For a closeted gay man with little experience of any sexual relationships Ryan does a great deal of theorising about ‘love’. As a final year seminarian he’s even chosen it as a topic for his thesis to gain entry into an Ivy League College : ‘The Divine Gift of Love’. He has an online flirtation with Bradley that lasts a year and when they do eventually hook up their fling peters out after being no more than a one night stand as Bradley has even more unresolved issues about coming out than love-lorn Ryan.Whilst he is busy working out what God’s take on it all could be, Ryan will not even risk his mother’s love as he strings along with her relentless quest that he finds himself a nice girl and breeds. But then again he so fixed on trying to find a rationale that if love equals God but also equals great suffering and what a fine mess that will all lead too, that he fails to spot that a fellow gay student has been drooling over him since the first day.
Ryan is a tad too sanctimonious to be likeable and when the virgin that he is takes it upon himself to try and sort out a friend’s relationship problems its a wonder that the pompous wee prig didn’t get slapped. And hard.
I guess it was a well-intentioned effort by writer/director Joshua Lim, but I have trouble enough thinking of God and love in the same sentence, but God and Gay …. no way. Too preachy and too patronising.
P.S. the fact that it has an almost obligatory naked full frontal scene at the beginning lulls you into a sense of false security that this could be a fun movie. It’s not.
★★★★
