eyes, and gets dressed to visit his friend Peter. He has a proposal for Peter: to run away together. But can they really escape from their parents, id est, from the symbolic imperative to always uphold the heterosexual normativity?

Love (V) (2008)

Love or the imperative of joy

[25 May 2011]

When 'Love', a young college student, spends the night with another man, he surrenders to manipulation. This man, named Sebastian, mocks Love for being a virgin and tells him to get out of there, as he has no interest in having sex with someone who doesn't know what to do. Love then affirms that he is willing to do whatever Sebastian asks of him. And that proves to be a most calamitous mistake.

Why is Love so willing to accept the conditions forced upon him by a complete stranger? Well, there is the psychoanalytic imperative of joy which sometimes can be more powerful than anything else. Here the imperative is a necessity, it's what Love needs to do but it's never what he wants to do. Jouissance, after all, is different from pleasure. We are immersed in a fetishistic culture of disavowal: one wants to be the object of desire of the other. But when a male turns another male into the object of his desire, what happens to the 'object a' in a culture of 'plus de jouir'? Simply that desire gets diluted and only the jouissance remains.

As a result, Sebastian feels compelled to perform anal rape even when Love begs him to stop. Both of them are enslaved by the imperative of joy. In a society so concerned with virginity, or rather the loss of virginity, Love feels ashamed of being a virgin at 22; at the same time, Sebastian, married with a woman, feels the need to circumnavigate his heterosexual position by engaging into homosexual intercourse, even though he regrets it and feels awfully disgusted at himself afterwards. Jacques-Alain Miller wrote on the subject: 'Their mutual presence in flesh and blood is necessary, if for no other reason than to have emerge the sexual non-relation'. After all, there is no rapport at all between the two characters; and that's the way it plays out from the very beginning: they are two strangers which have effaced any possibility of a real contact (Love and Sebastian constantly maintain their distances, even when they're just drinking beers and making casual chit-chat).

One could then ask, why does Sebastian insist on denying his homosexuality and keeps on living a life of lies? And why does Love refuse to go into the gay bar at the beginning of the short film? Perhaps, the unconscious imperative of joy drives them around, or perhaps this is yet another symptom of society's malady.

Kaboom (2010)

Defining sexuality: heterosexual or homosexual?

[24 April 2011]

Gregg Araki's films share a special signature. As a filmmaker, his interest towards certain themes are aptly exploited in different and peculiar ways. In "Mysterious Skin" we witness the alien abduction fantasy embraced by one of the protagonists, in "Nowhere" an alien invasion serves both as a metaphor and as in incursion into the real. In Kaboom, Araki plays again with that which surpasses normal humanity, redefining it in the process.

We find ourselves immersed in a story about college, young men and women, mysterious murders, secret societies and conspiracy theories that, somehow, mingle together with a surreal sensitivity. The first scene takes us to Smith's mind, an 18-year-old student… or, more exactly, to a dream he has been having frequently. After that he starts masturbating while fantasizing with his roommate Thor, a blonde surfer with perfect abs. Smith, however, doesn't want to be labeled… he considers himself neither gay nor bisexual. He has indeed sexual encounters with boys and girls, but his best friend Stella is convinced that he leans more towards guys. Stella is a lesbian that finds conflict in a risky relationship with a girl that has, to put it mildly, supernatural abilities.

At the same time, Smith finds out that a girl from college, one that appears in his dreams, has been murdered by men in black disguised with animal masks. Except he cannot be sure if he's imagining things because of the hallucinogen drugs he takes or simply because he's becoming paranoid and losing his mind in the process. It's college and there are drugs and alcohol everywhere; here actually one of Araki's favorite actors, James Duval, interprets the typical school "stoner", who pretty much sums up Stella's assertion: "college is just an intermission between high school and the rest of your life. Four years of having sex, making stupid mistakes and experiencing stuff".

