Departures

Told by way of an one-sided and fairly heart-rending retrospective, this tells us the story about two gents "Benji" (Lloyd Eyre-Morgan) and "Jake" (David Tag) who have their flight cancelled and so start chatting at the airport. The former is a gay lad without two pennies to rub together and who lives with his mum. The latter is a successful, straight, personal trainer to the footballing community of England's North West. Quite swiftly they go from chatting to drinking to sharing holes in each other's lives. The only conditions are that they only hook up in Amsterdam and, of course, there are never to be any strings. "Jake" is quite happy to pay their way and for a while this arrangement seems to be working, but before long the needs of one starts to outweigh those of the other; and when lies and deceit begin to further complicate their situation it becomes unbearable. Can there be any future for them? I suppose my problem with this was the implausibility of the underlying premiss. The concept that people could continue to meet, regularly, and expect that bond never to deepen didn't really work for me. What did, to greater extent, though, was the development of the power dynamic between the two men. Initially, "Benji" clearly considers that he is punching above his weight somewhat, and to be honest his friend doesn't do much to disavow him of that perception. As their friendship deepens, though, we begin to observe a subtle shift in the way they engage with each other and with some entertainingly pithy dialogue and an Eyre-Morgan who looks like he is fully invested in his character, the film comes alive more for quite a cheeky purple patch. Sadly, we are never far from the melodrama and as we progress through towards the conclusion it takes over a little predictably, even pitiably, before perhaps offering both men (and us) a glimmer of hope that the sun will come up. There is something quite real about much of this, and that is down to some insightful language and to the on-form Eyre-Morgan, and though it isn't a great movie, it's another solid example of gay cinema becoming less about being gay and more about being a tale worth telling that just happens to be about two blokes.