Shaun Kitchener | Toothbrush / 2024

return to where he belongs

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 a rather stand-offish way, Will still offers him the couch, although he questions Liam’s reasons for the visit. (We later observe all objects laid beside the bed). He even suggests that he still has Liam’s old Toothbrush in his bathroom.

     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.

     British director Kitchener’s film is one of the few films where the gay boy suddenly comes to terms with his homosexuality just before making the tragic mistake of marrying himself into a situation that can only cause harm to both husband and wife, and possibly even children. 

   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).