Director: Elliot Tuttle

Stars: Kieron Moore, Reed Birney

There’s more than a whiff of Greg Araki about writer-director Elliot Tuttle’s bold and uncompromising two-hander in which a Los Angeles sex worker encounters a face from the past. British actor Kieron Moore from ‘Sex Education’ is excellent as Alex, the queer camboy known as Aaron Eagle to his subscribers. We are introduced to Alex/Aaron during one of his broadcasts where he talks about his strenuous workouts while flexing his muscles and teasing and deriding his fans, calling them ‘faggots’. One of his subscribers offers him $50,000 to spend the night. Alex agrees and on arriving at the rented apartment finds Hank, a meek, elderly man, wearing a woollen balaclava that obscures his face. The sex worker is typically brash and cocky before the man removes his hood and Alex sees that he is Mr Grant, a teacher from his old high school in Maine who was jailed after sexually assaulting another student. So begins a dark flirtation and a to-and-froing power-play as Mr Grant talks about his feelings for the boy he assaulted, and Alex, who he confesses he has always loved. The younger man begins to lose his footing as he confronts his own feelings about the past. While the subject matter may prove too queasy for some, Tuttle’s intelligent and nuanced script boldly interrogates notions of desire and control, and he is very well served by his fearless lead duo. Birney as Mr Grant is sinister and ingratiating but evidently completely sincere and vulnerable. The single setting and general wordiness invest proceedings with a slightly stagey feel and cinematographer Ryan Jackson-Healy’s dark blue lighting evokes an unsettling and disorienting sense of artifice.

David Willoughby

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