Maddie Barnes | Sand / 2020

on the beach

by Douglas Messerli

 

Maddie Barnes (screenwriter and director) Sand / 2020 [10 minutes]

 

Jaimie (Joel Fossard-Jones) and Curtis (Johnny Gutteridge) are two British boys who live near the sea, and spend most of their time at the beach. These two adolescent boys are clearly gay and in love with one another, having evidently grown up together.    

      In between their bouts of sun-bathing, swimming, splashing, and wrestling, they kiss, and appear to be at near perfect equilibrium in their lives thanks to one another’s support and caring.

      Yet Jaimie well knows that at 17 they are still open to change (“You’re 17, nothing’s forever.”), and that their relationship may not even last. Yet he is deeply hurt when he hears that Curtis has been with a girl, and even more angry when he sees his friend at the beach kissing her and pretending not to even notice his existence.

      Curtis attempts each time to apologize, but he also lies, insisting that there’s nothing really between them when Jaimie has observed their pretense of near rapture. But his friend insists he’s experimenting, since despite their close loving friendship he still doesn’t feel “normal.” Although he tells Jaimie that he’s in love with him, he admits, as Jaimie prods, that he has told the girl the same thing.

       The more mature of them, Jaimie, assures him that he is the most normal of anyone he’s knows and that their own love, if were to survive, is also normal outside of the “twisted” world of their high school friends and families. But at the same time Jaimie is hurt and knows that his friend may need more time to work things out, so he refuses to talk with him for a full month.

       Once more, Curtis tries to assure him of his devotion, explaining that the love he has felt for Jaimie was so overwhelming that he simply had to know if he could experience such feelings with girls as well. Jaimie repeats that there’s nothing wrong with experimenting, and welcomes him back by running off to the water’s edge just as they did in the first scenes, turning back to call, “Well are you coming?”

       Curtis runs toward him, and their friendship seems to have remained intact. But not everything is the same. And both of them know that. Even if they do remain loyal to each other, changes are obviously in store for them upon graduation. And even the deepest of adolescent love doesn’t always translate into a permanent relationship.

       We share Jaimie’s pain, but we also perceive that he is the wisest of young men, able to give of himself while realizing his current’s love limitations.

        Nothing much happens in this film, except for the brief moments of the two boy’s separation. But the maturity and naturalness with which this film treats its young homosexual couple is as beautiful as the movie’s stark black and white images. Few films ultimately are accepting about the differences of each of its lovers as is Barnes’ small cinematic gem. And even if the maturity with which Jaimie seems to comport himself might seem almost unbelievable, it is certainly something we want to believe, that there are young people like him who finally are able to see through all adolescent trauma to realize who they are and want they might want in life.

 

Los Angeles, May 12, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (May 2022).