Even if it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it doesn't have to be one. This would be the core message of Perci Intalan's light-weight comedy “I Love You, Beksman” starring Christian Bables as Dali, a young man who despite of all signs that point in direction of his homosexuality, outs himself as straight, to the horror of his family and closest friends.
“I Love You, Beksman” screened at The Slovak Queer Film Festival
Given it's a comedy, no one expects a deep study of human condition or some kind of meaningful message for the audience. The question is though – who exactly is the target group of this strange film with an awkwardly plotted love story? Admittedly, we should be long past the normative thinking, and yet, “I Love You Beksman” sticks to those norms by using clichés to depict the LGBTQ+ community.
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Dali is, simply put, condemned to look like a gay person because of the environment he grew up in – with a father who outed himself as homosexual but stayed married to the boy's mother. He is also, probably equally “corrupted” by parental influence to show interest in fashion design, and he works as a full-time makeup artist in the family's salon. To make things more complicated not just for us, the audience, but also for everyone else in the movie – up to the moment of his big crush on a girl, he lets everyone in his immediate social circle address him as “girl”.
All in all, the charming young man with his hair dyed violet, dressed in bright, patterend clothes, who wears an Yves Saint Laurent handbag and bling jewelry, completely surrounded by queer people and dreaming of pretty dresses, is straight as an arrow, and he can't comprehend why people would think otherwise. Up to the moment when this finger food is served, the script penned by Fatrick Tabada actually works. With a nicely built set of characters close to Dali, “I Love You, Beksman” could have taken a much different turn, the one that wouldn't need a girl (Iana Bernardez) to explain him who he is.
The argument that would work in Tabada's favor is that dressing one way or the other isn't perceived in the same manner as it was until recently, provided you are not living in a dictatorship that tells you what is appropriate to wear. Notwithstanding, the overload of clichés applied both on Dali's appearance and behavior, exercise too much influence on the story and the audience alike, making the natural progression of the story suffer from the lack of credibility. It is hard to buy a love story when two people are asked to prove too much to each other in a rather superficial way, and then reverse it all to ‘stay truthful to themselves'.
If you forget about the cosmetics and lean back to have a bite of this sugar cotton candy that occasionally feels as an episode of a telenovela, you might catch yourself finding a great pleasure in doing so. The joy factor can be ascribed to the great performances delivered by the complete cast of the movie.
