on the plate than Araki’s earlier more shallow and sensationalistic films.”
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
Independent filmmaker Gregg Araki (”Totally F***ed up”/”The Doom
Generation”/”Nowhere”) uses Scott Heim’s 1995 novel to tell a sobering,
mature and disturbing tale about two young men and the homosexual abuse
they suffered as children. The tale of childhood innocence lost begins
in 1981 when Neil McCormick (Chase Ellison, and later, Joseph Gordon-Levitt)
and Brian Lackey (played first by George Webster and then in his late teenage
years by Brady Corbet) are age eight and both play on the same Little League
baseball team in their hick Hutchinson, Kansas, hometown. Friendly mustached
hunky coach (Bill Sage) lures his star player Neil to his child friendly
bachelor house that’s filled with a big-screen TV, video games and snacks.
The smooth coach sweet talks the lonely but cocky kid, looking for adult
approval but left on his own by his promiscuous single mom Ellen (Elisabeth
Shue), into lying on the kitchen floor and tells him “When I really, really
like someone, there’s a way I show them how I feel.” He then molests the
unsuspecting youngster, who takes it for love and the coach as the father
he never knew. The other youngster, Brian, is an uncommunicative, spectacle-wearing,
nerdy and socially backward youngster who is first seen when he blacks
out after getting caught in a rainstorm, and five hours later he’s seated
alone in his basement with a bloody nose and no memory of what happened
to him. Later we learn his dad is never around, and his hard-working but
dull and possessive mom (Lisa Long) has driven away his father (Chris Mulkey).
Over the years, the missing five hours still haunt him, and Brian lives
out his youth believing that he was kidnapped by space aliens. This is
reinforced by a TV program that interviews an intense farm girl (Mary Lynn
Rajskub) living in a nearby town who claims to be abducted by aliens and
will later meet Brian. But, as he gets older, he suspects Little League
teammate Neil can help him more than she can to fill in those blank moments.
As soon as Neil becomes of age he outgrows his hometown where he
already has become a gay hustler of older men in the playground, and splits
for NYC where he meets up with hometown soul mate Wendy (Michelle Trachtenberg)–someone
who sort of understands him. But he finds the Big Apple too much after
some rough sex in a hustling experience gone wrong with a bullying older
man and returns home at 18, during Christmas Eve, where he reunites with
Brian upon his request. The damaged youngster remained in town, still living
at home, but never recovered from his bad childhood experience and retreats
to live an isolated and untrusting life with his only close friend being
the town’s resident queer Eric (Jeff Licon). In a magical way, on Neil’s
homecoming visit, the boys’ stories come together and their affecting journey
leads to an illuminating self discovery of what went down when they were
eight.
Araki daringly questions if it’s possible for one child to love that
childhood pedophilia experience, still thinking it was a real love experience,
while another becomes a basketcase and is too ashamed to hear the truth
he’s dying to know. All the attention is turned on the vics and how they
handle themselves (both have trouble making relationships), as the child
abuser is all but ignored. It’s not a pleasant watch, but the characters
become remarkably real as human beings and the uneven flawed parallel stories
(Corbett’s alien story pales in interest compared to the great heartrending
performance by Gordon-Levitt, as he tries to sidestep AIDS, bad johns and
bad karma) nevertheless have a way of staying with you. This one clearly
has more meat on the plate than Araki’s earlier more shallow and sensationalistic
films.