STRAPPED
US, 2010, 95 minutes, Colour.
Ben Bonenfant, Nick Frangione.
Directed by Joseph Graham.
Strapped is the story of a male hustler in San Francisco. It is a better than average portrait of the hustler and offers some insights.
The whole film is set within an apartment block in San Francisco, one of the characters saying it is the gayest address in the gayest of streets. That seems to have the case with the people that the hustler encounters.
The hustler who gives various names to different clients is played effectively by theatre actor Ben Bonenfant – who has no real back story although he gives information to various clients which may or may not be true, especially his being abused by a family friend at the age of 12 and his father asking the abuser for money for the situation. Another client notes that he quotes from the philosopher, Foucault, and he expresses the desire to get home because he has classes the next day.
The hustler seems perfectly at home in himself, sometimes very cheerful, with his own body which he makes available, with his interactions with his clients, not judging them but adapting himself to their personalities and their needs. This opens with a middle-aged man who says he was bashed by an intolerant friend when he was 15, keeps to himself, talks about himself to the hustler who takes the initiative in the sexual encounter.
When the hustler starts to leave the building, he is stopped in the corridor by a seeming friend who invites him to come in for a cocaine party. This friend also has a back story about the hustler’s relationship with the son of a mayor – which he later denies. The hustler does not participate in the drug taking, is persuaded to do a dance with some stripping, and stays to have a conversation with one of the partygoers, frank discussion, followed by his accepting money for a blow job.
In the corridor again, he encounters a young man coming out of his apartment from his wife and child who offers to show him the way out, but takes him down to the basement, denies that he is gay but wants some kind of physical contact. He continues to protest and eventually punches the hustler who is rescued by an older man coming down to the basement to do his laundry.
He goes upstairs with the older man and spends some time having a discussion with him about life and its meaning, about gay life in the city, the older man giving him some encouragement. The hustler is moved and allows the older man sexual encounter in which the hustler is passive. He leaves the older man sleeping and tries again to leave the building.
This time he encounters one of the young men at the drug party, Gary, and accepts his invitation to go into the apartment. The main thing that Gary wants is some kind of affection, affirmation, kissing. This taps into the hustler’s independence, his reluctance to express emotion, and his unwillingness to kiss. Gary pleads with him and he does accept which has a transforming effect on him, awakening all kinds of emotional feelings as well as sexual, the same for Gary. Gary goes to the typewriter to wax lyrical poetically about the encounter and the hustler leaves.
Once again in the corridor he sees a man going into an apartment, is offered an invitation, but he hesitates and eventually does not accept the invitation, going downstairs where he stops at the door and makes the decision to go back to Gary.
The film was making points about the hustler, his life, his emotional situation, his isolation and resistance, yet his calmly and agreeably accommodating to the needs of the clients but, the film finally affirms that the important thing is emotion and feelings, the heart beyond the sexual physical activity.
