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I Am Jonas (And What It Was Like in the 90's)


Ashi

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Have you watched a movie so palpable, it feels like you were flipping through a dust-covered photo album?  I Am Jonas is like that for me.

This is going to be a heart-tormenting blog entry.  As a proper COVID-19 warning, you might want to social distancing yourself from it if you are not emotionally fortified at the moment.  I need to get it out though.  Stuck in the 9th Hell is too much grinding (yes, I am going to sprinkle comic reliefs throughout the blog).  This blog is not going anywhere, so feel free to come back later when you are feeling well.  (this post may contain spoilers, occasionally more than just the movie plot)

The movie is in French, but the portrayal of the gay experience in the 90's is universal: a good boy meets a bad boy, he could not explain why he was gravitate toward him.  Okay, I should stop projecting.  It's not like everyone here has ever met the bad boy who made up a lame excuse to skip class (or work...), and the good boy rolled with it, because he was too confused by an encounter of the same-sex kind.  And it was also not like everyone here had ever been gay-bashed, but the only thing he could do was self-denial and stay silent (because "haters gonna hate" wasn't invented yet).  Have you ever lied to your parents, perhaps the first time in a long time, too, so you could spend time with this exotic and dangerous boy (even a conscious thought of him was making you feeling sinful)?  I think not.... :rolleyes:  (*Ashi blows the dust off the cover of memory album and flips to the next page*)  

It's a good time to interrupt and mention I had just watched Snails in the Rain right before it.  Yes, it's a movie review within a movie review inside walking down the memory lane.  Snails in the Rain is an Israeli movie about a man who was both gravitated and repulsed by a series of letters sent by what seemed to be a stalker.  With each letter, you could see the off-screen author was progressively breaking down as his love toward protagonist became fervent.  As the protagonist unfolded each letter, his anxiety accumulated slowly but steadily, and his emotional state spiraled downward, until he was feeling suffocated.  Unlike the confessor, the protagonist was less honest about his own feeling and became homophobic, to the point he became destructive to his own girlfriend and himself.  The story was intertwined with flashbacks of protagonist's time in the military, which accumulated to a one-time sexual encounter with a bisexual man (as the main character was also bisexual, as an audience you might wonder if this was a case of unreliable narrator a la Fight Club, a figment of imagination to legitimize his own action).

Much like Snails in the Rain, I Am Jonas was told in stream of consciousness, a literary device more often used in 90's movies (think Memento, Pulp Fiction, Orlando, and Fight Club).  Jonas was constantly being haunted by the memory of his childhood friend.  As story unfolded, in parallels between the Jonas the Delinquent, and Jonas of the Bygone History, he became unrecognizable to people around him in present day, at least in form.  I enjoyed the detail the production team put in to recreate the 90's, like the green and purple wide horizontal stripes t-shirt and knee-covering crop pants, or the fact Jonas was playing Tetris on Gameboy (I might have fashioned such attire and played such game in the classic handheld platform back in the days).  However, it was the fact I have greatly changed myself over the years (at least appearance-wise) that struck a chord.  It's not the first movie I've watched showing how gay guys changed their physical appearance or demeanor once we were going through that metamorphosis, as if being gay is somehow a separate life, a life must be well-hidden, so nobody from the different phases of of your lives would readily recognize you....

The movie troubled me further, opening a long-forgotten entry to the emotional attic....  In the movie, the bad boy Nathan is dead, but the one who introduced me to the deviant way of life is not, but he was very much dead in my memory.  Perhaps it is for the good?  Though I was not a stalker like Jonas became later in life (or like the Confessor in Snails), but I was glad I did it once on Facebook to see how he fairs in life, just to fulfill my curiosity.  His profile photo shows he lost quite a few hair, and he was married to a woman in a pose that looks like he was born-again Christian....  Honestly most likely I would not go back to him, and the relationship he had with me was best described as he was just toying with me.  Perhaps he was bi-curious like the protagonist in Snails.  It wasn't a great memory to re-surface, but it was a very beautiful memory while it lasted and should remain buried (instead of rehashing it like some remakes that plagues movie theatres near you).

