Worth: $14.50
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Cast:
Josh Lavery, Daniel Gabriel, Anni Finsterer
Intro:
Suffused with splendour in moments, and near horror in others …
Writer/director Craig Boreham’s indie feature Lonesome is a sexually frank (at times quite explicit) look at gay culture in the era of online hook-ups, but resting beneath the surface is a story about alienation and loneliness.
Boreham, who directed the award-winning Teenage Kicks, may pull one’s eye to the screen to look at the men who grace it, but ultimately asks whether notions of romance and connectedness are being lost in a period where sex can be used as a balm to cover emotional wounds.
Casey (Josh Lavery) is escaping his country upbringing. On a road that is distinctly Australian, yet has the feeling of Americana, he wears his cowboy hat and hitches rides to get him to Sydney, which might as well be another planet as far as his experience with the world of a tiny and isolated farming town goes. Once in in the inner-city, he wanders the streets until he finds a party where he can charge his phone and scoff down some needed food.
Using Grindr, he finds someone looking for a random group hook-up. That someone is Tib (Daniel Gabriel) and not quite knowing the rules post sex, Casey hangs around Tib’s apartment asking questions that never get asked – a simple one being “What’s your name?” Both Casey and Tib are hiding their vulnerabilities; Casey’s hometown lover killed himself, Tib is trying to save money to get his deported mother a visa back into the country. They bond over having terrible fathers and eventually something that almost appears to be a romance forms between the two, whose chemistry together is undeniable.
Casey is reticent and deeply depressed. He dreams of himself in a field of grass – part memory, part hope. Tib uses casual sex to fend off his desperation and sadness of being alienated from his mother and the casual racism that he encounters. The bond they form is brittle but when it works, it brings out the best in both men. When it doesn’t, it brings out the worst.
Cinematographer Dean Francis captures both men at the peak of their beauty. He allows the camera to linger on their bodies and in a breathtaking night scene at a local swimming pool, contrasts their skin tones with the eerie lighting of the pool to create something magnificent. Boreham is perhaps suggesting a Ying and Yang relationship between the men, with Tib being the outgoing and confident man who is comfortable with his queerness and Casey being the introspective man who is wearing guilt and shame around his.
The relationship crumbles and Casey is left to walk the streets of Sydney with no money and no fixed address. He spirals into degrading himself, as that is what he feels he deserves. With no family and no friends, he is beyond lonesome, he is completely alone.
Casey isn’t the only one who is alone. Tib is an Airtasker, and one of his clients is Carol (Anni Finsterer), who Tib thinks hired him because she finds him sexually attractive. The truth is more melancholic – Carol has alienated her son and finds that having Tib around reminds her of him. Casey discovers Carol’s sadness and in a gentle scene, they allow each other respite from their pain.
Suffused with splendour in moments, and near horror in others, Lonesome relies heavily on its visual language to convey emotion. Josh Lavery, who is a non-professional actor, works best when the camera is on him in silence as Casey. His line readings are often clumsy, and he struggles to verbally emote. Daniel Gabriel has the livelier presence and seems more comfortable performing the range of moods that Tib experiences.
Because Tib is absent for a large portion of the film, the narrative weight falls on Casey. Boreham’s script gives him a decent character arc, but Lavery isn’t quite up to the task of delivering it with conviction. The ending of the film centres so heavily on Casey’s self-realisation that it has forgotten that the audience hasn’t seen Tib go through any changes.
If Boreham had been able to match the raw and open nature in which he captures gay sex and the male body with an equally in-depth examination of his characters, Lonesome could have been a minor masterpiece. As it stands it is a fine-looking production which easily hides its budgetary constraints, but one that doesn’t quite earn the core sensitivity and message about alienation that Boreham is trying to convey.
