Christopher Sampson | Miles / 2017

the next move

by Douglas Messerli

 

Christopher Sampson (screenwriter and director) Miles / 2017 [15 minutes]

 

Australian filmmaker Christopher Sampson’s short film Miles is not only about a road trip three close, life-long friends make together, but the miles of time they have reached to arrive at this important juncture where they will finally have to decide how to proceed for the rest of their lives, at least in terms of their sexuality and relationships with one another.

    Michael (Jye Whatson), so we discover, has just lost his father, and evidently feels a great deal of guilt for not expressing his love to him. But the dead father is not only one to whom Michael evidently has difficulty in expressing his feelings. He is currently in a relationship with Ashley (Madi Jennings) who knows his male friend, Edward (Nathan Draman) quite well without perceiving that he has had a far deeper, possibly sexual relationship with him before his now heterosexual focus.

     But it’s clear she has her suspicions, at one point suggesting that Edward be careful in expressing his affection to Michael, because doing so at this time, she argues, will simply make him back away; which is perhaps what she has discovered without really knowing the reason Michael is hesitant in expressing his full love. She attributes it to his father’s death, not to the fact that Michael is basically engaged on this trip in a kind of threesome, possibly to help him come to a decision of which direction to move.

    There are many things about Michael that we, as the viewer, also do not know. Is Michael basically bisexual or is he a homosexual attempting, in relation to what his father might have wanted for him, to convince himself that he will be happy in a heterosexual marriage? It matters a great deal to know whether it is simply a choice between two individuals or whether it is a kind of self-enforced transition in his life, a denial of his actual emotional state.

     I might suggest from what little we are shown, it is the latter, and a great deal of what Ashley perceives of grieving for his father is Michael’s suffering over his own sexual indecision. It is rather clear, in fact, that he prefers Edward’s company. And the most telling moment—certainly the most dramatic—is when, after all three have been sleeping for a while in the car, Michael attempts to steal away with Edward to spend some time with him, leaving the more deeply sleeping Ashley a note as to his whereabouts.

     As the two males sit upon a cliff overlooking the ocean, Michael again expresses his regret that he has not expressed his love to his father; but we sense that what he is really saying is that he is frustrated that neither Edward or he have expressed their love for one another. Edward, attempting to remain as neutral as he can in making up Michael’s mind, suggests that he’s there to listen, to hear and help with whatever Michael needs in healing.

    But Michael sees the offer as patronizing and certainly not attending to the heart of the matter, and turns to leave, Edward calling him back: “Michael, you can’t just walk away from me.”

    At least they have moved back into the subject that is truly troubling the handsome youth. “What do you want from me, Ed?” Michael responds.

    And finally Ed admits what is at the heart of the problem: “I want you to tell me where we stand. Stop being so distant. I want you to understand everything I do is for you.” In short, even pretending objectivity has been an action of love, not passivity or disinterest. “I know this is the

worst time possible,” he continues, “but I can’t help smiling every time I look at you.”

     The honesty puts a smile on Michael’s usually troubled face and he turns back to Edward, his friend explaining to him that he cannot go on in this manner, that every time he tries to communicate, Michael turns away. “So what do you want?”

      “I don’t know what I want.”

    Putting his hand to Michael’s face, Edward answers, “I do.” We wonder in fact whether he is speaking for his friend’s desires, making it clearer for him, or simply speaking for himself, admitting the fact that he knows what he wants.

      Michael’s answer, “I know,” appears to suggest the latter, but perhaps he is admitting that he too would truly like their relationship to continue. There is no way of knowing, for as soon as the two boys begin a deep series of kisses, Ashley, having awakened and read the message, arrives on the scene, hurt and deeply angry for what she has just witnessed and now knows is the truth.

     Before, in her mind, they were just close friends, but now….

    Noticing her existence, Michael goes to her, attempting to touch her face, but she cannot accept it, and he walks off, the girlfriend walking over to Edward and shaking her head as if to suggest that he has betrayed her.

     She turns back for a moment to look at Michael before walking in the other direction

   When Edward reaches out to comfort Ashley, she violently pulls away, and walks off, Edward attempting to call out to her, but she turning back for only a moment to shake her head in the negative, before herself leaving the frame.

    Edward remains standing at the very edge of the cliff, and we as observers can only fear for the possibility that he might attempt, out of love for Michael, to make his decision easier by disappearing in a single leap. One commentator on Letterboxd, at least, argues that Edward now believes that Michael would choose Ashley (and the escape of heterosexual marriage) to him.

      There is no answer of course, and women, I believe, are at least of two minds when it comes to marrying men who they know to be bi- or homosexual. In many cases, females are convinced that being of the opposite gender gives them the advantage and they might certainly cure their husband’s malady—at least that was long the view held when the world was not so very aware of other sexual choices.

     In today’s world, it may be far more difficult for a woman to enter marriage with someone who they know may at any moment relapse into desire for the same sex or possibly lose entirely if or when he realizes that he actually may be gay. And Ashley, who may have suspected her boyfriend’s attachment to Edward, now knows that he has been in love with him and perhaps still is. In short, the decision may now be out of Michael’s hands.

      Having revealed his sexual confusion, Michael has lost the ability to choose for whatever reasons he may have wanted that one remaining power. Ashley may pull him back to her demanding promises of renunciation, or outrightly reject her lover for not being a reliable choice of a mate.

     Whatever decisions are made, it will be a horrible time for all as they return from their revelatory trip back to what we absurdly describe as civilization.

     Sampson’s film is far too probing and complex, I’d argue, for such a simplistic act of Edward making the decision for his lover by abandoning all hope. That certainly might have been the decision of lovers in the films of early gay men such as Kenneth Anger or Curtis Harrington, but in today’s world Edward also knows that unless he determines to fight for Michael, the decision is hers to make.

      Throughout this well-filmed work, Sampson places his characters in the landscape a bit like Resnais does in Last Year at Marienbad, as figures on a metaphorical chessboard who seek out solutions to resolve the various pulls of imagined love. As the screen goes black, we now are left to imagine the next move.

 

Los Angeles, August 22, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (August 2025)