Dust’s coming of age story is not the polished instagram version of puberty. It is as naïve, bare and unedited as a teens sexted video.  Dust compellingly captures the exact moments between adult hood and childhood when the familiar people, places and bodies of earlier years no longer fit together. Painful as a pimple it’s impossible to look away as it zooms in on every clumsy emotion. 

Alko (Henk Jan Doombosch), at work on a Dutch vegetable farm with his frustrated peers, is stranded between kid’s hangouts and inaccessible adult venues. He knows what he wants to try (kissing, sex and girls) but is not sure how to get them. In a narrow, claustrophobic world where only the limitations are visible, he finally gets the chance for a first kiss from one of the girls he works with. It seems to go well and she promises that sex will be the gift at her imminent 16th birthday. Filled with toothy happiness rather than confidence he is trippingly eager for the next step. 

Bjorn (Liam Feikens), Alko’s childhood friend, is also eager to push forward on this kissing thing. He has been practicing on his hand, and showing Alko how whenever he can. His kiss with a girl wins her praise but from his needy glances and fumbles with Alko it is evident that Alko is who he would really prefer. 

With all the unpracticed emotions spilling out pain sits on the surface of every encounter. Bjorn goes in for an unreciprocated drunken kiss with Alko. Alko’s blossoming girlfriend hears about it and dumps him. Alko’s other friends work themselves into a homophobic frenzy which he guiltily redirects towards Bjorn. 

Henk Jan Doombosch is well cast as an unknowing teen whose need is ready to spill out from his skin. He manages to communicate a soft heterosexuality that mourns the split from a gay friend. A sad lingering look shows how unfair it is that one of his prized first kisses, with a close friend he likes, will be considered tainted because it was same sex.

Filmed like an I-phone video Dust is intimate, bare and honest. The loose and episodic editing keeps the artificial at bay. The performances are realistically unvarnished. Everything adults try to forget from being a teen is remembered with heart and without filter. 

 

 

Review by Andrew Hebden

Queerguru Correspondent Andrew Hebden is a MEDIA & CULTURAL STUDIES graduate spending his career between London, Beijing and NYC as an expert in media and social trends. As part of the expanding minimalist FIRE movement he recently returned to the UK and lives in Soho. He devotes as much time as possible to the movies, theatre and the gym. His favorite thing is to try something (anything) new every day.