BLISS RATING: ★★★★+
“I just wanna live in this moment forever ’cause I’m afraid that living couldn’t get any better…” – Lyrics from Angel Baby by Troye Sivan
This is a coming-of-age movie. Classified as a romcom, it seemed more like a journey through painful adolescent ill fortunes. While funny at times, it has a way more serious tone to it that never really reached a fever pitch, unfortunately. I liked this movie a lot, but it lacked a disciplined message and a clear focus. Technically, it checked all the boxes, but it missed a soul. There was just not a good flow to this movie, perhaps due to the quick editing changes of scenes. And it never got deep into the psyche of the characters, although I do think it needed to. This film should have been steep in angst but never quite gets to the level where we feel deep emotions for the characters; it just feels as if something is ‘missing’. It felt more like you were reading a book than watching a movie.
The story is about a young student named, Caleb, played well by the handsome and rather versatile Troye Sivan. Caleb is living in Hollywood, Florida in the year 2011. He is a bright, witty young man but underlying the bitter sarcastic exterior is an individual steeped in rejection – either real or perceived. He lives with his grandmother, played by Ellen Burstyn and her companion boyfriend, played by Lois Gossett, Jr. Caleb’s father died several years while his mother previously remarried a conservative Rabbi. Although Caleb is Jewish, his unorthodox leanings (being gay) simply did not fit into her new family’s lifestyle.
Subsequently he was handed over to his grandmother to foster. So already, this kid’s life has been hit with several strikes against him. Caleb’s best, and really only, friend is a girl named Dara (Brianne Tju), who works in the same convenient story as him. These two are misfits for sure but both understand each other and accept the ideocracies of one another.
Recently, Caleb had sex with someone in which the condom broke. That individual proceeds to inform Caleb that he just found out he is positive for HIV. And this begins Caleb’s journey to ascertaining if he himself is now positive. To confirm if his status is negative, he must be tested every month for 3 months with negative results since the HIV virus can take up to three months to show positive results. The doctor asks him to come to a support group for emotional kinship. There he meets another young man of Indian descent named Estha (Viveik Kalra). Estha is stunningly handsome and like Caleb, he too is waiting to see if he is positive.
Over the summer, the two develop a connection and a fondness for each other. It is obvious and inevitable that they become sexually attracted to one another. But when Estha finds out he is negative, he spurns Caleb and says it was fun for the summer, but he must now think of his future and family. This rejection is a particularly cruel blow to Caleb as he literally chose him over his best friend to be with. For Estha, the cultural intensity to familial fidelity is so much stronger than individual needs, wants, or desires. After being rejected by Estha, in a desperate gesture of trying to grasp onto some anchor of feeling like he belongs somewhere, goes to see his mother. Cruelly and harshly, she too rejects him completely. However, through all this, Caleb remains tenacious and tries to move forward with his life, learning to accept his reality whether it is negative or positive. We never really find out what the results are but that essentially is irrelevant.
And here is where the movie breaks down. We honestly do not ‘see’ Caleb through his struggles, or his pain. We see his shell. That is unfortunate because his struggles are what makes him – him. It was hard to grasp who Caleb was. It all seemed so superficial, and he never showed what was really going on with him. When he does break down with his grandmother, it is all filled with platitudes and euphemistic encouragements. Caleb was a deeply troubled young man with heavy feelings of overwhelming guilt and a complete sense of not belonging as so many people rejected him or left him. He lashes out with caustic remarks which further alienates those around him, and he becomes even more unlikeable.
I wish they would have concentrated more on what Caleb was going through rather than seeing him in episodic snippets. His brief relationship with Estha was a nice respite for him from rejection and provided him with a deeper connection to another human being going through a similar life changing experience. Yet, he was again crushingly rejected. That had to hurt. The whole idea of Estha saying in one meeting that he thought that sometimes he senses that his parents can smell it on him – shame.
And Caleb’s burden of tremendous guilt he carries around. These are only mentioned, and then life moves on. This story should have developed deeper emotional connections so we could also sense and feel the crushing pain Caleb and Estha were experiencing. It just never quite got there, unfortunately.
Who really S.T.O.L.E. this movie? The acting in this move was hit and miss. Not that it was necessarily badly acted; it really was not. It was unfocused. It simply lacked an emotional connection to the characters. And there is no real depth to the characters. I never really felt much from them and subsequently felt little for them. But I think the closest to making his character believable was Viveik Kalra as Estha. He could display the breath of his character well and we had a better grasp of who his character was. While low-keyed, he still remained consistent and focused. It was known from the beginning his responsibility was to please his family and remain obeisant. Viveik played the part of the terrified and obedient son hiding his gayness with great pain in his face and mannerism. He never seemed happy even when relaxed.
There are, however, some cute scenes in this move which showed some tenderness and a glimpse of who these characters were, but it never went beyond obligatory scenes showing different situations. For example, when Caleb and Estha finally kiss and are in bed, they realize they cannot have sex. So, Caleb throws popcorn on Estha and eats that off him and feeds him individual kernels. Cute, funny, and adorable even if it seemed a bit too contrived. Earlier there is a wonderful refence to Estha loving popcorn which lead to that particular outcome. There are also some intensely personal scenes between Caleb and Dara.
Nevertheless, it is a worthy story of the abscessed reality of a gay kid growing up when HIV was still stigmatized and a terrifying reality. For that it does kudos.
Much has changed since the conceptualization of this movie but fears and prejudices have only switched. Perhaps now it seems a bit outdated but the pain of facing any life-altering condition alone still remains the same and these stories continue to be need to be told. There is still a valuable lesson to be learned from watching this movie. Understanding.
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