Kieran S. Weller | Stranger / 2023

hello, i must be going

by Douglas Messerli

 

Kieran S. Weller (screenwriter and director) Stranger / 2023 [14.15 minutes]

 

Alex (Jack Armstrong) is out for a walk along the beachfront, reasons unknown. He’s just called to share his whereabouts. At that very moment he literally bumps into another man, Jesse (Oli Meredith) an acquaintance. Alex, who is back in town just visiting his parents, is startled to literally run into his old friend. It’s almost five years, they agree, since they’ve seen one another. They agree to go for a drink.

    The drink is café latte, and Alex, who orders, clearly knows without asking what Jesse wants his. The latter teases him, “How do you know my order hasn’t changed?” “Has it?” asks Alex.

 

     Jesse asks the usual questions, what Alex has been up to—he got his degree, evidently in art, and his professor has helped him get a job at a gallery which he curates. Jesse’s impressed, but Alex feels he has to get his own work in the gallery before people can be impressed by his new job.

    Jesse was doing a catering apprenticeship which was going very well, but they lost funding and the program under which he was working had to be cut.

    Alex remembers the cheesecake hors d'oeuvres which Jesse used to make. He’s told Beth, his housemate he quickly adds, about his cooking and she was quite interested.

     But Jesse is now interested in something different. Is Beth his only housemate or is there someone else.

     Beth and Alex were housemates at university, he explains. And then there was Harry, and he was with him for about a year, which was nice well it lasted.

     We now begin to realize that Alex and Jesse were, in fact, a previous “couple,” and that Jesse’s interest is far deeper now that just a piece of conversation.

      “So you and Harry aren’t together anymore?”

      “We went about our separate ways. That’s I have to say about that,” Alex answers.

      But he adds is far more revealing: “It wasn’t a happy time in my life. I realized I was better than being someone’s secret.”

      Jesse agrees that Alex deserves more.

      Alex turns the conversation, so to speak, asking about Jesse’s love life.

      He quick mentions that since his mother and dad have passed away he hasn’t had much time since he’s been caring for his grandmother.

      Alex is astounded. How has his mother and dad both died without him knowing?

      “It was two years ago…It was a car accident.”

      Jesse admits that it hurts and that it probably won’t stop hurting, but at least he doesn’t feel like he’s dying when he thinks about it now.

      Alex can only wonder why he didn’t talk to him about any of his problems.

      Jesse’s answer is vague but also very accusative: “With respect Alex, you of all people know how much I struggle doing that and after everything you said before you left I took it you didn’t want to speak to me again.”

      Alex demurs, admitting what he said but…

       “You were getting on with you life and I didn’t just want to dump that on you so I just kind of…got on without having you around.”

       Jesse admits that he was toxic to be around, but Alex suggests that certainly doesn’t mean that he needed to go through what he has alone.

       In short, despite whatever immediate problems there were between them, Alex is admitting that he still cares and loves Jesse.

       But Jesse claims Alex always made him feel sane when he was actually crazy, and wishes he could have honestly said at the time what he inwardly wanted to.

       “What was that?”

       Jesse quickly backs out again: “It doesn’t matter. I shouldn’t have said anything.

      We have reached the halfway point of this short film, and like Alex we also want to shout out “Well…?”

       But actually it’s Alex who wants to confess that he still feels guilty about the way he left, that there was always something missing. Certainly he can’t expect Jesse to be honest, if he can’t open up to himself. “I just thought it would be easier to run away for it. From us.”

      They both admit that they truly miss one another.

      At that moment Alex’s cellphone rings, a call from “Sam,” which he postpones answering.  

      Now they both feel they need some air again and return to the cold.

      In the middle of the bridge, they pause, Jesse finally speaking: “Alex, I wish I’d told you not to go.”

      Alex’s phone rings again, he explaining to whoever it is that he’s sorry, but he got caught up with something. “I’ll see you in a moment, okay. I love you too.” Clearly Alex is in a new relationship, the fact of which he hasn’t shared with Jesse.

      “That was my boyfriend, Jesse. We’re staying in a hotel around the corner. We’re going tomorrow.”

      Jesse, who has just begun to open up, is now tongue-tied again, unable to share his feelings. Stuttering, he keeps repeating “I’ll let you get on then,” interrupting himself only to say that “This was nice.”

      Alex’s answer, “Jesse, don’t be a stranger,” is merely a cliché, not at all the heart-felt feeling goodbye one might expect. Indeed, it’s clear Jesse is now truly a stranger to Alex, just as Alex has been to Jesse during his crisis. Alex walks off, as Jesse for a moment remembers better times when he and Alex, still in love, stood looking out over the ocean. The screen begins to turn various colors, black, red, followed by abstract color patterns that sometimes appear at the end of a film reel—a sea gull reappears for a moment, another vision of the two men standing together with Jesse’s head leaning against Alex’s. Jesse’s mind blurring over even as he recalls particular moments in time.

     We don’t know the complexities and difficulties of their relationship, but it is clear that, just as Jesse has just suggested that Alex deserves someone better than Harry, so did Jesse deserve someone better than Alex. If Jesse is a man feeling as if he’s drowning, he now knows only that he can no longer depend at all upon the stranger Alex has become. The narrative is over as under the credits photographer Hayden Simpson presents us with beautifully abstract images of the waves rolling in. There is nothing more to say or even remember.

     But we, nonetheless, are left with the echo of reality that Jesse is now caring for his grandmother, while Alex seems to be caring mostly for himself, his new job, and new friend.

     If British director Waller’s director is less than profound, his dialogue is simply brilliant and revealing.

 

Los Angeles, December 1, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (December 2025).