Johan - Mon été 75

As much as I hate to admit it, French fag filmmakers of the 1970s were some of the most aesthetically and thematically audacious auteur directors of their time as pissed off pansy poofs who used the artistic medium of film to disseminate an innately iconoclastic Weltanschauung, even making committed commies seem like nothing more than 'bobo' (aka bourgeois bohemians) posers in the process. Indeed, shit-stabbing filmmakers like Jacques Scandelari aka ‘Marvin Merkins’ (La philosophie dans le boudoir aka Beyond Love and Evil, New York City Inferno), Lionel Soukaz (Race d'Ep: un siècle d'images de l'homosexualité aka The Homosexual Century, Ixe), Philippe Vallois (Nous étions un seul homme aka We Were One Man, Haltéroflic aka Rainbow Serpent), and Stéphane Marti (La Cité des Neuf portes, Mira corpora) basically represented a celluloid army of flaming frog Rosa von Praunheims who concocted a uniquely unhinged homo universe of the cinematic sort that blurred the lines between art and pornography, fiction and nonfiction, and morality and immorality. Indeed, representing the quasi-commie cocksucking side of the counter-culture movement, queer filmmakers took a radically revolutionary stance to filmmaking that is totally at odds with the authoritarian bourgeois LGBT fag mainstream that has taken a monopoly over fagdom nowadays, with a film like Johan - Mon été 75 (1976) aka Johan, carnet intime homosexuel aka Journal intime homosexuel d'un été 75 aka Johan being the sort of Communist Manifesto of patently politically incorrect vintage French fag flicks, as a decidedly depraved piece of reflexive sodomite cinema of the quasi-Cinéma vérité sort featuring unsimulated sod sex and anal-fisting, sadomasochistic Nazi fetishism, glorification of brother-on-brother incest, interracial buggery, and a rather unflattering depiction of sexual introverts as promiscuous perverts who engage in 24-hour orgies in public bathhouses. A sort of debauched autobiographical docudrama/quasi-mockery and arthouse-porn flick set in Paris (and partially New York City) about auteur Philippe Vallois (who both plays himself, but is also depicted by no less than two other actors) as he longs for his eponymous imprisoned kleptomaniac boi toy ‘Johan’ so he engages in assorted, eclectic sexual affairs to find a substitute for Johan while waiting for said boi toy’s release, Johan was essentially banned upon its release in 1976 due to its perverse pornographic imagery and has thus developed a sort of cult status since then despite the fact that few people had actually seen the film until relatively recently because, although the film was screened at the 1976 Cannes Film Festival, the French censors got a hold, butchered it, and the original negative was destroyed. A somewhat plot-less piece of excess-ridden aberrosexuality, Johan is like Godard meets Garrel meets a raunchy Jean Rouch as directed by Wakefield Poole’s ‘bottom brother’ as a work that is as subversive in its direction as it is in its morality. 

 Paris-based filmmaker Philippe Vallois’ boyfriend Johan—a cocksucking criminal who is quite keen on thievery, pathological lying, sexual promiscuity, and brother buggering—is in jail, so the auteur decides to fill his ‘romantic’ void by cruising for men who share his locked-up lover's apparently irreplaceable qualities. In fact, the filmmaker has the gall to write to his imprisoned boy toy, “Johan, the boy who will replace you in the film must be more than just beautiful and a dancer,” but the filmmaker's search for savage sensuality will ultimately prove to be much less fruitful than he hoped it would be. When Philippe interviews the decidedly dimwitted twin brother of Johan in a gay sauna, the seemingly confused brother mumbles, “I only had sex with my twin. His name is Johan. He’s in jail.” Despite his absurdly obsessive love for Johan as demonstrated by comments he makes to his boy toy in letters like, “If you had been only a sex champion, I would have left you as I did the others,” Philippe cannot seem to keep his trouser snake in his trousers, as if he is subconsciously tempted to sabotage his relationship so as to release him from his self-destructive prison of poof love. During his journey, Philippe candidly exposes the truly seedy hermetic homo realm that is the pre-AIDS international gay underground, proudly bragging regarding the advantages of being a cocksucker in an increasingly cosmopolitan world, “It is easy for a gay man to discover a new town. It is one of our advantages. We meet people. Gay bars, nightclubs, and finally the sauna where I stayed 24 hours until I was exhausted. The most hidden of my desires had been satisfied.” And, indeed, as a raunchy rectum reamer of the innately insatiable sort, Philippe does not shy away from interracial buggery with an anonymous black buck, not to mention taking two fists in the ass (whilst he masturbates and drinks from a toilet bowel!) from a stranger that has covered his hands in Crisco. Phil also learns that regarding poppers, “it liberates a lot of people” and that a lot of sadomasochistic sodomites like to roleplay by dressing up as Gestapo dudes. Of course, being a sissy sod, Philippe is quite the sentimentalist as indicated by a nostalgic memory he wrote to Johan in a letter: “Do you remember the first time I had sex with you? We nearly didn’t do it. I could not get an erection because my desire was too strong.” As can be expected from two less than monogamous homosexuals, there is a certain innate darkness to Philippe and Johan’s relationship as demonstrated by the filmmaker’s words to his lover regarding a mutually shared STD, “Do you remember the gift you gave me or I gave you? We’ll never know who was guilty...Personally, I think it was you.” Despite its sometimes ominous undertones, Johan concludes on a joyous, campy, and—for lack of a better word—‘gay’ note with the eponymous non-hero being released from prison and being warmly greeted by Philippe and his entourage, which includes a blonde Nordic fag hag (who dreams of having a love child with poofs Philippe and Johan!) and a man with a perverted mustache dressed in drag as alpha-diva Maria Callas, a woman noted for being the gay intelligentsia's answer to Judy Garland, hence P.P. Pasolini's one-time cinematic collaboration with her. 

