The Seminarian

Seminary is a place where people train to be religious leaders. So, by that definition the film title refers to  a student in a seminary especially of the Roman Catholic Church. The reason I start with this is because its important to understand what the film is probably going to get into. Story of a closet gay seminarian, who is juggling between finishing his thesis on God and love and his own trysts with love in real life including heart-breaks, friendship and being honest to himself and to the friends around him.

Ryan is in his final semester of seminary college and needs to submit his theological thesis to continue studies. He is also gay and to receive his grade, he has to fully convince his professor that his beliefs in the thesis are not just factual. He spends occasional nights with hi smother over dinner but do not discuss his relationships.  He also has a online friend Bradley who understand each other well but have never met. He has two gay friends Anthony and Gerald. Ryan talks to them but somehow neither of them has too much time. Anthony is dating a guy from another college but is struggling between him vs another guy. When Bradley and Ryan decide to meet, they both have an amazing time and Ryan is instantly in love. But their relationship is a tenuous one, while Ryan wants it to be a solid one. It's as intangible as air. He can't get a firm grip on it. And this keeps Ryan troubled because of which his view on his thesis also keep changing. Ryan is perplexed that why won’t Gerald listen to his problems and heart-break and soon we find that Gerald has always been in love with Ryan. When Ryan finally gets over Bradley, he decides to move to Gerald but he doesn’t want a rebound. Gerald wants real relationship. Ryan is now all alone, trying to figure out why God gives love, is it unrequited love or is it tangible? The film ends with the possibility that Ryan may soon be telling her about about his true self.

A lot of things about this film were not clear to me. Firstly being, whether the film was supposed to really focus on Ryan’s actual experiences and mapping that to God and love? Or was it just the story about a man, who happens to be a seminarian and gay. The film doesn’t show the obvious metaphor between Ryan’s practical experiences and his thesis besides the one minute monologue that he would be shown sharing with his professor. I felt the movie focussed a lot more on Ryan and how miserable he was an individual. He seemed to me like a needy kid, who want his friends to listen to him at all times. He also seemed desperate to fall in love with Bradley. It is never shown why he is so smitten by the man, who clearly has not made up his mind on where he wants their relationship to head to. The film starts slow, very slow. and the pace continues. And acting is also pretty lame. Actually its not the acting but the connection that the characters share with each other. The mother-son relationship seems pretty fake and even the friendship between the trio of gay friends doesn’t look natural at all. And hence, as a viewer, I fail to empathize with anyone. It seems the actors were just repeating their dialogues without either believing or connecting with them. Ryan is the only saving grace and he does have a hot body and nice penis that we do get to see in semi-glory in one of the scenes.

The film has excellent reviews in most places but personally for me, it just did not connect with me at any emotional level at all. There have been better movies trying to show the struggles between religion and homosexuality. My recommendation would be to skip but be your own judge. (4/10)