When Stella has sex with her girlfriend there is a special luminosity that announces a supernatural element… and when Smith agrees to engage in sexual intercourse with a lighthearted girl named London he also experiences a weird luminescence which he attributes to drugs. In the same way he cannot define himself as homosexual or bisexual, he is also constantly escaping out of normal consciousness, which is made clear with the dream at the beginning of the film. Psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan would correlate the privileged mode in which we capture our own selves through narcissistic investment with the type of knowledge based on the 'illusion of consciousness' in which it is implied that the entire reality could become accessible to the mind, turned inside-out, and as a result, it could be illuminated and made transparent. Kaboom deals closely with this illusion of consciousness; it explores the mindset of Smith taking him constantly to different extremes of realities.

This illusion, however, is insufficient if Smith is to find his place in the world, and he experiences its limitation when he confronts the phenomenon of the strange -with all its connotations, the stranger, the alien, the unfamiliar- here exemplified by the animal mask men that start chasing him; it doesn't matter if they are after him or if he's only imagining it, but the important thing is that he experiences fear (and thanks to the director's skills, we also experience the suspense of the persecutions); this seriously puts into question the very possibility of auto-transparency or auto-knowledge for Smith.

Perhaps this is all linked with Smith's lack of a parental figure, as Lacanian theory would tell us it is the nom de pere or name of the father that inscribes the subject into the symbolic order. Smith has a loving mother, but he has never met his father who was conveniently reported dead in a car accident just before he was born. Without the name of the father, without the castration which takes place when the father removes any possibility of the mother having the phallus, it's clear that the individual, in this case Smith, would always be out of place or at least displaced from society. In a world ruled by heterosexual normativity, Smith has no clear space or location, and in the same way sexuality means for him to wander around aimlessly, he also starts slipping into an uncomfortable fissure that brings forth elements of reality and also from his personal oneiric world.

I think no other director could have pulled this off. Kaboom succeeds in forcing us, the viewers, to reevaluate what we think, to defy established knowledge. When Smith finds out the truth behind the murders and the truth behind his father's death, he will no longer be able to see the world as he used to. But then again doesn't the same thing happen to us, as we grow up?

2:37 (2006)

Teenage angst

[31 March 2011]

"No man is an island" wrote John Donne in a poem. And, certainly, to think of the human being as an isolated creature makes little sense. We are, after all, social animals. We need others, and we need them desperately. Thalluri's film deals with the intensity of high school and the need of the other, presenting a handful of characters that coexist in the same place. We cannot say they are friends, they barely know each other, each of them carries a burden so heavy that they become estranged, alone, and that's when the fear of losing one's own humanity is ignited.

We have the case of Marcus and Melody: brother and sister. They come from a wealthy family, well structured around male hegemony. Their father is very much alike the primordial father from a tribe that Fred describes in Totem and Taboo. This primordial father can have carnal knowledge with his offspring, because in these mythical prehistoric time no such thing as incest exists; however, the jealous sons will savagely kill the father, this powerful alpha male (a figure that bears some resemblance with Lacan's inverted E, which symbolized "the one man not castrated"). By killing the totem-father only taboo remains, and thus incest becomes the ultimate sin. When Marcus witnesses his father having sex he attributes this attitude as a total disregard for moral codes, after all, Marcus seems to imply that his father acts in such a way that he has no choice but to witness the coitus. This traumatic event triggers something deep inside his consciousness and as a result the incest fantasy and the rape fantasy will become firmly inserted in his psyche.

The first scene with Luke, the high school jock, is most revealing, as we see him in his bedroom, in front of his computer, stroking his penis most vigorously. What images appear in the computer screen? Luke is struggling with his own sexuality, he is in a place that Lacan would denominate 'minus phi' which is the inscription of a point of fracture in the imaginary, that indicates a certain fissure that affects the constitution of the libidinal object in which one's own image finds support.

"Uneven" Steven is a kid that suffers of genetic malformations, not only does he have one leg longer than the other, but he also has a condition that makes him lose control of his sphincters, and as a result he wets himself in class, becoming the target for everyone's cruel jokes.

Then there is Sean, a boy that openly assumes his homosexuality and pays the price for it, being constantly mocked by Luke's friends and other guys in school. The only way for him to cope with this is escaping into a world of stupor produced by his marijuana consumption.

