Unrequited love is tough, especially when you are still in your early 20’s and you have been silently wrestling with it for the past 15 years. Charlie thinks he has it all worked out and that if he hangs on in their long enough then maybe his best friend Sebastian, who he is inseparable from, will eventually catch on. That is until they both go out to a piano bar with friends to celebrate his 23rd Birthday and their relationship starts to take on a completely new dynamic after Charlie is really taken back when the handsome older piano player hits on him.Fast forward a few days and Charlie is accompanying a girlfriend to a concert at the Symphony Hall and he discovers that the pianist is none other than his would-be suitor from the other night. His intrigue is aroused, amongst other things, and realizes that this this he is probably no ordinary saloon piano tinkler, and he hangs around the stage door to find out.
When Tim and he finally meet and Charlie starts to realize that he could possibly be his first ever boyfriend, he has the backlash of Sebastian to deal with. Sebastian is very high maintenance and is under a great deal of pressure since his financier father has been jailed for fraud and the Press still camp out on the doors of his swanky Park Avenue apartment building hoping to get some clues as to what really happened to all the missing millions. As such his small clique of friends tend to hang out there and indulge the neurotic wealthy young man’s every little whim, even to the point that Charlie has even been persuaded to move in there too.
With Tim in hot pursuit and quick to declare that he has fallen in love, Charlie moves into panic mode. He struggles to respond to Tim with the same enthusiasm as he still wants to keep his options just in case Sebastian finally wakes up and smells the roses. The trouble is that Sebastian has too many of his own demons to deal with, most of them to do with the guilt he feels for being aware of the full extent of his fathers crimes which he is still being pressured to continue. However once Tim is offered a once-in-a-lifetime job with the San Francisco Symphony, then Charlie knows he will not wait around for him to finally make his mind up.
‘Those People’ is one of those rare exceptional debut movies from an inspiring new filmmaker Joey Kuhn that seems to be the payback for having to sit through far too many indifferent indie films every day. It is simply that good, and was a sheer joy to discover. From the opening scenes of the two best friends bawling out Gilbert & Sullivan’s tongue twister from ‘The Pirates of of Penanze’ ….an eccentric but brilliant choice …. I was hooked. The fact that these young men could master the complicated lyrics of ‘I Am The Very Model of A Modern Major General’ with such ease yet they struggled when it came to just sorting their own words to each other.Kuhn makes the focus in the script he wrote from Grainne Belluomo’s story on friendships and relationships, and for a refreshing change not on the men’s sexuality. He did however imbue the scenes between Charlie and Sebastian with such a sensuality that comes with any connection which teeters around being almost physical, and when Charlie and Tim consummated their relationship, the emphasis was on being both tender and erotic rather than just explicit.
Kuhn had the benefit of some excellent production pluses which are usually not available for small budget independent movies such as being able to film in both a packed Synagogue and Symphony Hall. It was however his very shrewd casting calls that were his trump card and deserve so much of the credit. Particularly a young unknown Jonathan Gordon who as Charlie was innocence personified and had the perfect chemistry to be convincingly in love with both of the men in his life. It was a pitch perfect performance, but so too was the one from the slightly more experienced Jason Ralph as the overly-confident but confused Sebastian. The third, and equally good, one in the trio was handsome Lebanese actor Haaz Sleiman best known for playing Nurse Jackie’s best gay friend in the TV series of the same name.
Every year queer cinema discovers a fresh new voice that is capable of taking the medium to a higher and different plane, our feeling is that Joey Kuhn could just be one that fits this bill.
