Sam McGowan | Heaven / 2019

a chance to fall in love

by Douglas Messerli

 

Sam McGowan (screenwriter and director) Heaven / 2019 [7 minutes]

 

This short film is a rather clumsy effort of a movie about an equally clumsy and shy young guy at a co-ed party with two boys and 6 girls, one of them an ally. The boy Tom (Indiana Williams), that  shy kid, is desperately in love with the other boy at the party, Jake (Karl Richmond).

    So too is the mean girl Rebecca (Gemma Carfi), who is equally attracted to the cutey. The film begins with Tom so wrapped up in his own thoughts of how he might possibly tell Jake he loves him without even knowing if he’s gay—while Rebecca endlessly jabbers on, mostly about passing the bowl of chisels (the Australian name for a crunchy treat in a beveled shape)—that she wonders if he’s “freaking deaf.”

     Irritated by his mooncalf antics, she stands up and proposes a game of “Seven Minutes in Heaven,” a sort of advanced spin-the-bottle, which even Jen (Mikhayla Dennis) doesn’t know how to play—leading Rebecca to describe her as a virgin. But the rules are simple: leader (in this case Rebecca) chooses someone to wait in the closet while the others spin the bottle to determine who will spend time alone with him or her for seven minutes doing whatever they want. She chooses Jake to wait in the closet for whatever comes his way.

     Tom is terrified, asking Jen to momentarily join him as he rushes to the bathroom, there desperately reminding her of his feelings for the other boy. He’s so upset that his nose begins to bleed. Jen assures him that she will spin the bottle, making certain that it spins in his direction, but Tom understandably remains dubious of the result.

     As he leaves the bathroom to return to the others, he meets up with Jake on his way to the loo, who, observing Tom’s bloody nose, very nicely suggests that he raise arm hand in the air to help

stop the flow of blood, gently putting his hands on Tom’s arm to position it, as Jake nearly faints at the touch.

     Back in the circle of hell, Jen spins, the bottle passing up nearly all the others before it stops just between Rebecca and Tom, the girl immediately standing up to claim it landed nearer to her. When Jake weakly takes issue, Rebecca, as she puts on another layer of lipstick, insists that Jake is waiting for someone like her, that he isn’t interested in boys.

     In tears, Tom rushes into a nearby bedroom, sitting on the floor in frustration and shame.

    But soon we see the door open, and without him even noticing it, Jake sits down beside him. Rebecca isn’t his type, he tells the now clear-eyed Tom; in fact, Jake, is someone he’s been pining for he says, as he awards him a kiss.

     Tom kisses him back and that’s and that truly puts both boys in heaven—at least for the rest of the night.

      If Australian director McGowan is clearly an amateur, he’s got enough heart to hand his nerdy character a chance to beat out the privileged bitch in his search for love.

 

Los Angeles, October 28, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (October 2025).