Finally there are two girls that play a very relevant role in this film, that owes much to Gus Van Sant's (listed in the credits) realistic and insightful approach of adolescence: Sarah, Luke's girlfriend, makes the mistake of caring too much for her boyfriend, and consequently once she begins to have doubts about her future with him, everything falls apart. Kelly, on the other hand, is perhaps the nicest person in school. She seems to genuinely try to help everyone, she is kind with boys and girls, instead of creating problems she tries to find a solution for them. When everyone attacks Steven she makes sure he's going to be OK.

However, all of them suffer from teenage angst. But this is not the typical, cliché angst. Lacanian psychoanalysts might ask… why despite all the amount of scientific knowledge that has been accumulated, and the efforts to establish theories that presuppose to grant us reassurance (Levis Straus structuralism and Hegel historicism that aims towards the acquisition of the Absolute Knowledge, in other words a conceptualization that implies a theory without remainders) we still experience restlessness? Lacan asked himself "why is it that we so much want to preserve the dimension of anxiety?". Anxiety is a horrible thing and yet is there a human need to preserve it? In this regard Kierkegaard may be closer to the question of angst when he speaks about the psychological ambiguity concerning this concept "Anxiety is a sympathetic antipathy and an antipathetic sympathy". Arguably, the existence of angst points out to something that cannot be reduced to a rational category, and without which a truly reflection on the question of ethics is useless. We find this sympathetic antipathy in characters like Marcus, who has a strong relationship with his sister and at the same time despises her. The antipathetic sympathy is present in Kelly, the sweetest girl that treats everyone kindly but that secretly feels alienated, incapable of anything but antipathy for herself.

However they are all connected, and what they do will affect the lives of the others. What happens then when during the first minutes of the film someone commits suicide? Life is a tricky business, that's for sure. But life as teenagers can be even trickier.

A Little Comfort (2004)

How to chase the object of our desire?

[25 March 2011]

Armand Lameloise recreates the most essential aspects of adolescence: confusion, excitation and teenage angst find a common ground in a story that focuses on two 16-year-old boys.

One of them is Arnaud, who seems to have little interest in girls, although he starts dating one. Perhaps because of peer pressure or maybe just to feel like he can fit in. However, he's clearly fascinated by Guillaume, his best friend. This becomes obvious when Arnaud picks up his friend's clothes in the dressing room and starts sniffing it. Why does he do that? Because the body of his friend is forbidden, but not the object that represents his friend in a most libidinal way.

Later on Arnaud will find his friend's underwear and he won't be able to resist the temptation of trying it on. As a result he will become instantly aroused. Masturbating while wearing his friend's undergarments is as close as he thinks he can get to having intercourse with Guillaume. In this regard, masturbation sustains a fantasy. But life cannot be built upon fantasies and that's why Arnaud wakes up crying in the middle of the night. Guillaume is, after all, the hot guy that has sex with girls very often. And Arnaud knows that… but why does he insist in preserving the dimension of angst? Because angst is a 'horrible certainty' that opposes to the indeterminate of life. This is related to the Lacanian real; so Arnaud has no choice but to approach the real through Lacan's 'object a'. Guillaume is that remainder left outside the process of constitution of the subject in the field of the other which escapes symbolization, and as such is an element heterogeneous to the signifier but nonetheless an element that belongs to the subjective structure: "this remainder, this ultimate Other, that irrational (in mathematical terms) that probe and only guaranty of the alterity of the Other is the object a". The object a (Guillaume) depends entirely on the phantasm. That's why it's so hard to conceive a lasting relationship between the two boys. For too long Guillaume has lived in Arnaud's mind only as a fantasy, and even if some things might become true, this phantasm will weigh heavily on the protagonist.

Arnaud breaks up with the girl he was dating, and accuses Guillaume of coming to him only when he's in trouble. Subconsciously, Arnaud challenges his friend to step out of the fantasy, to resign as a phantasm and turn into a real object a, an obtainable object of desire. Whether this gambit pays off or not, is for you to see.

From the Edge of the City (1998)

Defining nationality and sexuality

[25 March 2011]

What is a nation? According to Benedict Anderson it is a community socially constructed; an imagined community, indeed. In order to be Greeks or Russians one must first share these imaginary narratives that set apart one people from the other. Cohesiveness must come after everyone commits to this exercise of the imagination. What happens, however, with young men like Sasha and his group of friends? Raised in Russia and then transferred back to the land of their progenitors they feel neither Russians nor Greeks. They have been expelled out of any possible narrative of integration, and instead they are lingering on the edges of the city, on the marginal borders that preclude them from obtaining full status citizenship.