Some viewers probably won't get this from the movie, but once I got older and had relatable experience, it awes me how much I allowed love to manipulate me.  Love makes you invincible.  Love makes you do stuff you'd never imagined doing like skipped work or use the f-word (though I didn't let him convert me into a smoker, I tried to make him quit instead).  I was probably imagining what was like kissing a man (love made me do it!), and perhaps I would even allow him to conduct the sinful act of buggery.  Love is a queer little thing.

Spoiler

(*Ashi starts to pull out mental imageries of the memory album and places them like a story board*)

FRAME 1: Young Ashi (YA) showed anxiety as he walked into Bad Boy's (BB) house for the first time.  It was fairly dark outside on a weekend night, as if it's Batman's Gotham City.

FRAME 2: BB's BFFs, also YA's coworkers, went into his house as well.  Big smiles on their faces.  Obviously not their first time.  YA noticed the parents weren't home.

FRAME 3: BB gave YA a confident "I told you so" smile.  He wanted to prove to YA BB didn't live in a bad neighborhood.

FRAME 4: YA was annoyed about BB's self-consciousness, but tried not to show it.  YA couldn't care less of BB's material comfort level, but allowed BB to impress him.

FRAME 5: BB wanted to show a movie.  BB's BFFs liked Adam Sandler, but YA hated him.  BB popped in Austin Powers 3 DVD instead.

FRAME 6: BB's BFFs quoted the movie from memory as each scene shows.  Like boys of their age, probably had watched it a million times.

(about thirty minutes into the movie)

FRAME 7: YA was bored, as he had watched it already as well, but decided to laugh of an awkward scene when Ivanahumpalot hammered an umbrella into Austin Power's behind.

FRAME 8: "It's not that funny," BB said, with an awkward laughter, but not making eye-contact.

FRAME 9: YA noticed the conspicuous absence of BB's BFFs.  He questioned BB about them. 

FRAME 10: The room was dark and was only lit by the flickering of the TV.  Even YA could see BB was blushing through his Mediterranean bronze skin.

FRAME 11: "I don't know," BB said, still not making eye-contact.  He knew!  Because YA had never seen BB acting like this before.

FRAME 12: YA knew then BB's BFFs were either making out themselves, or hooking BB and YA up.

FRAME 13: "Where is your bedroom?"  YA heard from BB's BFFs that BB had a weird poster on his wall, like dogs doing it to a lady.

FRAME 14: BB observed YA, didn't know what to say.  YA only after the fact realized he was being aggressive.... 

FRAME 15: (flashback) "Do you like this or this?"  BB laid out Men's Health magazines and Playboy on the table at work's cafe.  BB cackled like crazy hyenas from Lion King.

FRAME 16: (flashback) YA rubbed his eye, unable to speak the truth.  BB was totally enjoying it, and told his BFFs about it.  His BFFs were okay about it, but YA never said he's gay. 

FRAME 17: For the first time around, YA had the role reversed.  YA wanted to know....

FRAME 18: YA stared at BB.  YA stared at BB's luscious lips.  YA gave a simple smile.

FRAME 19: BB was petrified and did nothing.  NOTHING!  BB & YA were just staring at each other, let TV illuminate them.

FRAME 20: The BFFs came back from BB's bedroom.  Only if....

Unlike Jonas, he was forever unsuccessful with his relationship... wait! I am not very successful with my romantic relationship either....  But what I was trying to say was, while I never had any romantic relationship after, Jonas was cheating on his boyfriends a lot.  As he finally disclosed to Nathan's mother nearly the end of the movie, he was looking for something that didn't exist....  As the fragment memory of him resurfaced, that quote was the final nail into my forehead.

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