In the light-hearted Dutch romance Just Friends, a restless young man is urged on by his grandmother to hook up with her equally dashing carer/surfer.
The Netherlands
3.5*
Director:
Ellen Smit
Screenwriter:
Henk Burger
Director of Photography:
Tjitte Jan Nieuwkoop
Running time: 80 minutes
Original title: Gewoon Vrienden
Gay films can’t be all doom and gloom with the odd rainbow all the time. That would be a very short-sighted depiction of life as a non-straight individual. Rainbows aren’t grayscale, and gay drama is not confined to anguish about one’s sexuality. Stories can take shape and flourish outside the conventional lines of LGBT cinema without being any less worthy of our attention.
This has been the case for close to decade thanks to the work of Argentine director Marco Berger, whose films consistently take place amid abundant sunshine – a perfect visual metaphor for the bright demeanours of his characters, for whom life might have its ups and downs, but not because of their sexual identity.
In Dutch director Ellen Smit’s Just Friends (“Gewoon vrienden”), two gobsmackingly adorable young men – the gym-frequenting, energy drink‒chugging skinhead Joris (Josha Stradowski), who bears more than a passing resemblance to Wentworth Miller, and chocolate-eyed, curly-haired, medical student‒turned‒carer/surfing instructor Yad (Majd Mardo) – meet, flirt and fall in love without missing a beat.
Whether from experience in the real world or from years of watching films in which gay characters confront friends and family unwilling to accept them, viewers of LGBT cinema have come to expect conflict at every turn. Perhaps this is what makes the genre of “sunshine gay films”, which includes Smit’s film and Berger’s entire oeuvre to date, so unexpectedly potent despite its mellow core. Our expectations are upended merely by people being tolerant.
In the case of Just Friends, the potential point of conflict comes in the form of Yad’s family, which originally hails from a Muslim Syrian background. But we come to realise that Yad, who has recently returned home from Amsterdam after partying too hard and realising he needs a fresh start, has had boyfriends before. And even though his mother has voiced her disapproval, it is not at all clear that the reason was them being boys instead of girls. When the time comes, his interaction with his father is also absolutely compelling because the discussion turns not around the fact that Yad and Joris are or aren’t dating but around the issue of how Yad is experiencing the relationship.
But even the bright lights of Yad and Joris can’t outshine the latter’s dazzling grandmother, Ans (Jenny Arean). Living alone with her sickly ginger cat, she needs help around the house, and when Yad shows up, the two seem to hit it off immediately. When Ans’s grandson arrives, however, Yad is smouldering so hard he is just about to spontaneously combust. Joris enjoys every moment of this attention so much he feels compelled to remove his shirt immediately and start pruning the hedges in the garden using a trimmer, although his ripped abs arguably would have done the job equally well.
Joris’s family is still coping with the loss of his father a decade ago, which is likely when Joris’s mother started getting plastic surgery and hitting the bottle. And yet, his father is a persistent presence in the film – mostly because his urn features as prominently as any of the lead characters, but also because he appears in flashbacks beautifully rendered with video scan lines and, at a crucial point, in an animated photograph.
The film contains a single instance of homophobia, and it is quickly nipped in the bud. It doesn’t come from the nemesis but a peripheral villain who only appears in this lone scene. His behaviour and existence seem to be relegated to the fringes of society and can in no way be taken seriously. Such random bullies who pose no threat beyond a rhetorical nuisance don’t deserve our attention anyway.
Sunshine gay cinema is what we need in order to balance all the heartache coming from the tragedy aisle of the LGBT celluloid supermarket. Cinema can create the world as it should be, and in the case of Just Friends, the tolerance is so overwhelming as to be inspiring.
Viewed at the 2018 Cape Town Film Market and Festival.