Emasculation (Short)
I’m not quite sure where I stand on “Emasculation.” I don’t mean the CONCEPT, on which I have very strong feelings against, but a short film I just watched written and directed by Miles Trahan. On the one hand, as a guy, I can understand the exasperation and anger from the man (Ryan Castro) when his girlfriend (Jessica Lamdon) tells him that not only is she leaving him, but that she’s leaving him for a woman because, in her words, the “male phallus disgusts her.” But looking at it from the girlfriend’s point of view, I can understand why she gets frustrated with his need to call his masculinity into question, even as she pleads with him not to.
As a film, Trahan gets strong performances from both of his actors, and he stages the film well, all the way down to his choice of music during the opening and closing credits. However, emotionally I’m torn; the film feels too much like an angry condemnation of the woman’s need to be honest with herself to feel much sympathy in the end with the man, which the title seems to imply that we’re supposed to. However, if it’s a indictment of the man’s behavior, why does he deserve to have the satisfaction he feels at the end when the waitress (Mika Matsutani) admires the flowers he had gotten for his girlfriend? Some movies and plots succeed because of such ambiguity; this isn’t one of them.
