Akron - QUEERGURU

Benny Cruz is quite the star footballer and thanks to his skills his team win their friendly match in the mud after school one day. His team mates however are not the only ones who are impressed, as so too is blonde haired Christopher who introduces himself and expresses his admiration. It’s obvious from the look in his big blue eyes that it’s not just Benny’s talent on the field that he is taken with, and before their conversation ends, phone numbers have been exchanged to meet up again. When 17 year old Benny arrives back home his mother spots his ear-to-ear grin and demands to know what the cause is. ‘I’ve met someone’ he admits but refuses to add anymore at this early stage, but she insits on knowing at least that the object of his affection is cute. ‘Yes’ he admits ‘very’.

Benny is a freshman at college who would wants to study to be a doctor and he is very close to his family to whom he ‘came out’ too a couple of years ago, and his parents and his younger sister have always been nothing but supportive. Christopher on the other hand lives in a Dorm on campus with a roommate as his single mother , a free-spirit yoga teacher, now lives in Florida. It means however that the boys actually have no place of their own to consummate what very quickly becomes a sweet and tender love affair between these two young innocent men who are very obviously mad for each other.

When Spring Break comes, with Benny’s parents blessing, the two boys decide to set off for the long drive from Akron in the middle of Ohio to Christopher’s mothers home on the sunny Florida coast. However, just as they are about to take their leave Christopher spots a photograph of a young boy he doesn’t recognize. Benny tells him that it’s older brother who was in fatal accident when he was just six years. It’s obviously a sensitive subject with the family so he doesn’t press the matter any further, not that he wants to either as he suddenly realizes he had seen the brother before.

Christopher’s mother is quicker to connect the dots when she meets Benny and suddenly this very promising and happy relationship starts to quickly sour as both the boys parents start to bring up demons of the past. As the young men get caught up in all the powerful emotions that are whirling around its a test of the strength of their wills, and also of their family values, if what has now been uncovered will actually ruin their own future together.

Written and co-directed by newbie filmmaker and Akron native Brian O’Donnell it is a wonderfully refreshing coming-of-age story that simply captures all the passionate excitement of two very fresh-faced wholesome kids in the glow of first love. Full points to O’Donnell and his co-director Sasha King for both making the boys scenes of intimacy tastefully discreet, and secondly for ensuring that when the going got tough, even though voices got raised and heated, they avoided taking the usual cliched route of making a melodrama out of it all.

Spot on casting with not just the exceptionally talented Matthew Frias and Edmund Donovan as Benny and Christopher respectively who so perfectly captured the torment of trying to choose between each other or their mothers. The chemistry between them wavered between being quite touching at times to positively electric on other occasions. Shout out too for a surprisingly good supporting cast, often a real weakness in low budget indie gay movies, as this had a set of very strong performances particularly from Andréa Burns an experienced Broadway actress who was pitch perfect as Benny’s mother.

Like so many people we know we do not have particular fond memories of Akron the tire capital of the US, but if the people there now are as nice as these folks in this movie, then it is obviously time to hurry back.