Teenagers Franky (Josh Wiggins) and Ballas (Darren Mann) have been best friends since kindergarten and are totally inseparable. Both are handsome jocks who are on the school swim team together and very popular with all the girls in their class. Then one drunken night after they have celebrated Franky’s 16th birthday, the two boys end up in bed together and from that point, life is never the same for either of them.
Catching drift of rumours about to be spread, Ballas goes out of his way to spread the story that Franky was the one that instigated what had happened and that he himself was totally straight. A confused and hurt Franky is now the target for all the school’s rampant homophobia and surprisingly the only support he gets is from Ballas’s sister Natasha (Taylor Hickson) who had at one time was bullied so badly it caused her some mental stability issues.
The other person eager to help was Franky’s estranged father (Kyle MacLachlan) who had recently moved out of the family home to set up house with another man. The relationship with his father had however deteriorated since the spilt, and so initially Franky found his advice ‘to follow his own path’ more annoying than helpful.
This excellent sophomore movie written and directed by Canadian filmmaker Keith Behrman covers all the nuances of a gay coming-out-story but adds some twists to ensure it doesn’t just simply trot out the cliches of such a scenario. Franky’s ambiguous sexuality which he now has to deal with much more publically than he would have preferred, puts a different perspective on it. Kudos to Wiggins in particular for his pitch perfect performance as Franky that gives such a believable authenticity to the whole drama.
This is a story about the boys and the dilemma of their broeken friendship, and in fact the adults don’t really figure that much in the tale. Behrman however never touches on the fact that this high-school intolerance is accepted as the norm still and that the peer pressure it creates is so overwhelming that it can make nice teenagers like Ballas act like utter monsters to the people they have loved.
Labels: 2019, coming out, drama, homophobia
