Monty Wolfe | In Pieces / 2019

broken

by Douglas Messerli

 

Monty Wolfe (screenwriter and director) In Pieces / 2019 [10 minutes]

 

This college satire of sexual behavior was a little hard to bear, despite the charm of it’s two central figures, Max (Connor McGarry) and Rex (Hayden Alminiana).

     In part, it’s the dreadful music with Rex and his band perform. Then there’s the truly tired stereotypes of college behavior that somehow I might have placed back in the 1970s.

     Finally, the acting by all its characters certainly leaves something to be desired. Yet if you stay with it, this story about a couple of young men who meet up previous to this party and already fall in love but haven’t fully expressed their feelings to one another, comes to a nice conclusion.

     Max is frustrated because he has texted Rex all day, whose phone, incidentally, has broken down. Rex, as he tells a female friend is not at all sure that he Max likes him as much as he has enjoyed his time with Max of the other night when they observed a braggadocio fellow student insist that he had sex with a woman who tells others she refused even to jerk him off, pissed on a trash dumpster behind which they hid before himself jerking off, the only fun story of this frankly rather poorly written piece.

     Fortunately, Rex observes Max walking out of the house wherein the party is just getting going, and joins him. Finally, he reads the missed text and simply tells his friend, “Max you’re going to have to be less of a drama queen if we’re going to be a couple.” The two kiss, and presumably descend straight to the heavens.

     This had some of the makings of a good comedy, if only director Wolfe had been able to actually convey the reality of college-student mentality; he seems locked back in high school days, with hardly a semblance of possible intelligent thought among these cretins. And only Rex he had the ability to compose real music and just a little singing talent.

     As it is, I can suggest several far more sophisticated and intelligent college satires. These people, trapped in a private house, not even at a college venue, can’t even dance.

 

Los Angeles, October 23, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (October 2026).