TAXI ZUM KLO: A Refreshingly Candid Gay Feature About Living Two Lives

I’ve always maintained that much of the consternation about representation in cinema would be relieved if people just looked to history. It feels more and more as time goes on that historical record, the curiosity of artforms and zeniths and breakthroughs is something left to the dustbin rather than revitalized again and again. Like the recent restoration of Pink Narcissus, the new 4K restoration of Frank Ripploh’s 1980 soft-core gay dark comedy Taxi Zum Klo is yet another piece of good news that the art of marginalized communities finds caring people to bring them into the forefront of the present. It’s restorations like these that can disprove the notion that all art of ‘representation’ must be of the here and now to be valuable or be a place where audiences can find pieces of themselves.

Two Lives Of a Schoolteacher

Taxi Zum Klo is quite a renegade feature for its time and being European rather than American means that it does not shy away from sex, it’s euphoric and its most distasteful aspects. Its central premise is not a premise at all but a thesis. An autobiographical account of Frank Ripploh (who plays himself) through his personal interests and personality in private and in public life. He’s a school teacher by profession and a ‘respectable member of society’ among the people who know nothing of his personal sexual preferences, his unabashed flaunting of his body and his belief in his own words that he “doesn’t want to end up just an average man” but he doesn’t want to end up “an old gay (he uses a different word) guy who hangs out in bogs”.

The difficulty of maintaining actual self in society becomes a key point of juxtapositions in the film. One in particular occurs at the doctors office where a sex worker talks up Frank about all the lude things she sees in the clubs with her clients. The camera cuts back and forth between their conversation and the embarrassed patients in the waiting room all either deciding to leave or burying themselves in newspapers as to distract their minds.

A Film Refreshingly Proud of Its Own Sexual Explicitness

Cross-cutting occurs also between the present and past. Throughout the film we see old footage of gay sex or other supposedly taboo acts of society cut right in between things like a teacher’s meeting at the school or a tutoring session with a young student. The latter is perhaps the most line-pushing and distasteful part of the film even by today’s standards, involving an attempted statutory rape by a teacher towards a student as a point of gay eroticism.

Many parts of the film are expressed in an explicitly frank way, pun intended, as Frank discusses how he feels about his unfaithfulness, his total sexual assuredness. When he cheats on his “live-in relationship” with the father of one of his students, he doesn’t apologize he simply says “next time, join in, understand?” The explicit close-ups of various bodily holes, genitals, and skin are jarringly contrasted with the day to day activities Frank does, including teaching his students biology, contemplating his life in his commute to and from work, and having difficulty maintaining a “normal” monogamous relationship with Bernd, a worker at a local theater he has a chance romantic encounter with.

Conclusion

Taxi Zum Klo translates to “Taxi to the Toilet”. It’s not only indicative of the provocative and publicly controversial nature of the film’s content, but also a badge of honor. This is a movie that revels in making those who instinctually find themselves repulsed by the natural body. Even aside from the graphic and unsimulated sex sequences, there’s also a doctor’s exam scene where Frank’s asshole is given a clear closeup as it is stretched out by the doctor. Taxi Zum Klo is a unique and proud feature that dares its audience to consider homosexuality and sexuality in general as natural to being human even if the stigma exists to keep them hidden.

Taxi Zum Klo 4k Restoration premiered at Metrograph on August 1st.