Friday, January 17, 2025

Alexander Roman | Lonely in Seattle / 2021

a good masseur is hard to find

by Douglas Messerli

 

Alexander Roman (screenwriter and director) Lonely in Seattle / 2021 [51 minutes]

 

If you’re studying massage therapy, into New Age and Buddhist Studies, and fascinated with “Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response” (ASMR) (an accompanying score that produces pulsing, pleasurable tingling, so the film’s introductory credits report) Alexander Roman’s Lonely in Seattle is the movie for you. Moreover, there’s lots of pretty pictures of Seattle and nature in general along with the rest of the stuff.


     Never before have I seen a movie of 51 minutes spend almost half of its time demonstrating the techniques of massage. But that’s the point, I gather, of this cinematic effort, to get you into a cozy position, show you pretty pictures, and present a rather banal portrait of a man who has it all—money, brains, and chiseled good looks—who realizes that what he really wants in his bed is not simply a fuck-buddy, but a man who will hang in there, cuddle, and stroke your neck after a long day of buying up new property.

    That man, Luke (Matt Ford) spends most of his time, since this after all is Seattle, in a chic, dark coffee shop—probably one which his own company built—meeting up with his equally capable and busy chatterbox of an assistant, Beth (Christina Ros), she reporting on the newest local zoning meeting she attended, he worried about the fact that he hasn’t yet heard about the offer he’s made on a property.


      She’s a lesbian, he a gay man; but unlike Beth who has a date that night, Luke is hands off, disgusted and discouraged by all the boys who would line up to go bed with him each night, but leave him early the next morning.

      Poor little rich kid. In his spare time, he visits a kind of Buddhist-like psychologist, who attempts to probe into the reasons—gently, carefully, and only with permission—why he finds it difficult to commit himself to others. If there’s a secret, other than he’s tired of one-night stands, we never discover it.

     Beth, who seems to know best what her boss needs, arranges, despite his busy schedule, for him to have a massage by a new guy in town, straight out of Brooklyn, Wes (Alexander Roman), a chunky, backpack carrying guy without even a massage table. He treats Luke this first time just by massaging his hands.


       For Luke, it’s love upon first massage. And soon after he has invited Wes over to the lovely little cottage he has built for himself for a full back and stomach massage, to which we are privy along with the pictures of leaves, lights, and raindrops I hinted at above. Luke is even willing to pay Wes to stay a while longer simply to cuddle.


     Soon enough, Luke is feeling deeply for the masseur, but the therapist himself needs a shrink. He has such a poor self-image that he simply cannot imagine why a handsome, sleek, bearded gay millionaire might possibly be interested in such a slumpy simpleton as he imagines himself to be. Luke assures him that he’s simply lonely, and that what Wes offers can’t be matched all the cute gay boys in the Emerald City.

      The two crawl into bed together and are never seen again. The end.

 

Los Angeles, January 17, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (January 2025).

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