Forbidden Letters (1979)
Been trying to think of the right words to talk about Forbidden Letters for a couple days now. After seeing the new restoration on PinkLabel.tv, I was blown away. Each scene has complex thematic exploration and is visually stunning.
Forbidden Letters is a film about distance, longing and being closeted even when you're out and proud. Richard has been in prison for a year, while his boyfriend Larry waits and remembers. Today is the day Richard is released. They've had little communication, the letters they've so desperately wanted to write never sent for fear of outing Richard and increasing his jail time. So they wait in their pain, the ache getting stronger and stronger.
The film opens on a strange avant-garde montage of a lawyer explaining the situation, which is later revealed to be Larry's dream. He is woken by a call from his friend, Iris, the rare female character in a gay porn film. She's a fun presence, but her role becomes more apparent at the climax. Larry goes out crusing in San Francisco, what Iris calls "homo heaven", and enters a theater. He watches disinterested in the crappy porn film on screen.
He imagines being there, watching as these three men have sex on the beach, their sex more intimate and loving than the fucking that was shown in the theatre. He watches, clothed, never engaging, a beautiful critique of 70s gay porn up to this point. He leaves the theatre and picks up a hippie looking dude. They have sex, but Larry is disinterested and the song on the soundtrack talks about going through the motions. Larry is just passing time, even if the sex captured on screen is hot. He rests in a hammock in another beautiful haunting shot.
Cut to Richard in prison. Shot in Alcatraz (the Ask Any Buddy podcast has some fun stories about they managed this), the cold distance of a real prison is omnipresent. He talks of the struggle of hiding his sexuality, of missing his lover. He gets naked in the cell and starts masturbating. In the cell next to him, Larry appears and leans up against the same wall that Richard is on the other side of. They jack off together, but their distance could not be more pronounced. It's like Genet's Un Chant D'Amour turned inside out. There the lovers were desperate for connection which created intimacy and desire. In Forbidden Letters, the prison is a place of loneliness and repression.
Larry goes back home, and goes to a book where he has written all the letters he wishes he could've sent. He remembers first meeting Richard, seeing him across the room at a Halloween party but never getting the guts to speak to him. I first met my boyfriend at the queer support group we both went to. He was the most beautiful man I'd ever seen, but it wouldn't be till years later that I got the courage to speak to him.
Later, Richard and Larry got together, and created a small chosen family with Richard's friend, Iris. She's a hooker which Larry is honest about being judgemental of, but her kindness brings him around. She's a hooker with a heart of gold, but the detail is surprisingly nuanced. Larry narrates his fear of the relationship:
"There were times Richard, when I wanted to hold back something. A part of myself from you. Maybe you felt it sometimes. A fear that you love me more than I loved you. I guess it’s never perfectly even. But there were nights when I thought that I could have been a better lover. [...] I think I was scared of letting every thought go, of turning myself over to you. Not just sucking you off or getting fucked, more like blending into you. In a way, I felt like I was becoming you. [...] There were times when I forgot everything, who I was and where I was and just tumbled and got lost in you."
That's a gorgeous piece of narration, romantic and haunting in equal measure. I've been with my boyfriend for 6 years now, and there are times I feel like losing myself in him, in his touch, his warmth, his love. It's almost scary, but there's something comforting about that too. Richard and Larry have sex by the same tree that Tom and Robert had their first time in Bressan's Passing Strangers. Filmed less than a year apart, the greenery has been replaced by autumnal colours. Passing Strangers and Forbidden Letters are complimentary films. Passing about the beauty of first love, Letters about the difficulty of holding onto that.
