Wicked Fun

Under discussion:

The Bulgarian Lovers  (2003)

Ah, the eternal allure of the troglodyte god. The straight-identified rough-trade waif. Those broad shoulders, tawdry tattoos, ass cheeks like warm, firm scoops of ice cream that never melt. Bulgarian Lovers is a new film that punctures and celebrates the practical and probably very old arrangement between older gay men and those earthy, uneducated, delectable bad boys. Kyril (Dritan Biba) embodies the kind of poisonous desire nearly impossible to resist, the sort of relationship we intuitively know is going be harmful, if not ultimately fatal. Daniel (Fernando Guillen Cuervo) glamorizes Kyril’s illegal activities (drug-dealing, car theft, uranium smuggling) perceiving him as an anarchist or gangster instead of a spiv. He even imagines himself as Kyril’s moll. He becomes Kyril’s “patron”. He’s not really a sugar-daddy, and Kyril isn’t exactly his kept boy or gigolo. Daniel’s longing for Kyril is ostensibly simple (you only need to see him to understand why) but also, somewhat complicated.

Kyril, the struggling, earnest Bulgarian immigrant is many things that Daniel is not. Younger, buff, intense, working-class, impulsive, not stupid but not intellectual, either. Daniel, however is also quite attractive, fit, gentle, charming and financially successful. One of the delights and tragedies of Bulgarian Lovers is the way Daniel distorts Kyril’s character, not only to mitigate the pain of disappointment, but to create the ideal romantic partner. His need to create a particular sort of man whose dangerous life and physical splendor he can partake of perhaps blinds him to a greater intimacy. Not that the two aren’t involved in a mutually caring relationship.

What separates this film from many others is the suggestion that people who truly love us can still exploit us, that perhaps an unspoken, even subconscious contract can exist between lover and beloved. A compromise between what we want most and what we are willing to settle for. Daniel is so plagued by a false sense of inadequacy that the privilege of loving Kyril is astonishing to him. Intoxicating. Like permission to dwell in the temple of Apollo or Dionysus. To know he can have limited access to such exquisite virility, even a small taste, is so deliriously tantalizing that no price, however ludicrous, is too high.

Daniel finds Kyril somewhat unexpectedly. After videotaping a number of juicy looking men at a bar, he happens upon Kyril, who asks for a cigarette. Daniel buys him a meal (he hasn’t eaten in 3 days) and eventually asks if he wants to go home with him. When Kyril shakes his head, Daniel goes on to explain in voice-over that in Bulgaria nodding means “no” and shaking the head means “yes“. You could call this a portent, an omen pointing to the ambivalent nature of Daniel’s attachment to Kyril. He knows he’s being used, gradually Kyril makes it impossible to ignore, and before the movie is over, Daniel will endanger himself and take all kinds of risks in the name of love.

What knocks me out about Bulgarian Lovers, what I think is startling and affecting, is how the director, Eloy de la Iglesia, never tries to convince us that Daniel is not a fool, only that sometimes foolishness is a reasonable trade for love. Whether we can buy into this or not, Iglesia makes an alarmingly compelling case. And it’s a heartbreaker, watching Daniel keeping his suave composure while we know he must be dying underneath. When he looks into the camera and tells us he’s a “stupid bitch.” Throughout the movie his friends warn him that Bulgarian immigrants are bad news, that Kyril will only cause him misery. And while that may not be exactly true, he certainly causes more than he should.

What makes much of Bulgarian Lovers bearable is Kyril’s earnest love for Daniel. He never pretends it’s something that it’s not, and cares for Daniel in the same way we love a parent, or someone who supports and looks out for us. Which may explain his friend Gildo’s observation that Daniel can be somewhat kinky. Even though it’s never said aloud, Kyril has become Daniel’s lover for pay, but we never get the impression he feels obliged. He loves Daniel like a buddy or protege who’s decided he’s okay with having sex. Like the kind of guys who figure that if it’s with another man, it doesn’t really count. The scene where he finds Daniel the evening after his wedding so they can dance together is one of the most touching and audacious I’ve ever witnessed. Iglesias has fashioned a sleek, sly parable on the nature of love and wanting, with the very odd conclusion that delusion, martyrdom and genuine care are not necessarily incompatible. Or maybe that we all just do the best we can with what we’ve got, and what comes our way.

