Blue Film

I'd been hearing about this film for a while. Apparently a few film festivals actually turned it down because it pushes so hard on the boundaries of queer storytelling. The whole thing happens over one long, boozy night in Los Angeles between an internet sex worker and his former middle school teacher, who's a convicted sex offender, and it goes straight into taboo stuff, trauma, and abuse that never really got dealt with. Now that I've actually seen it, I get why festivals were nervous. There's this idea sitting underneath the whole film, that wanting to be desired and wanting to be loved can look almost the same on the outside while being totally different things underneath.

Aaron Eagle works as a fetish cam performer and he gets off on humiliating his viewers, throwing slurs like faggot at them, and apparently there's a real audience for that. When someone offers him fifty grand to spend a night with a stranger, he says yes without thinking twice and shows up at the guy's place. The stranger is wearing a balaclava to hide his face and wants to record everything they talk about, asking Aaron a bunch of questions trying to figure out who he really is under the persona. Pretty quickly it's clear Aaron isn't being totally honest about himself. When the man finally takes off the mask, it turns out he's Hank, a guy who got fired and convicted for sexually abusing a student, basically a pedophile. The two start talking about their pasts, and Hank eventually tells Aaron exactly what happened with that student. Aaron also opens up about his own childhood and how he ended up doing what he does now. Hank admits he's been in love with Aaron since Aaron was a kid but never did anything about it. As the night goes on they role play, talk, shower and drink together, with Hank hoping he can ease even a little bit of Aaron's loneliness. The night ends up making Aaron think about who he used to be versus who he's become, the choices that got him here, and maybe what he wants to do next. The film also quietly shows how both men have built their own false stories about their pasts, stories that aren't true but that they need just to keep functioning and get through life.

I don't think this film is trying to make some big statement. It feels more like it's just saying there's always more going on than what you see on the surface, and you only get to it by actually watching and listening, even when that's uncomfortable. And yeah, it is uncomfortable at times, I won't lie about that. But as the night goes on, watching Aaron and Hank together just gets more and more gripping. As they go through their pasts and talk about the daily weight of their trauma and who they really are, you start seeing both of them more clearly. You're not going to agree with either of them, but that's actually what helps you see them as real people, something neither of them really got the chance to be before. It turns out a big reason Hank set up this whole night was to find out if he still loves the boy Aaron used to be. Their conversations go into some genuinely dark, explicit, and controversial territory around sex and desire, and they sit there long enough to actually dig into it, which is exactly what makes it so uncomfortable. Both men lay out their secrets and face their own insecurities while still holding onto the walls they've built up over the years. There's real conversation here about sexual perversity in general, whether it comes from loneliness or something deeper, and whether religion actually controls these urges or just hides them. Both actors do an amazing job playing characters this messy and complicated, and these definitely aren't easy roles, I'm sure they both had doubts going in.

By the end, the film makes just enough room to humanize one of these men without ever letting the other one off the hook. Shot entirely in one apartment with just the two leads, it's really just two men being honest with each other, not gentle exactly, but not cruel either. Both flawed, both genuinely worth watching. (7/10)