Unable to fit in, these youngsters cannot be a part of the symbolic order. Society has banned them and as a consequence they partake in illegal activities. Some of them are good at stealing, others at prostituting themselves. But then again, since being a hustler is the most profitable activity most of them try to gain the favor of other men.

Sasha is a boy struggling with his own identity. He is heterosexual and he falls in love with a common whore. However, the only way he can make money is by participating in the same activities his friends do. If identity is defined throughout adolescence, it's very revealing witnessing this group of kids coming to terms with what they do. They're 18 or 19 years old and some of them affirm that everything is alright as long as they assume the active role in homosexual intercourse. Others, more lucidly, realize that it doesn't matter who penetrates who, all that matters is that sex is taking place.

Nonetheless, the kids cannot let go of social conventions, after all, identity also depends greatly on how one pictures oneself. Our own images also depend on the gaze of the other. But since all of them are estranged from imaginary narratives since the very beginning, they find it difficult to find their place into the world. One can only wonder if at least one of them will be able to step aside of the vicious circle of poverty.

50 Ways of Saying Fabulous (2005)

Teenage confusion and gender roles

[24 March 2011]

Stewart Main's production is a coming-of-age story that bears little resemblance to other typical and predictable movies. 12 year-old Billy idly watches a TV show with his best friend, a rather tomboyish girl who excels at boys sports and acts a bit manly. Inspired by what he sees on TV, Billy wears a fake ponytail and pretends to be Lana, the heroine of the sci-fi series while Lou, the girl, poses as the male hero. They subvert traditional gender affiliated roles as part of a game, but they are also aware of a certain otherness, a certain counterpart that can exist only in private.

The figure of the double, largely described in fantastic literature, is usually developed when the main character fails to recognize his own-self, and starts experiencing a feeling of alienation. The double can adopt several forms, as for instance the form of the exact replica of the character, like in Dostoyevsky's "The double", or on the contrary, it can become the form of an absence of reflection in the mirror image, a horrifying 'presence' as in Maupassant's "Le Horla". Clearly Billy and his friend Lou find an ideal refugee in the form of fictional characters that supply that which they are lacking; Billy is a boy that wishes to be a girl, and Lou is a girl that wishes to be a boy.

In this scenario, two other characters will help develop the dynamic of the double. First of all is Roy, the new kid in the school, who soon becomes attracted to Billy. A most revealing moment takes place when Roy is picked on by kids that held him to the ground, as a consequence of all this roughhousing, the young boy exhibits an erection that soon makes the other lads lose interest in him. This moment is defined by the emergence of sexual excitation in Roy's penis, an irruption of the drive of the real in his body; such pulsations also exist in Billy who stays behind and accepts Roy's invitation to touch his "stiffy".

Do they experiment joy only through phallic exploration? The phallus has no image, the absence of representation in the visual field "signifies that in everything that is imaginary localization, the phallus appears in the form of a lack". As the days go by, Billy is not acquitted of guilt, but nonetheless he decides to join his friend Roy in a shack, wherein they mutually masturbate. But why does Billy seem uncomfortable after these sessions? Perhaps because if the phallus 'is characterized by a lack', then any image would only 'mask' that lack, evoking something which is absent, and in principle one can define that absence as something that pertains to our bodily existence in so far as what is missing in the virtual image is our real existence itself. In the same way Billy can never truly be Lana, from the TV show, he cannot envision his acts with Roy except in the darkness and secrecy of the shack. But what part of our anatomy permits the distinction between oneself and one's own image, including the multitude of others with whom we tend to identify? It is this distinction that seems to get distorted and somewhat effaced in the phenomenon of the double.

The second important character in the story is Jamie, a guy in his twenties. As soon as he enters into the scene, Billy seems to forget all about Roy. He now starts daydreaming about this guy, this strange adult that could eventually pay some attention to him. But before Billy can get closer to Jamie, he must first decide if he should adopt the male or the female position, which is basically the same decision Lou has to make. As the relationship with Roy deteriorates, new problems will arise. The double, again, could signal the coming of ominous events.