Loose Canons directed by Ferzan Özpetek
the film explores the typically agonizing event of a queer person’s life in their struggle to ‘come out’. The story follows Tommaso, the collegian son living his queer life in Rome away from his traditional family, who comes to formally ‘come out’, where family trouble bursts and the satisfaction and enormity of weight, the simplicity of speaking those few words to family, is sadly not given fruition—if only subtly.
Which in retrospect is fresh: why do queer people have to come out? Why is a queer lifestyle invalid until you’ve officially come out?
Personally, I didn’t care too much for the film. I found it structurally a bit too hard to follow, as the narrative mostly swings in and out of the large ensemble’s character lives without any substantial concrete grounding for either characters or the narrative. It felt more like vignettes that were slightly interconnected. Each character stands on the slimmest pillar, which is unfortunate due to the potential of their characters. However, I did like the ‘twist’ or just escalated climax of Tommaso’s brother unexpectedly taking away from Tommaso’s journey of self-realization. However, the dreams of Tommaso at the beginning of the film and the intention of knowing he might have no ties to his family is almost a relief as long as he is happy and able to pursue his dreams of writing is undercut and I would say debilitated through his brother’s actions and forced into the family business. Regardless, I find the issues of familial interconnections with identity to be a really great theme for a film. I did however love the last 10 or so minutes with the letter voiceover from the grandmother and especially the best friends from Rome.
In the reading, “The Coming Out Story”, ‘coming out’ is perfect described:
A protagonist’s coming out provides a number of pleasures to viewers: the pleasure of having confirmed one’s earlier intuitions (“I knew he was gay”); the pleasure of feeling superior to the characters and those fellow spectators who failed to foresee the revelation; the illusory pleasure of grasping one’s identity (“He is gay. Now I know who he is”).
The validity of owning your queerness is fetishized as needing to be publicly acknowledged to attain a full grasp of your queer identity. In my perspective, ‘coming out’ is fetishized by both heterosexual and homosexual people in real life, as well as in the viewing experience of film, literature, and music. Investigators of a life that people feel entitled to know —when the identity should be valid when the individual lives their experience, unashamed of the notions of what the heterosexual world has systematically presumed.
In my case, I have never felt that time was against me. Even as the days grow longer and the years grow shorter, opportunity and the lushness of my individual life has never been superseded by expectation, and if it has, it’s a struggle to point it out and move from it. Genuinely, the complexity of the term ‘selfish’ is so negatively attributed that many people would rather exclude themselves or put themselves last rather than put their thoughts, emotions, ambitions, etc. to the forefront. This does also have to do with support. Without a community, there is no hearth for a fire.
Maybe this question will remain unanswered. Maybe it’s best we leave it untested. Leave it as it lays. Give it some breath. I care more for the livelihood of queer communities rather than institutional notions of expectation: come out if you want, or don’t. Whatever will make you grow and be. Just be.
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