Throwback Thursday (Part Deux!): PinkLabel.TV Presents the 1980 French Gay Feature EQUATION TO AN UNKNOWN

August 5, 2021
HANK ORSO

Director/writer Dietrich de Velsa's 1980 French classic EQUATION TO AN UNKNOWN, largely unseen since its original release, has been rediscovered and remastered, and is available for viewing now at PinkLabel.tv. In French with English subtitles, it's a simple story of a handsome young man played by Gianfranco Longhi who rides his motorcycle through a series of sexual encounters. This seems like a basic contemporary porn premise, but in the hands of an actual filmmaker, the images and stories the viewer garners between the sex impress the most. I get a sense that de Velsa is showing us his experiences, or at least his fantasies. The cinematography is simple yet beautiful, with often austere settings which push the beauty of the men engaged within to the forefront. Place beautiful bodies in a simple setting and they become even more striking.

Longhi first stumbles upon a soccer game which he observes from the sidelines. He watches, and he glances over and sees another youth matching his look, and an older man stands between them. Shot from both sides of this line of three, we get a complete picture of the cruising occurring between them: one youth looks at the other, then to the man, who glances back and forth between them, and this continues until the man realizes this is not a game he's allowed participation in, and the camera lingers on his departure as he turns and walks away from the literal, and figurative, playing field. An injured player is walked off the field, and the game concludes with the players retreating to the field house where they roughhouse naked in the communal showers. The injured player is attended to by another player who slowly massages the injured. The group of bathers leaves the locker room leaving the two alone...but observed in the distance by the motorcyclist and his new friend. Massage leads to face straddling leads to rimming and some 69 action as they suck down their meaty dicks while the cyclist is masturbated by his friend as they watch. And that's it, that's where the sex ends.

Or did it? The film cuts to the man returning to his flat, walking desultorily up a long flight of singular stairs (shot from below for the whole climb as a baby cries in the distance, naturally, beaus it's French) and he returns to his mundane life. He lies in bed and jacks off, and here we're brought back to the locker room where we see a foursome of the two players and Longhi with his friend who engage in some cock sucking before the three jack their loads onto Longhi's face. But are we seeing what actually occurred through the man's remembrance, or is he fantasizing it happened as he jacks off alone? It's purposefully unclear.

Observation and fantasy and longing play an important role in the tone of this film. When we see him next in a diner watching three boys play pinball, his reflection shown in a strip of mirror to the side of the boys, we see he longs to join them. Just like the man seen earlier at the soccer game. Just like the older man seen sitting in the corner of the diner observing all of them. Of course observation can lead to action, as occurs when two pinball players retreat to the bathroom and fuck, followed by our hero taking his turn to be blown by the bottom still sitting on the toilet, followed by the man behind the counter who goes in next to take a piss between the legs of the bottom. There's an eroticism to it all, but it's tinged with sadness, especially on the face of the old man in the corner. The camera focuses on him and you wonder...did he used to get invited to the bathroom?

Longhi flirts with a gas statin attendant and gets head in an alley in exchange for a ride. They're happened upon by two other riders and the four escape to a shack for a foursome. He's then back in bed and a neighbor we saw earlier joins him whom he fucks, but again, we doubt the reality of this as the film cuts quickly mid-fuck to him jerking alone. Clearly the last scene is his fantasy; as he's jerking, all of the men from earlier wander in and disrobe, joining him on the bed for an orgy of sucking and fucking that leaves him covered in jizz.

And with a last film cut, the men disappear leaving him alone, cock in hand, as his mind wanders, it seems, to an early memory of riding through the streets on a bicycle, with a friend riding in front of him on the cross bar, happily whistling in the sun. There's a beautiful melancholy to the whole proceedings that ends on an up note. Life is what it is, and for our hero, there was sex and there was longing and there was adventure.