I’m always on the lookout for movies and TV shows that challenge gender in interesting ways, so when I happened upon a summary for Biosphere from 2022, starring Sterling K. Brown (of This Is Us) and Mark Duplass (of various things Mark Duplass has been in) I raised a curious eyebrow.
The movie stars these two men — and only these two men — as the survivors of a world-ending catastrophe, for which Duplass’ character Billy, as the former (or current, depending how you count) President of the United States, bears some responsibility. Billy is a man of thoroughly average intelligence, wit and insecurity. Billy is just a dude, really, who happened to be elevated to the highest office in the land with help from people like Ray (Brown), his lifelong friend and professional advisor, who also happens to be a super-scientist of sorts.
Ray and Billy are hunkered down in a dome of Ray’s design, protecting them from the end of the world. They run laps, listen to records, watch movies, read books (such as Kiss of the Spider-Woman) and banter about the dynamics of the Super Mario Bros. For some reason they didn’t think to invite any women into their dome, but we don’t hear anything about that. They subsist on a diet of fish caught from a self-sustaining pond — until their last female dies. No more fish to breed means certain death.
Until, of course, one of their remaining male fish undergoes sequential hermaphroditism, and suddenly there’s a whole clutch of fish eggs waiting to hatch. This is exciting and all, but it happens around the same time Billy is experiencing strange stomachaches. And before you know it, he’s undergoing some unwelcome changes. As they said in Jurassic Park, life finds a way.
(I’d be remiss if I failed to mention my short story Fish of the Desert, which carries similar themes and remains one of the ones I’m most fond of.)
What does it all mean? Why is it happening to Billy rather than Ray? Could they — and should they — attempt to mate? And what’s the deal with the mysterious green light out in the darkness?
I have to tell you right now that if you want a really enjoyable TG story, you can probably miss this one. Billy doesn’t “turn into a woman,” in a way that is obvious to the viewer — he always looks like schlubby, middle-aged Mark Duplass (albeit with visible breasts) — but he(?) does pontificate on the nature of gender identity and sexuality the further he undergoes his transformation. Billy could claim to be a woman if he wants. He could also not.
The script, by Duplass and director Mel Eslyn, leaves a lot of ambiguity left to hang in the air around all of this. The movie is really about the relationship between the two friends and roomies, their shared history and the dynamics between them. It’s intellectually curious and willfully provocative. And while there are definitely some titters and some moments that will cause bemused cringes, there aren’t any cheap laughs about the situation.
I admired the movie. It’s dry as hell, and isn’t out to please an audience as much as it is to challenge them with a very highbrow take on its subject matter masked by its lowbrow trappings. It’s a one-of-a-kind film in its approach and execution, which means not only will it not be for everybody, I’m not sure who it is for.
Around the same time that I was looking into seeing Biosphere, reader and friend-of-the-site Gideon Wordsworth let me know about a short Spanish-language film called El Intercambio (“The Exchange.”) In it, a young man named Matteo has a one night stand and, as often happens, has his privates “stolen” by the woman he’s bedded. The only person he tells is his virginal friend Lucas.
The film isn’t very explicit, although it does contain one noteworthy shot of the modified crotch (which helps sell that what has happened has happened.) It’s more about the mood and the air of furtive attraction between these two males. Being that it apparently premiered as part of the Puerto Rican Queer Filmfest, it approaches its subject matter sensitively and openly.
I don’t really have much to say about it — it’s not quite a half-hour long and is mostly quiet, but it’s very well done — but I thought you nice readers would enjoy a chance to experience it.