Sam Liddell | Blue Kiss / 2024

the cold goodbye

by Douglas Messerli

 

Sam Liddell (screenwriter and director) Blue Kiss / 2024 [11 minutes]

 

British director Sam Liddell’s 2024 film, Blue Kiss might be difficult to comprehend if one didn’t have an introductory statement, as my film provided me. It’s not that the short movie is complex—it is one of the simplest films I have watched in a long while. But, frankly this work is a bit incompetent in its revelation of connections.

     Gay dancer Joe (Harry Jenkins) has just had a sexually fulfilling night with a hookup (Brandon Rogers) and wonders if his bed mate might want a little breakfast before he leaves. The hookup makes it clear that he has no time for breakfast, but has no intention of meeting up again with Joe with lines such as “I’m not looking for anything serious,” and “I already have friends.” However, unable to find his own pair of socks, he borrows a pair from Joe, which of course requires him to meet up again with his one-night-stand.

     What Liddell’s short work is somehow unable to explain openly is that, as the publicist explains, his hookup also lives in the same “hoodie” where Joe last met up with his former lover, Henry (Harry Bailey), who, the director reveals in a flashback, on his way to London, seeming in a big hurry, leaving weeks before Joe has previously been told of his departure. Their rather rushed goodbye is so unsentimental on Henry’s part that you have to wonder whether or not he’s seeking to get away from Joe or being sent to London by his parents to get Joe out of his system.

      The cold goodbye, which would have perhaps been a fit title for this film, is so icy that Joe’s quick kiss is almost missed.

       At film’s end, accordingly, cute dancer Joe is once more alone and wondering why no one he meets is willing to invest themselves in even a part-time relationship.

       If some viewers seem to have loved this film, it seemed not only purposely vague to me, but covered ground that by 2024 one might have thought was yawn-inspiring. Only the dancing by Harry Jenkins saves this slight cinematic offering.

 

Los Angeles, June 13, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (June 2025).