On The Fringe of Wild, the feature film debut of director Emma Catalfamo and writer Sorelle Doucet  is a contemporary coming-out-tale set in the outbacks of Ontario where time and rampant homophobia have seemingly stood still.  It is a very sharp reminder that even in 2021 life is still made unbearable for LGBTQ folks by the people that should love them most.

This wee male take on Romeo and Juliet starts with a scene of high school bullying targeting Peter (Harrison Browne) who gets no sympathy at all when he gets home from his angry hateful father.

His father clings on to the ridiculous idea that if he can ‘make a man out of his son’ by taking him for a hunting trip in the woods, it will turn him straight.  Even his mother …… the only sympathetic person in this whole melodrama …. is unable to stop this charade.

Out in the woods desperately unhappy and wanted to escape his father, he is attempting to actually take his own life, and that’s where he inadvertently meets Jack (Cameron Stewart).  The two teenagers break into an empty cabin and very quickly bond, and their newly found friendship helps them both accept their own sexuality which they had both been struggling with for some time.  It wasn’t long after they admitted their attraction to each other, that it turns into something much deeper and physical 

Jack is tormented by his own perpetual drunk of a father, who is so bad that he even makes Peter’s seem reasonable by comparison.  So it really is inevitable when the boy’s relationship is discovered the shit really will hit the fan.  That comes about by  Miles (Mikael Melo) a bitter and confused third boy who is also gay but rather messed up and extremely jealous of Peter and Jack’s relationship.

By this time thanks to the finely nuanced performances by the young lead actors …….incidentally Harrison Browne is a transgender actor/activist……. that we are dreading how this story will have to end.

Catalfamo does such a fine job highlighting the sheer amount of bullying that young LGBTQ kids still have to face in so many places around the globe.  Until we collectively do something to stop it once and for all, there will always be tragic stories like this.

 Breaking Glass Pictures will  release this on October 12 on iTunes/Apple TV, Amazon, Google Play, Vudu, DirecTv, 
and through additional local cable & satellite providers, and on DVD.