Blind Date (Jan Soldat, 2022)
Added 2022-11-25 02:03:19 +0000 UTC
Soldat is a German filmmaker who doesn't have much of a festival profile in North America, which is a shame. While I would make no grand claims for his films, he does shine a light on queer marginality with a gaze that is simultaneously dispassionate and empathetic. His 2020 film Resident Ground Floor was about a gay agoraphobe on disability who spent nearly every waking hour jerking off to porn and pissing on himself. Blind Date, meanwhile, is a kind of performative miniature.
Soldat brings his camera to the apartment of "Holger," who has put out the call on a Grindr-like app for a guy to come over for a semi-anonymous afternoon tryst. When "Matti" shows up, he's surprised by the camera, but goes along with it. And indeed, two middle-aged German dudes fuck the shit out of each other while Soldat looks on. The end of the film is perhaps most touching, since it shows that some awkwardness is unavoidable in these scenarios. (You want coffee? You want a shower? Do you know how to get to the U-Bahn station?) It's all so incredibly human.
