Lilies Not for Me had its world premiere at Edinburgh International Film Festival on Friday 16 August. It unveiled a horrific and doomed tale of what it meant to be gay in the 1920s.
Directed by Will Seefired, the film follows Owen James (Fionn O’Shea), a gay man living in the 1920s. Locked in a facility that wants to “make him better”, Owen retells his past relationships to Dorothy (Erin Kellyman), a nurse in the facility, on their prescribed “dates”.
We flip from past to present through Owen’s narrative as the film spirals into a dark, stomach-turning (and unfortunately historically accurate) event.
A sharp descent to horror
Owen begins his story by introducing Philip (Robert Aramayo), an old friend, as he comes to visit. We quickly see that Owen and Philip are much more than friends. They’re very comfortable in each other’s space, affectionate, and show lots of painfully obvious pining toward each other. It’s cute, it’s gay, everything is fine.
Sadly, we know that things can’t stay this way for long. Philip becomes obsessed with “curing” himself and others from their queerness. He reveals his plan to Owen, a theory that by receiving a testicle transplant from a straight man, the patient would be “cured”. Philip undergoes this surgery himself by Owen’s unwilling hand. He then offers the “cure” to Owen, who turns it down and accepts himself the way he is.
From here, the pair stray down two different paths. Owen moves on, finds another partner and embraces himself while Philip becomes jealous of Owen’s new relationship and dwells more on his experimental “cure”.
Philip’s internalised homophobia turns into something dark and twisted – if this wasn’t based on historical events, the procedures he conducts would sound like something out of a SAW movie. The surgical scenes are terrifying (one viewer next to me began to curl in on themselves) and made you feel a sickness akin to the goriest horror you can picture. What Philip puts himself through, and the lengths he goes to obtain a “donor”, opens your eyes to just how serious being gay was back then, and how much Philip hated himself for it.
Based on historic events
In Britain, during the 1920s, many queer men went through testicular transplants. Being gay was believed to be a physical ailment during this time by doctors. Austrian physiologist, Eugen Steinach, led the transplant experimentation.
Among the torturous surgeries and heart-warming queer moments, Lilies Not for Me had a couple of minor cliches. The flashback concept paired brilliantly with the plot. However, the introduction of someone telling a story and it cutting to a flashback scene is slightly overused.
The same goes with the ending. Without too many spoilers a real, hard-hitting ending (even if it was soul-crushingly sad) would’ve stuck in the viewer’s minds more than the imaginary one we got. Saying that, I get the idea of Owen writing his own story and coping with what he is going through.
Lilies Not for Me set out to encapsulate the horror of being gay in the 1920s and the abuse queer people faced – and it did so with a packing punch to the heart and mind.
The Edinburgh International Film Festival runs from 15-21 August. Tickets and showings are available here. Brig’s coverage of the film festival can be found here.
Featured Image Credit: Edinburgh International Film Festival