Openly gay filmmaker Matt Riddlehoover’s portfolio that includes seven feature films and a couple of shorts are all good examples of boy-lite cinema. They are quirky, funny, easy on the eye stories of contemporary gay men just trying to get their act together. The latest one in this vein reunites writer/director/producer, and sometime actor, Riddlehoover with actor Jacob York again who takes the title role in this soul searching drama.
Gerald is a 30-something-year-old hypochondriac trust fund baby whose full time occupation seems to be to vex over his own wellbeing. His live-in partner of ten years Charles (Jonathan Everett) is so wrapped up in himself, and his business which takes him away often, and his gay republican buddies, that he can hardly bear to be in the same room with Gerald. Then one day in his constant search for alternative therapists to deal with one of his many ailments he is referred to May (a scene-stealing Kathy Cash) a middle-aged jeweler/new-age therapist who hands out advice and stones with her very dry sardonic wit that will change his life for good.
Gerald is very skeptical of her methods but when he starts to see the changes in his well-being that May predicted, then he takes her and the whole process very seriously indeed. Mind, you don’t have to be a genius to work out what this sad overweight man problems are, and by doling out different stones for all his issues, she helps empower Gerald to find his own way forward. May is however not the only mystical element of the movie as one of the stones enables Gerald to start seeing ghosts ….. well mainly the one of his boyfriend Scott (Angel Luis). Scott is unimpressed with seeing the sad state that Gerald has ended up in just feeling sorry for himself (as we are too) and he gently nudges him to take action.
What makes this rather far-fetched story work as well as it does is that Riddlehoover is careful to make his characters both likable and convincing so that we cannot help but get invested in the outcome of their stories. As the central core York and Cash give intuitive performances that are quite delightful …. particularly Cash in her movie acting debut. It balances out some of the less than ideal acting that seem to always plague micro-budget productions ….. like the hammy turn of Claudia Church as Gerald’s patronizing mother Doris that causes too many wince-making moments.
What the real matter with Gerald is that is not that he has just forgotten how to live and how to love, but that he has lost his ability to differentiate between what is worth striving for and what is not. He has to re-learn that until he loves himself, he will never be capable of loving another person again. It’s a serous lesson but one that is told with such fine touches of humor that keep a good perspective on it all. And luckily for all those that crave a happy ending, Riddlehoover does at least let you leave knowing that Gerald has now at least got real hope as he moves forward, and we can finally stop worrying what’s the matter with Gerald.
