Toronto International Film Festival 2018: CONSEQUENCES: One More Unhappy Entry In The LGBTQ Canon

The recent spate of LGBTQ coming-of-age films has been a heartening trend to see. Just last year, we had a beautiful array of films that explored the differing facets of sexual awakening in young teens, from Luca Guadagnino’s Oscar-winning Call Me by Your Name, to smaller indies like Stephen Cone’s Princess Cyd, Francis Lee’s God’s Own Country and Eliza Hittman’s Beach Rats.

It’s the lattermost film that Darko Štante’s Consequences hews towards due to its concerns with hypermasculine posturing, delinquency, and the difficulty of being closeted in a virulently heteronormative social milieu. And, like Beach Rats, the protagonist is forced to walk a razor-thin line; so precarious is it that, once his secret is discovered, he has no choice but to play a destructive game in order to remain respected by his peers.

Though it’s obviously tough to watch, we also have to be mindful that not every coming-of-age story is a happy one—especially ones dealing with queer lives. The question is: how many more unhappy stories dealing with victimized LGBTQ youth can we take before it becomes too much to bear?

A Desperate Need to Fit In

Consequences follows a Slovenian boy named Andrej (Matej Zemljič), whose severe anger issues land him in a detention centre that is, at best, perfunctory, and at worst, farcically inept at keeping its inhabitants in line. What no one knows is that Andrej is gay, and it’s a secret he knows he must keep, as the other boys around him are much more violent than he is. When he earns the respect of the centre’s informal leader, Željko or “Žele” (Timon Šturbej), he thinks he’s in the clear. But then, during a night of drunken and drugged-up revelry, he betrays an interest in Žele that the latter seems to reciprocate.

When Andrej lets down his guard, Žele casually begins using him as an enforcer, having Andrej  to collect money owed to Žele from other boys using threats and thievery. In exchange, Andrej is able to gratify his hidden desires, seemingly without any penalty. Štante hints to us quite early on that Žele is not the man Andrej comes to think he is, but the narrative’s inevitability cannot be circumvented. Andrej’s lust for Žele, and the latter’s advantageous manipulation of it, end up spiralling into a devastating conclusion that we can only grimly anticipate with bated breath.

A No-Holds-Barred Ending

The inevitability of Consequence’s ending will be the thing that makes or breaks the film for the casual viewer. Some will find it refreshingly honest and true to the film’s overall style, which is neorealist and gritty. Others will find it unbearably miserable and pessimistic, piling so much tragedy and terror on the protagonist at the last minute that the excess comes to seem didactic. My feelings lie more on the latter end of the scale. If there is to be a tragic ending, then a director needs to know how to stick the landing to make it work. If the tragedy is there simply for the sake of tragedy, and the director cannot control the downward trajectory, then it comes off as cheap and unconvincing.

Štante’s intentions are well-meaning. As a former teacher at a youth correctional facility, his determination to show us Slovenia’s broken system is admirable. Even more so when he’s also tackling LGBTQ issues in a country that is still a long way’s away from being completely tolerant and accepting. His inexperience as a filmmaker, however, is hard to ignore, especially in relation to the downbeat ending.

He lays on the foreshadowing thickly, so that the tragic elements do not come with too much of a blow. But because we know how Andrej’s story will roughly end in advance, it makes watching the film to the end well-nigh unpleasant. Nor does that unpleasantness amount to much substance, since Andrej is an incredibly tricky character to root for (owing to the violence he perpetrates), and the film offers little in the way of a solution.

I had similar issues with Beach Rats, which I also felt had a weak ending that should have been better handled. And, in general, I’m more supportive of filmmaking that empowers the LGBTQ community, rather than coats it in even greater layers of melancholy and deprivation. I think by now we know the challenges the community faces; the next step now is to focus on stories that will nourish them. Stories that will give them the power to walk with their heads held high, because they can be assured that a life of happiness and contentment is possible, and better yet, completely achievable.

Conclusion: Consequences

Consequences is another film in a long line of films that tells us that pockets of intolerance and homophobia still exist in the world, and woe to the LGBTQ youth who live in them. There is nothing wrong with being reminded about that, and the empathy these films can generate is productive.

However, now’s the time to crank it up a notch, and begin to portraying healthy LGBTQ relationships, where a gay kiss or snuggle no longer has (pardon me) consequences. Where queer couples no longer have to suffer for their sexual identity, or have their stories end in a tumult of despair and crushing loss. A film like Love, Simon would no longer have to be the exception to the rule, and if this can be done freely, then honestly, we’d all be better for it.

Do you agree that happier LGBTQ stories need to be showcased more often? Let us know in the comments below!

Consequences premiered in the Discovery programme of the Toronto International Film Festival on September 7th, 2018. For all international release dates, see here.