perverse nonsense
by
Douglas Messerli
Dennis
Hensley (screenplay, based on the novel by James Robert Baker), David Moreton
(director) Testosterone / 2003
I
rather liked David Moreton’s first film, Edge
of Seventeen, a work about a young high school teen coming to terms with
his gay sexuality at a difficult time for anyone, made even more problematic
when you have hardly any control over your private life.
On the basis of that movie, I determined
to see Moreton’s more recent works, and ordered up his 2003 film, Testosterone from Netflix. I’m sorry to
report that it was a big mistake.
I suppose the first few moments of the
film, particularly given Marco D’Ambrosio’s charming, tango-inspired
score—which continues to enchant throughout the film—and the cartoon drawings
that provide us with the main character’s back story might be described as
rather engaging. It might have worked better to actually get to know the
flesh-and-blood characters before the work teetered off into a Grand Guignol
comedy, but since the central character, Dean Seagrave (David Sutcliffe) is a
successful graphic book artist, author of I
was a Teenage Speed Freak, at least the credits made sense.
That fact, however, might have alerted me
that this 30-some year old, living in Los Angeles, was not exactly the
brightest bulb in the universe. To give him credit, he does very much love his
gay lover, Pablo Alesandro (Antonio Sabato, Jr.), and evidently has been in a
monogamous relationship since the two met. Indeed, we quickly discover Dean is
obsessed with Pablo, although we never do perceive what this intense love is
really about—which is made even more mysterious by the fact that Sabato’s face
is hardly ever again flashed across the screen; perhaps Moreton chose that
option over letting the heavily-accented former model try to act.
Before you can even say “gorgon,” the
creature which the beautiful Pablo’s mean-spirited mother most represents, Dean
has man-handled her and offended the gallery’s art-dealer to whom his agent has
long been attempting to introduce to her client. Already I knew something about
Dean and this film as amiss.
And before you could say “What’s wrong
with this picture?” you discover, as the evidently rich-boy Angelino hops a
plane for Argentina, knocks on the wealthy Alesandro’s door to be once again
brushed like a flea by the monstrous momma, and is almost arrested by the
police.
Seemingly by coincidence, Dean eventually
meets up with a local coffee bar owner next to the Alesandro’s digs. The young
beauty, Sofia (Celina Font) at first sends him away, but soon gives out clues
in English that she not only knows the language but knows the true whereabouts the
elusive Pablo. Again by coincidence, so it appears, Dean also encounters
Pablo’s former lover, Marcos (Leonardo Brzezicki), who also tries to bed Dean,
with no success, but does manage to fuck the bellboy.
Turns out Marcos is Sofia’s brother and
that he has apparently been sent to kill Dean. O my, I suppose we’re expected
to respond; perhaps this is a kind of noir mystery, particularly after Sofia
promises to take Dean to Pablo’s country home, but drops him off at her own
small villa for a nightly stay-over instead. By the next morning, demanding to
be taken to Pablo’s home, he discovers it’s all been a ruse, that Pablo is
still back in town. But, finally, Marcos does lure the reluctant lover into his
bed, the morning after firing his gun into his own head instead of the intended
victim.
Again through a promise from Sofia, Dean plans
to meet Pablo for lunch, but that lunch turns out to be an after-wedding party
celebrating the marriage of Pablo to Sophia. Already at the party, the
apparently always randy Pablo has moved off to another room to screw a male
guest. And Dean follows, drawing his large machete out of thin air, which
hovers, in the penultimate scene of this confused dark comedy film, over his
former lover to either sever his one-time lover’s head or, if we wish to
imagine a less violent scene, to detach his penis.
The last scene shows Dean in a taxi, back
in Los Angeles, the cooler stowed intimately beside him, a bit like the last
scene of the Coens’ Barton Fink. As
in that movie, it is a cheap trick, clearly a Pandora’s box with nothing
inside. In real life, had Dean accomplished such an act, given the immediacy of
the police and goons who protect the Alessandro family, he would be in an
Argentine prison. And, of course, had he anything in that cooler he’d have
certainly been caught at the customs line. Yet, evidently, Dean has now found
the “closure” he desperately sought, and maybe even a new subject for his next
graphic novel. Quite frankly, apparently like the director and his writer, the
audience no longer cares.
Los Angeles,
April 28, 2017
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