Adante Watts | Just Friends / 2023

hot cookies

by Douglas Messerli

 

Adante Watts (screenwriter and director) Just Friends / 2023 [5 minutes]

 

Two cuties, Riley (Jack Caron) and Skye (Nicholas Di Prima) are baking cookies in Riley’s kitchen. But both are clearly frustrated. Riley is insistent that they should be “just friends,” evidently to cover over the fact that Skye truly wants a gay relationship with him.

    As Skye suggests, Riley is willing to go through “all the hoops” necessary to hide the fact that what he really wants, deep down, is sex with Skye. And as Skye explains this to Riley, he moves closer and closer, clearly seducing his wide-eyed and terrified, would-be closeted friend.

     But at the very moment, he backs off, toying with the now very convinced Riley, arguing that perhaps Riley is right after all. He can respect his decision if he wants to remain “just friends.” He walks off.

     There’s not much else to Adante Watts’ short, 5-minute film, but a certain future of seeing the boys wind up in bed—unless Riley is even more fucked up and confused about sex than the beautiful handsome boy sitting on the kitchen counter still waiting to be kissed appears to be.

     Perhaps if the director had explored simply the next 10-minutes of Riley’s life we’d learn something deeper about how confused closeted kids finally recognize that it’s time to make a decision, desire winning out over illogical reasoning. But this film is just a tease.

 

Los Angeles, July 24, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (July 2023).