Subtitle:
English Starring:
Murray
Bartlett, Daniel Dugan
and Adrian
Gonzalez
August tells the story of two former lovers, Troy and
Jonathan, who reunite after a long ago painful breakup.
After spending several years in Spain, Troy returns to
Los Angeles and decides to phone Jonathan and meet for
coffee. A seemingly innocent rendezvous turns into an
attempt to revive passions past. Only this time it''s not
that simple as Jonathan has a new beau, Raul, and is
trying to make the right decision a second time around.
The moment the producer of this film introduced this
film is a full length feature version of the short
''Postmortem'', I was super excited because I had no idea.
That had been one of my most favorite shorts and for
some reason had stuck with me. I was super excited to
watch a feature version and when I saw that 2 of the
principal characters were retained from the short, it
was all the more better, The actors just suited the part
so well in the short that I would have hated to see
someone else play those parts. I would strongly
recommend the short also to people to watch it.
Jonathan and Raul are a very happy couple of few years.
They practically live together though Jonathan still has
his apartment. Raul is married to Jonathan''s best friend
so that once the immigration goes through, they can have
Raul stay in the country so that they both can live
happily. Enter Troy from Spain who is planning to move
back to LA. Troy and Jonathan were ex-lovers and
apparently Troy broke Jonathan''s heart and left for
SPain. It took a long time for Jonathan to get over him.
Troy is trouble and naughty. We can see that all he
wants is Jonathan back. Jonathan is also not completely
over Troy and they have a sexual tension between them.
They meet for coffee after Troy comes back but something
takes Jonathan back to Troy''s house and after initial
reluctance on their second meeting, they end up
sleeping. Raul suspects something but doesn''t say much.
He expects a mature man like Jonathan should know what
he is doing. This goes on for a while. Jonathan doesn''t
really know whom he really wants, Troy trying to get
back to Jonathan and Raul''s dilemma when he knows and
pretends to ignore what is going on. Finally on
Jonathan''s 30th birthday, Raul encourages the 3 of them
to get in a 3way because they are drunk and stoned but
Raul knows exactly what he is doing. He wants to see the
extent of their passion. This incident outs some sense
in Troy''s head. He decides to move back to Spain leaving
the 2 men to deal with each other on their own.
The director and editor of the film have very
excellently used time jumps and creatively edited the
film. The scenes going between past and future add a
different feel to the film. We have all seen many love
triangle gay movies but this one is handled very
differently. Raul''s character is the most complicated
because he is going through various emotions to decide
what o do with jonathan, try to make him understand. He
had to speak a lot with his eyes and I must say he did
an excellent job. Jonathan and Troy acted very very well
too. here is something about Jonathan that makes him
very charismatic, at least for me. The film shows how at
various points in our life we always keep looking for
true love, have to make some very tough decisions to get
through the phases in our life and how compassion and
passion can make us stop looking at things in a more
logical way. Special mention to the background music. It
was mostly middle eastern which for some reason fitted
so well with the theme and the mood of the film. It was
excellent. I wish I could get my hands on the music of
the film. I really really loved this film. It is hard to
describe in words but the way some of Jonathan''s actions
are showed are interesting because he thinks what he is
doing is OK but from Raul''s point of view, he is trying
to show that he still has a thing for Troy and as we all
know that Troy is trouble.
I strongly recommend this film. An excellent example of
how direction and editing can do wonders to a film. I so
wish our US based directors who make all kinds of bad
film in the name of gay cinema can learn something from
this.
