George Bamber | Kept Boy / 2017

the travails of a toy boy

by Douglas Messerli

 

David Ozanich (screenplay, based on a novel by Robert Rodi), George Bamber (director) Kept Boy / 2017

 

There probably comes a time in any “kept boy’s” life when he wonders just how much longer his beauty and personality might delight the man who pays his bills. At least, that’s the proposition behind George Bamber’s 2017 film Kept Boy in which the still handsome, but not quite as beautiful as he obviously once was Dennis Racine (Jon Paul Phillips)—still in love with his partner, the wealthy interior designer Farleigh Knick (Thrue Riefenstein)—wakes up one morning not only to find Farleigh has hired a new pool boy, Jasper (Greg Audino), but tells him that if their relationship is going to continue, Dennis needs to find a job.

     What’s a good-looking boy who dropped out of Bard the moment he met Farleigh to do without any degree—a requirement in this fantasy view of Los Angeles to even get a job as a dogsitter. He consults his best friends, Lonnie (John-Michael Carlton) living with a wealthy older woman and Paulette (Toni Romano) who is the mistress of a married retiring politician, but they have no suggestions, although he provides Paulette with some sage advice about what to tell her aging daddy.

      Dennis imagines that he might get a job as a travel agent, not a very good possibility given that those jobs have been primarily replaced by computers. He even tries to borrow money from their chef Javi (Diosiq Burné), only to discover that he was once Farleigh’s boyfriend, given the job of chef as a consolation prize when Farleigh met Dennis.

      Javi suggests that he show some interest in Farleigh, watch a taping of his designer reality show that, if nothing else, he might ask, once in a while, about his lover’s well-being. In fact, the major problem throughout this somewhat empty-headed but pretty-bodied soap opera is that no one seems to bother to talk to one another. The idea that Dennis might have lived for years in the same house with Javi and not know of his previous “position” is difficult to imagine.

      Even more surprising, at least for Dennis, is that the pool boy Jasper is now suddenly working on TV as Farleigh’s assistant, a fact he discovers only after he has taken Javi’s advice and shows up to a shooting where, he quickly perceives, he is not truly welcome. When later Farleigh suggests that he’ll drive Jasper home before he comes back to pick up Dennis, he never returns, Dennis greeting him in their bedroom only the next morning.

      Obviously, Dennis is on the way out! He asks Lonnie to pretend to be a pizza boy who demonstrates an inordinate amount of sexual interest in him, just to make Farleigh realize he’s still got his good looks, despite the crow’s feet around his eyes. But it doesn’t seem to work, as Lonnie is sent naked out of the house. Each day it seems clearer that Fairleigh has designs of his new interior design partner.

      Finally, Dennis’ friends convince him that he has to get his lover away from Jasper, so with the help of the wealthy Deirdre (Ellen Karsten) and his falsified travel agent credentials, Dennis arranges for a trip to Columbia with just himself, Farleigh, and Javi to reinforce their relationship and let his lover know of his continued devotion. Once more, it appears that no one in this film can simply tell one another what they feel, but must create a larger-than-life gesture to reveal their real feelings.

     And it as this point that the film really seems to lose any of the satirical charm it might have exuded, as the plot gets bogged down in a series of incredible coincidences that begins with Jasper following them down to South America, supposedly to visit his rich uncle. It turns out that the uncle does, in fact, exist and that he is a noted artist about whom Dennis is oddly knowledgeable. Jasper and his uncle, for no reason it appears but to create another melodramatic flourish, have a difficult relationship which ends with the man turning his bodyguards and their guns upon his guests.

      Dennis makes plans to lure Jasper into sex just to reveal to Farleigh how unfaithful the former pool boy really is, and in the process Dennis discovers: 1) that Jasper’s real love interest has always been Dennis, 2) that Fairleigh, god bless him, still loves Dennis, and 3), Fairleigh has gone after Jasper only in the fear that Dennis might leave him. They could have stayed home and thrashed these issues out without costing Fairleigh an apparent heart attack and death in a strange country. But then, I suppose, there wouldn’t have been all that lovely scenery and sex to wow the audience with.

      In any event, all turns out for the better—at least so it seems. Dennis realizes that what he’d really like to do is go back to college and get a B.A. in Art History, which he imagines—quite mistakenly I must point out—will allow to lecture on the subject to college students. He’s going to need far more than the $200,000 that Fairleigh left him (the man truly was deeply in debt), a couple of more degrees, and a lot of good luck to get a job like the one he wants.

    He hands over the deed to Fairleigh’s house to Javi, who after all, has a history with Farleigh “family” and the house.

     And Dennis takes away the door-prize, the truly well-educated cutie, Jasper, who probably will have to support him until he gets his PhD. Maybe then, with any luck, Dennis can find a job as a waiter, but alas, by that time he’ll be too old for the job. As we learn, being a “toy,” in the end, isn’t always fun.

 

Los Angeles, March 21, 2023 

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (March 2023).