Review: Stress Positions (2024)
Narcissists aren't cut out for following the rules, even in a pandemic
Stress Positions (2024)
Written, directed, edited and scored by Theda Hammel
Co-written by Faheem Ali
This pandemic comedy about a household full of narcissistic queers finds Terry (John Early), a mid-thirties-ish gay man, still living in the house owned by his husband and caring for an injured 20-year-old nephew. The erstwhile spouse, a late-40s man named Leo (John Roberts), is not present; he’s one of those gays who jet-sets around from Greece to Berlin to Thailand. He allows Terry, his nephew, and three women to stay in the decrepit Victorian, known to Leo, Terry and their acquaintances as “the party house.” And it’s the pandemic summer of 2020, and it’s New York.
So we already have a dying gay relationship in the frame of a former party house, amid the possibly dying city. Living on the top floor is Coco (Rebecca F. Wright), a statuesque drag queen in her 40s or 50s whose every appearance shouts Has seen better days; gaunt and over six feet tall, she looks extenuated, like someone about to slip into a black hole. In the flat just below live a lesbian couple, Vanessa and Karla; Vanessa’s book is a thinly veiled fictionalization of life with Karla, who did not consent to the adaptation. They bicker constantly. Karla narrates parts of the movie.
And in the basement is Bahlul (Qaher Harhash), a gorgeous 20-year-old model and Terry’s nephew. (The story of Bahlul’s mother — the very blond sister of the very Nordic-appearing Terry — how she married an Arab in Morocco and raised this boy, and how he came to be in Terry’s basement recovering from a badly broken leg, is narrated by Bahlul in parallel with the movie’s narrative.)
Terry makes a birthday cake for Bahlul, overtips the delivery guy, dutifully bangs a kitchen pot outside the window, and tries to make amends with the delivery guy when Karla causes his bike to be stolen. Everyone knows someone like Terry, trying to do the right thing at all times and bossing everyone around in pursuit of it. The movie gets a great deal of comedy from his exertions, as he sprays even a $20 bill with disinfectant before he hands it to the deliveryman, yells at other residents to mask when they’re in the same room, and tries to keep everyone away from Bahlul — especially the rapacious Leo.
Even when he succeeds, despite his paranoia about infection and his tremendously klutsy physicality, his good deeds soon come undone. By the end of the movie almost everyone in the cast has COVID or is headed to the hospital. The film asks skeptically what good anyone can do. In a house full of narcissists, trying to do the right thing is especially hard, because no one follows your silly little rules when they all have Main Character Syndrome.
Theda Hammel is the auteur par excellence of this movie; in addition to writing it (Faheem Ali, who also plays the delivery man, is credited as co-writer) and starring in it, she directed and edited it and composed the music. It’s her feature debut, but the direction and editing are first-rate; the comic timing of both dialogue and slapstick is assured and polished. While the viewer may want to yell at her, as Terry does, “Not everyone is trans!!” it’s great to see a movie in which the trans characters are not there to transition or come out or struggle against dysphoria or discrimination, but are just part of the scene.
As a pandemic movie, “Stress Positions” captures the transition from the paranoid early days, when people were disinfecting packages, to the first (too soon) attempts at detente. The minor character I felt most in sympathy with was the overworked ambulance driver, gritting his teeth on who-knows-how-many Red Bulls as he careers through the streets. He’s both Charon and Death itself, running over people in the streets while bearing others to the place where they’ll be healed, or die.