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).  

 

Thomas Dearnley-Davison | The Visitors / 2025

how nice of you to drop in

by Douglas Messerli

 

Thomas Dearnley-Davison (screenwriter and director) The Visitors / 2025 [11 minutes]

 The Visitors is one of those comic works about eccentrics that seem to be the birthright of many British authors. In this quite ludicrous domestic drama Luke (Thomas Dearnley-Davison), being visited by his mother Jill (Jane Morgan) is attending to his Instagram page when she enters the living room and suggests they play a game instead, usurping his cellphone for that purpose. Luke is clearly not pleased.

   At that very moment, like a bad stage play, two burglars, unlikely brother and sister Matt (Omar Aga) and Ronnie (Kirsty Langley) leap into the room through a broken window demanding the evidently famed royal cups and plates that Jill has been collecting for decades, ceremonial ware sold to the collectors on special occasions such as the crowning of King George VI soon after his brother Edward’s abdication of throne or upon the marriage of Prince Charles and Diana.

    Luke is terrified by their arrival, but his mother seems to take it less as an intrusion that a wonderful night visit, only too happy to take Ronnie, who seems to be in charge of the invasion and knowledgeable about the collection, into the back room to show off her treasures.

    Matt has taken a night off from his job as a DJ just to participate in the heist, and is not at all happy that his sister argues that she must see the full collection before deciding which ones to take.

   Meanwhile, Jill very nicely introduces herself to the intruders explaining why they found both of them at home, when the siblings were expecting the house to be empty.

   The women move off into the back room, while Matt and Luke watch TV together, Luke daring to suggest that since Matt is a DJ and a musical connoisseur he probably doesn’t at all take to musical groups such as Abba. But to his surprise, Matt admits he quite likes Abba, and it soon becomes clear that the two have some of the same musical tastes, and that Matt, in fact, doesn’t at all mind the way Luke is looking him over.

     In the back room, Jill proudly holds up her prized George VI cup, telling of her complete collection of the royal memorabilia in which Ronnie takes great interest. At some point, however, she accidently drops the cup, which breaks into dozens of pieces.

     They return to the living room where Jill invites the would-be robber to take any piece of choice, while Ronnie admits that she knows that the pieces are really rather worthless, but explains that her mother used to have just such a collection, and one day she simply left the family never to return. Perhaps, she imagines, if she could have just found something special and precious among Jill’s collection she might be able to lure her mother back.

    Jill, on the other hand, describes the job as a policewoman that kept her busy for years, explaining just how hot it was in the tiny police vehicles, etc.

    In the hall, Matt invites Luke to see him perform his job at a club, and when they finally agree at which gay club to meet up, Luke is only too happy to accept the invitation.

    It appears that Ronnie has found another kind of mother, and that just perhaps, as ludicrous as it seems, Luke has possibly discovered a new boyfriend.

 

Los Angeles, October 28, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (October 2025).