1985

It’s Christmas, and Adrian is returning back to Fort Worth to be with his family for Christmas after a few years away working and living in New York. He comes with a secret, and with a sense of distance between him and his conservative religious family, and over the next few days as he spends time with them and with an ex girlfriend, he attempts to come to terms with his past and with what he can and can’t tell the people he’s leaving behind.

This is a bit of a throwback both in era and in style of film-making – it’s a black and white indie, shot in 16mm, set in a time when stories like this were a staple of indie film-making. And the nature of Adrian’s secret is not, perhaps, very secret from the audience (though it does take a while for it to be communicated on screen, if you’ve seen films like this before there’s a lot of blatant hints early on). But part of what this film is about is that feeling of separation from the people who you should be able to share this with, the inability to talk about what you’re going through and how you’ve lived and your hopes and your fears. That internal stuff that I absolutely understand. Most of the performances are pretty solid, and while this is in some ways fairly familiar territory, I appreciated the execution and the quiet despair that lies within.