 If nothing else, Johan demonstrates how lame both gay culture and cinema have become since the film’s initial release nearly 40 years ago, as a work that will probably offend contemporary politically correct poofters just as much as it would offend members of the Westboro Baptist Church. Indeed, Johan is the sort of unflinchingly depraved queer flick that laughs in the face of remarks like “God Hates Fags” as a work that takes pride in its almost demonic sexual sacrilege. In other words, Johan makes the art-porn flicks of Canadian poof Bruce LaBruce seem like the spastic celluloid temper tantrums of a sexually abused gay toddler version of Jacques Derrida, even seeming like what might have passed through the deranged mind of frog philosopher Michel Foucault—a sexual sadist who intentionally infected unwitting partners with AIDS—as he took his last gasp whilst succumbing to gay cancer. A sort of artsy fartsy gay gonzo blue movie of the radically reflexive and embarrassingly autobiographical kind that ravages the ‘fourth wall’ so as to make the viewer squirm with abject disgust, Johan will ultimately appeal most to fans of auteur-pornographers like Jack Deveau (Drive, Left-Handed), Fred Halsted (LA Plays Itself, Sextool), and Peter De Rome (The Fire Island Kids, Adam & Yves) more than Criterion Collection-collecting fans of La Nouvelle Vague. In fact, French filmmaker/art-pornographer/film poster designer Jean-Étienne Siry (Et... Dieu créa les hommes aka And God Created Man, Un escargot dans la tête aka Snails in the Head), who penned the screenplay for Deveau’s bizarre French blue movie flick Le musée (1976) aka Strictly Forbidden, has a small role in Johan, thus signifying the virtually nonexistent line between arthouse cinema and pornography in France during the 1970s. It should be noted that the uncensored version of Johan was assumed a number of decades ago, but luckily, as auteur Philippe Vallois revealed in a featurette included on a DVD release of the film, someone working at a French film archive discovered a reel with the label ‘Johan’ on it and of course the rest is history, with the revolutionary wanton work finally being available for viewing for the first time in a number of decades after being assumed to be lost for good. Part pseudo-documentary, part decidedly degenerate existentialist erotic confessional, part celluloid counter-culture artifact, and part arthouse work in the artful yet aimless spirit of Philippe Garrel’s La Cicatrice Intérieure (1972) aka The Inner Scar, Johan is ultimately a collage of perversely poetic sexual pathology.  Featuring, among other things, a mother's day celebrating Darby Crash look-alike and violent SS fetish photos, Johan is historical celluloid proof that there was a time when sodomy was synonymous with criminality.  Indeed, Johan is probably one of the most flagrant examples of the Jean Genet school of filmmaking as a work that even makes Rainer Werner Fassbinder's swansong Querelle (1982) seem too bourgeois. In sum, Johan should be approached with the same caution as one might give while letting a crack-addled Detroit prostitute in their home.

-Ty E