Trans men suffer a kind of invisibility in society, rarely remembered and rarely discussed, especially in the case of trans gay men. After all, how many films are there about queer love between trans men? Desire Lines, a new film by Jules Rosskam, seeks to redress this in its unapologetic celebration of transmasculine sexualities and their infinite expressions. The film follows an Iranian-American trans man, Ahmad (Aden Hakimi), and his journey through a gay trans archive. His research takes him everywhere from the life of Lou Sullivan, one of the first publicly out trans gay men, to the closure of gay bath-houses amidst the Aids crisis of the 1980s.
Desire Lines is very much about the intermingling of identities, about what it means to be both gay and trans. Different identities are never separate in one person but rather come together to form a unique whole. To this end, it is very fitting that the film itself is a coming together of different forms. Desire Lines is a combination of fiction and documentary in which most of the attention is given to the archive rather than to Ahmad himself, whose story acts more as a framing device. The film consists largely of interviews with various trans men as they discuss their experiences of self-discovery, love, sex, illness, community, and all the other things that make up a life.
This hybrid documentary essay also focuses on the need to find an origin and a history for one’s identity. This idea is explicitly stated at several points and is largely explored through interview footage of Lou Sullivan as well as references to him throughout. For many, he is the person they can trace their identity and community back to. As Ahmad pours through the archival material, he begins to find his own origins by hallucinating himself in photographs and imagining himself in between the lines of letters and articles. It’s a powerful visual expression of how personal history can be, but it strikes an awkward balance of being a frequent occurrence while also feeling inconsistent.
More generally, the storyline is quite minimal. Ahmad finds kinship with a young trans man named Kieran (Theo Germaine) who works at the archive, and what exists of this storyline complements the theme of identity nicely. We get the sense that it is as much through his friendship with Kieran as through his research that Ahmad finally feels able to situate himself within his community. There is also some hint that Ahmad’s identity is fractured because of his forced separation from his homeland of Iran. These things are all suggested, but Desire Lines never really digs into them. We don’t get a a real feel for Ahmad as a character. The interview portions are more engaging than the protagonist, and while the fiction-documentary hybrid works conceptually, the execution could have been more even.
It is refreshing to see trans men talking so openly and frankly about the unique joys that come with their experiences of queer love as well as the difficulties. And there’s a lot to learn about trans history in the course of this film, but the concept of Desire Lines was somewhat wasted in the end. If archival footage and interviews are being presented through the eyes of a character rather than simply as a documentary, it’s important to be able to connect with that character, and sadly this does not come to fruition.
Desire Lines premiered at the 40th edition of Sundance.