Under discussion:

Deliverance  (1972)

Li'l Abner  (1959)

Paris Trout  (1991)

Chrystal  (2005)

Chrystal is informed by a delicate indelicacy. A balance between harshness and sweetness. Joe marries Chrystal after taking his turn with her in the backseat of a car. Chrystal sees the ghost of her son from the wreckage after she and Joe go over the side of an embankment. Joe foregoes concealment to present Chrystal with a baby boy he must have kidnapped. He shows up with a full mop of a beard, not as silly looking as ZZ Top, shorter than that, but still looking like some crazy hermit from the Ozark Mountains where Chrystal is set. The film is not Deliverance or Li'l Abner (sometimes it reminded me of Paris Trout without the venom) but it definitely dances somewhere between. On the one hand it is the fulfillment of hokey hillbilly folklore, with all its lurid melodrama, and on the other, it turns our worst, most ugly preconceived notions about mountain folk upside down. Inside out.

An African American professor from the University of Chicago comes to study the chilling, raucous, splendid music of the Ozarks, but he’s really there to validate their way of life. He’s blind, he’s intelligent, he’s noble and when Chrystal kisses him impulsively he handles it with grace and composure. When his assistant freaks because he sees Joe welding in the middle of the night, he says something like, “You can’t support diversity on one front and reject it on the other.” It would be pretty easy to dismiss the character of Kalid because his functionality almost trumps his autonomous existence. He treats everyone with respect, he befriends Chrystal and never once condescends, when they are attacked he counters by saying you can find violence in any city. I am not exactly sure how far past his existence as a device Kalid extends, the acting in Chrystal is whispery in comparison to a lot of movies, and his character feels authentic, even if it is something of a magic wand.

Chrystal is played by Lisa Blount and her mother, Gladys, by the wonderful Grace Zabriskie, a familiar performer amongst David Lynch’s troupe of cinematic actors. Chrystal is the promiscuous, crazy mountain lady, walking around as if in a daze,reclining in the branches of a tree, offering sex to Joe (Billy Bob Thornton) as if it were a sandwich. The first time they sexually engage after he’s returned from his stay in prison, she’s alarmingly detached, looking out the kitchen window and speaking as if to a stranger. She drives home the point that when you’re in constant emotional and physical agony, you seek out respite any place you can find it. Director Ray McKinnon (who also plays the comical, repugnant villain, Snake) neither glamorizes in a trashy way the lives of rural people nor does he condemn it. He merely explains. When Snake and Joe mix it up outside a kitchen restaurant, Joe hurls incest jibes as the fight begins to pick up heat. The film cuts back and forth between this event and Chrystal singing at a jam of mountain musicians. When Joe hears her poignant, yearning ballad, it distracts him long enough to give Snake the upper-hand. When Snake (who is partial to the crack pipe) tries to involve the others in a gang rape they want nothing to do with it.

The strengths of Chrystal lie in its casual surprises. Its understated verisimilitude. A trip to what we expect to be a brothel or speakeasy winds up being a restaurant everyone knows by “word of mouth”, a car chase that might have resolved like something out of Dukes of Hazard becomes an exercise in compassion. Mostly plot driven, I wish the visual style were a bit stronger, that the camera work might have risen above the merely competent, though these days competence is definitely worth noting. What made the movie memorable had more to do with the story than the imagery that came from it. When she saves Hog’s life or we hear the story of her grandmother and she gathering herbs and flowers as a child, McKinnon is gently, deeply moving, and it balances the moments when Chrystal’s rage and hysteria overcome her. Like the rest of us, her life is composed of anguish and transcendence, devastation and redemption. Like the rest of us, the characters might smoke dope, or they might be dedicated to sobriety. They might be college boys or blue collar. They might go fishing or hunting or fix cars or try on a dress for the first time at the age of 82. Like the rest of us they’re just struggling to work out their salvation or get as close as they can.