A Painful, Provocative Reunion Demands Your Empathy In The Daring 'blue Film'

To picture a movie arsenic including a skis mask, a camcorder and $50,000 successful rate would surely lead 1 to ideate a circumstantial type of story. Add 2 men and activity activity and nan encephalon mightiness rotation astir much pointed scenarios.

But nary of that tin hole you for what micro-indie “Blue Film” has successful store. The nexus of perversion, symptom and intersexual intent driving writer-director Elliot Tuttle’s dark, discursive enclosure play is of a stripe seldom attempted successful moreover nan astir self-consciously daring movies. Should you request a self-imposed break afterward from friendly two-handers, moreover Tuttle mightiness understand, past wink successful nan wide guidance of his Pasolini posters. (I’m guessing astatine this provocateur’s wall art.)

Is it clear yet that “Blue Film,” group chiefly successful a location successful Los Angeles complete nan people of a revelatory night, isn’t for everybody? Some of that “everybody,” incidentally, includes nan festivals and distributors who rejected nan queer filmmaker’s debut feature, contempt having captious buzz, Tony-winning character Reed Birney arsenic 1 of its stars and indie guru Mark Duplass arsenic a mentoring producer.

But definite subjects (spoilers ahead) are bound to trigger a different benignant of scrutiny. Initially, our attraction is connected macho-posturing tattooed camboy Aaron (“Boots” prima Kieron Moore), graphically boasting to his followers online of nan large payday he’ll person that evening from a submissive client. What he later encounters, however, astatine nan doorway of a Craftsman connected a quiet thoroughfare is simply a masked, polite, older big (Birney) pinch a camera and, erstwhile it’s turned on, a batch of individual questions, nan benignant that statesman to ace nan destruction of a young man utilized to being successful power of his transactional life.

Then his client’s look is revealed and Aaron recognizes it’s his mediate schoolhouse coach Hank, a convicted pedophile who erstwhile coveted him. Hank, who completed situation clip for nan attempted battle of a different boy, has made a cross-country travel to activity retired nan big type of personification who could person been his first victim. He is still processing what he is, wondering if desire, moreover love, is disposable to him anymore.

The mobility is, will you care? Even viewed done Aaron’s cautious, clear-eyed empathy, it’s a steep ask. But you should. Tuttle’s fearless inquisition won’t reproach your intelligence, inquire your mercy aliases hogtie your feelings. Honestly, it’s refreshing to beryllium repulsed and intrigued by a movie consenting to plumb these psychological depths erstwhile Hollywood won’t. In its committedness to unvarnished talk — moreover if that leads to a clunky staginess — “Blue Film” has thoughts astir identity, choice, misdeed and salvation. There’s a sincere engagement pinch humanity’s much difficult realities.

Needless to say, this type of graphically articulated speech wouldn’t activity if nan performances didn’t land. Thankfully, Moore’s affecting portrayal of jumbled masculinity mixed pinch situational curiosity is well-calibrated, while Birney, a pro pinch a challenge, eases america into Hank’s weary self-possession (if not ever nan nauseating facts of it) earlier coloring extracurricular nan lines pinch a believably absorbing accuracy astir reckoning.

But “Blue Film” is tough, make nary mistake. Awkward and searching, it exists successful a filmic abstraction that you could reason was opened up by past year’s courageous documentary “Predators.” And sometimes that regard is conscionable discomfiting, afloat stop. Tuttle wants that. He has room to amended but he’s personification to watch, plumbing nan hard-to-fathom.