by Douglas Messerli
Shaun Kitchener (screenwriter and director) Toothbrush
/ 2024 [11 minutes]
Liam (Jack Armstrong) is about to be married to his
girlfriend in a week and is celebrating his stag party in a local pub. But we
also recognize that something is amiss, particularly when he shows up at the
door of his long-ago gay partner Will (Alexander Mushore).
He claims to have lost his wallet, keys,
and cell-phone and had nowhere else to turn. What he doesn’t know is that Will has
another sexual partner in his bed, Sam (Oliver Lintott), and that he is about
to host his mother the very next morning.
In a
quick discussion between the two, Liam realizes that Will has broken with his
boyfriend George, to whom he had been rather rude, feeling he was not up to
Will’s qualities, telling him he was a “5” relative to Will beings a “10” to
his face.
In fact,
Liam has suddenly come to his senses about his marriage, and once Sam leaves,
both men come to realize that they still love one another and are ready to
again engage in sex.
Liam’s
true love is Will, and they will have to attempt to restore what has obviously
been a previously contentious relationship given Liam’s clear inability to
accept himself as a gay man.
In a
sense, this is kind of coming out movie, with the gay man finally admitting
that he should not attempt to become an unhappy heterosexual husband. He has returned too where he truly belongs, the arms of his former lover.
Los Angeles, April 28, 2025
Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (April 2025).
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