This is the second vertical AI BL drama I've sat through, and honestly I went in knowing better. I had it on while I was doing cardio at the gym, and what struck me was just how much the plot echoed the last one I watched. Same step brother romance angle, same mystery girlfriend showing up near the end, same extra guy pining after one of the leads. Genuinely the only thing going for it was the runtime, the whole thing wrapped up in forty five minutes flat. The setup kicks off with Finn moving schools because his mom just married into money. He finds out his new step brother Aiden goes to the same place, and he's warned to keep his distance from him. Their first run in at school is rocky, just like you'd expect, but there's this odd pull between them neither can shake off. Finn keeps telling himself not to read into it because Aiden's straight and openly homophobic. Things shift when some kids start bullying Finn and the student council president, Ryan, steps in to ...
Movie starts with Natalie having discovered that her husband Ernesto is having an affair and invites the person to the house. She is shocked to see that the person is actually a young boy and that her husband was cheating on her with a man. Daniel is a part-time sex worker, and Ernesto paid for his company before love began to bloom between the two as time went on, a love that was conditional on Ernesto continuing with his marriage. Just as she plans to confront him, she gets the news that her husband had had a stroke and is in hospital, she rushes there. Daniel hears it and also goes. Over the course of next few days, these two people connect on the tragedy but at a superficial level. As they wait in the ICU, tensions rise, emotions unravel, and the two are forced to navigate their complex feelings—grief, betrayal, and unexpected connection—while confronting the uncertain future of the man they both love. Ernesto is soon moved to a private room, where we get to know a little bit about his roommate(s). Eventually when Ernesto wakes up, he asks for forgiveness, but eventually the wife wins over and gets to take back him home. Ernesto will likely be left lonely but ending leaves us hopeful.
As I said before, I wonder of the idea here was to make a dark comedy but it fails. I say that because you get to hear the interactions between two nurses, which are absurd; then Natalie meets a woman whose daughter has cancer and they share secret or jus the whole premise of a man, his wife and boyfriend in a hospital environment itself. It did not feel comedy to me but at the same time, the drama as well did not engage me. It struggles with the deeper themes of identity, deception, and authenticity versus insincerity. As far as performances go, both Natalie and Daniel do a great job. She is the confident yet fractures and wronged wife desperately searching for answers and her potential future while Daniel is a boy who believes he has found love but, in reality, remains alone: a male concubine who Ernesto loves but equally shuns in favor of his façade of heterosexuality. If this was to be a dramedy, it did not work for me and the direction needs a lot of work. It was quite superficial while never really making s understand the conflicts that these two people face, their love, their guilt. And we definitely do not get to see anything at all from Ernesto's perspective. (4/10)
Comments