As this sex scene continues, Larry narrates this:
"Richard, loving at a distance is no way to love. It makes no sense. It’s a charade and my hands are tied. And still I feel close to you. I haven’t touched you in a year and still I have you in me. How you move, your back, and hair. Your mouth and breath mixed in mine, the way you undress, your sweat and come. Your spit. I can recall almost everything about you [...] But draw a blank on trying to remember your touch. I don’t know how to remember that. Words and sounds are easy. At least there’s an echo. But how to recall your body on mine, in mine? [...] I miss you, Richard. There’s no way I can write that down. No way to say it. How can I describe a hole in my life? Like a section of feelings has been removed and I’m left with a space inside me. A space I’ve filled with waiting."
This year has tested my relationship in ways I could never have imagined. Being separate from my boyfriend all the time is painful. I miss his touch, the way he holds me, the feeling of his skin on mine. I can remember the nice things he said, the way he smiles, but that touch I'm unable to grasp, to hold onto. I miss him, I think it everyday.
But Richard and Larry have it far worse than me and my boyfriend. They can't communicate, the prison a metaphor for being closeted and being unable to express the deepest desire and love that you have. More than that, prison changes you. Will Richard even be the same man he was when he comes out? A tension is created.
Larry has dinner with Iris, which about ten minutes before the end, throws the central relationship on its head. In a long monologue, Iris describes Richard as a ticking time bomb, that their relationship is uneven and will end badly. She doesn't mean it to be spiteful, more a warning that she doesn't want him hurt. After a simple "fuck you, Iris" from Larry, she says they are a good couple and she wants them to be happy, but her words linger in our minds. This is a masterfully shot single take sequence. Victoria Young who plays Iris nails this long long monologue. The sequence is shot from over Larry's shoulder so Iris is in focus, but Larry's face is reflected in the mirror, which reminded me of My Dinner With Andre's compex framing. That movie came out two years later.
Larry goes to the bus stop and picks up Richard. They say nothing as they ride the bus home, a simple two shot perhaps in homage to The Graduate's famous ending. The feelings are similar. After all this hoping and aching and wanting, you have your happy ending. But what now?
Larry and Richard arrive back home, a repeat of the same shot which appeared multiple times in flashbacks. Before Larry always reached out to Richard and hugged him. Here, after a moment of unbearable tension, Richard reaches out to Larry and they hug. Roll credits, shot in the style of Orson Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons.
A more traditional porn (or film for that matter) would restore the status quo and end with Richard and Larry's passionate sex, a reunion which says they'll be fine. Bressan ends in a way that is far more ambiguous and satisfying. We don't know if Richard and Larry will be okay. We know they both love one another, that they longed to hold one another. We hope their love will be enough to withstand all they have been through and all they will go through. But as an ending, this is far more complex than Bressan's earlier masterpiece Passing Strangers.
Bressan is fast becoming one of my favourite gay filmmakers, let alone my favourite pornographer. Forbidden Letters, for all its plot and nuanced understanding of relationships, is very hardcore. There are multiple scenes of penetration, cum shots and fucking. They are all essential to the plot. Larry's earliest flip fuck is both interesting in the way it shatters expectations (Larry, the twinky one, is the top) and has things to say about his mental state. Richard and Larry's prison jack off emphasises their distance and the pair of flashback sex scenes between them displays their love and their desire. Robert Adams and Richard Locke are hot, these sex scenes are hot. As a film, this is damn near perfect.
The extended cut on pinklabel.tv is absolutely essential. It is gorgeously restored, but more than that adds in so much of what Bressan was trying to achieve thematically. The VHS release cut about 20 minutes of footage, which Evan and Tyler on the Ask Any Buddy podcast suggest was to even out the amount of black and white and colour footage. The film is mostly in black-and-white except for the flashback sequences which are in glorious colour, a similar effect to Passing Strangers.
As the credits rolled, I was wiping tears away. I miss my boyfriend. I don't know if we'll be okay after this. I think we will, but that fear lingers. All I know is we love one another and long to hold one another again. I hope it's soon.
But there never seems to be enough time
To do the things you want to do
Once you find them
I've looked around enough to know
That you're the one I want to go
Through time with
- Time In A Bottle, Jim Croce.
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