Will Bottone | You Free Tonight? / 2024

is it bad to be sexually free?

by Douglas Messerli

 

Will Bottone (screenwriter and director) You Free Tonight? / 2024 [15 minutes]

 I saw this short British drama several months ago, and wondered why I hadn’t yet written something about it. But I watched the same film today, I realized that I had delayed simply because there isn’t much to be said.

    Visually, it’s far superior to its rather empty plot in which a young 16-year-old boy, Archie Lewis (Jake Doyle) finds himself with a girl, El Scott (Megan Barnwell) who appears to be trying to hook him with other girls, only to perceive that her friend is more interested in boys, a fact with which Archie himself has not yet to terms.

    Looking up sites to discover whether or not he is gay, he comes across “Findrr” (a stand-in for Grindr) and begins to search out other guys on the site. His first meet-up is with a boy who claims he’s 21, but who Archie quickly realizes is several years older, the man also recognizing that Archie is younger than the 18-year-old age requirement to be on the site.

    They apparently still have sex, even though obviously it doesn’t quite answer this young boy’s needs. However, from a quick countdown of the computer clock—the equivalent to the classic movies’ representation of passing time through a montage of the pages of a wall calendar peeling away one-by-one—it becomes apparent that Archie spends a great many months on Findrr without really being able to discover anyone with whom he could fall in love.

    He shifts hook-up sites, and is now seen seated in a restaurant with a handsome young man about his age, Paul (David McGouran) who finally seems to a near-perfect match.

    When Paul excuses himself to use the toilet, however, Archie soon after follows, Paul surprised by his appearance, and when quickly realizing why he has followed, is rather outranged, scolding his date for having behaved in such a manner and cutting off all further communication. Archie has evidently been taught in his experiences with Findrr partners that sex is the aim of any date.

     In tears, Archie returns home, soulfully asking his mother (Heath Tammy) whether she believes he is a good person. Troubled by his question she sits down beside him on his bed, attempting to discover what might have happened or who led him to question his moral worth.

     Archie’s cellphone rings, however, and their conversation is interrupted. It is another Findrr client responding with the usual come-on “U look cute,” Archie answering with the same response he first received when checking out the site: “You free tonight?”

     Archie has been hooked into a kind of loop in which so many gay men discover themselves, being fulfilled sexually without any real possibility of finding someone they may come to love.

     At 78, after being now in a relationship for 55 years, I missed out entirely on the Grindr phenomenon, which I imagine has been to my benefit. But then surely not every Grindr user in the world is a blackard just out for a quick suck or fuck. Surely among all the lonely men out there desperately in search of a night with someone else, there must be someone desiring more than a quick sexual fix? But then perhaps at Archie’s age, that is precisely what he needs, allowing him to find his way through school and a few more years of independence other aspects of his being before he begins to seek out settling down with someone into a long relationship.

    This film appears to suggest, however, as do so many post-AIDS movies that having random sex is necessarily a bad thing. Perhaps it’s better, however, that Archie finds his Paul later in his life when he is mature enough to deal with the compromises and sacrifices a relationship requires.

     But these days all the movies by young gay filmmakers seem to think that boys in their final year of high school should be settling down with a permanent boyfriend—all of which reminds me of the pre-feminist position of women who were thought be undesirable and perhaps even unmarriageable by the time they reached their mid-20s.

 

Los Angeles, October 16, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (October 2025).