Blue Film
[Showtimes and trailer at Tropicinema.com]

Elliot Tuttle directs an eerily disturbing but compelling character study in “Blue Film”. The film is intense, immersive and disquieting, reminiscent of the work of Todd Solondz (Happiness) . Its neutral dispassionate tone asks much from the viewer and is certain to raise eyebrows.

Aaron (Kieron Moore) a young male escort and webcam model is hired to an Airbnb to visit Hank (Reed Birney) a masked and reticent aged man. The man asks a series of questions making Aaron increasingly uncomfortable. Aaron becomes angry when Hank mentions the young man’s face tattoo and demands that Hank remove his Balaclava mask. It is revealed that Hank is Aaron’s Junior High teacher, a convicted pedophile who served seven years. 

Aaron is mildly surprised but not shocked. He is objective and invariably materialistic. 

Hank tells him that he has paid him tenty-five thousand. It is all of his savings. He further tells him that he has been in love with him since Aaron’s teenage years when Aaron was known by his actual name Alex.

Hank further reveals that he was sexually abused by his grandfather under his mother’s consent. Aaron relaxes and agrees to cater to Hanks’ wishes, who wants to shave Alex of his body hair as if he were a young boy. Alex in turn confesses that he is hurt by his former boyfriend who treated him with cruel hardness. It is hinted that Alex has PTSD. As a defense, Alex made himself a cold image machine.

The most unnerving aspect in the film is that Hank is not remorseful or contrite; he is resigned to his fate as a sex criminal. Preaching abstinence, Hank is religious, seeing himself as a solitary individualist and a kind of martyr, perhaps for other pedophiles like him. 

Hank casts aspersion to Alex, consigning him to the realms of shallow materialism without spiritual substance. 

The sex criminal becomes judgmental.

For Alex’s part, he is far from impervious; he wants to be loved and desired by Hank, a sexual criminal, a man who preys, drifts and suffers upon the margins.

This film is not for all, but its unusual subject and deliberate tone give it a complex multifaceted psychology. 

While it coldly presents the fated resignation of its characters, it treats their perversity as a claustrophobic mystery where nothing is known fixed or counted on. 

Write Ian at ianfree1@icloud.com

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