Review by Benjamin Poole
Directed by: Elliot Tuttle
Starring: Kieron Moore, Reed Birney
"What's up f*****s?". Via an OnlyFans diegesis, Blue Film, Elliot Tuttle's quite incredible chamber piece, opens with this charming inquest from an exceptionally handsome queer coded twunk (Kieron Moore) - peroxide hair faintly grown out, slight body hair, thick chain, line tattoos and muscles oh god the muscles - flexing for and insulting the camera. Apparently just back from the gym, Aaron_Eagle (with this and The Invite's Hawk it's a big season for ornithological pseudonyms within sex-based films) cajoles, threatens and teases his audience who express their appreciation in a streaming message chat and floating graphics representing proffered cash tips. On three he commands us, his "paypigs," to huff poppers, before grabbing his member barely contained in a pair of tight whiteys and further instructing us to picture cleaning his "sweaty fuckin balls." The underwear is peeled down to reveal "this white fuckin' ass" which we seemingly want to put our faces "all up in," but only if us "pathetic fuckin' f*****s tap that fuckin' tip jar." What a way to make a living, eh? And what a way to start a film; confrontational, just that little bit too far, and as it fuckin' means to go on.
From the school of if you've got it, flaunt it I'm all for OnlyFans on principle. Oldest profession in the world, etc, but here is a model where the worker has control over their content and enjoys an 80/20 financial split with the platform in their favour. I'm no expert on the historical economic structures of the adult entertainment industry (I mean, I've seen Boogie Nights) but I get the inkling that performers didn't enjoy similar largesse during the VHS era, both in terms of renumeration and agency. Yet... the ostensible issue with OnlyFans is the escalation of content. The sense that punters, desensitised and porn brained and giddy with the parasociality of it all, along with performers who need visibility in a ruthlessly competitive market, results in a snowballing process where the platform hosts increasingly extreme routines, ending up with content creators such as Bonnie Blue achieving notoriety for having it off with over a 1000 men and then attempting to top that by putting one on a further 2000 while in a glass box (?). This stunt resulted in her being banned from the platform but moving (along with her fans) to a similar outlet whilst pushing the kink envelope still further and further. For some users of cam-porn there abides a dissatisfaction; the lack of true intimacy, of actual contact, begetting a yearning which cannot be appeased no matter how hardcore the visuals become. All of Aaron's entreaties to feel, sniff and taste his bum simply isn't going to happen for the mere spectators. That is, unless you're the consumer who has coughed up 50 thousand notes for his personal services...
Blue Film is, among other elements within this film brimming with provocations, partly about this sense of unfulfilled thirst: the gulf between desire and consummation, the map/territory incompatibility of the constructed image and the grounded reality. There follows an awkward sequential juxtaposition (yeah, don't get comfortable. It's worth saying at this point that Blue Film has been rejected on moral grounds by multiple festivals, including SXSW and Sundance) of a montage featuring home video footage which families have shot of their children at the beach, birthdays, biting on a teething toy, etc. The mosaic is soundtracked by 'When Love Is Young' by The Free Design ("when love is young, as fresh as dew"...). An older man wearing a balaclava listens and watches (within its first five minutes Blue Film has twice made us unwitting voyeurs) until there is a knock at the door from Aaron, making good on his boast that someone is paying $50,000 to spend the night with him. The film settles into an intense two hander wherein old soil is turned over to reveal toxic longings and unrequited passions; expertly acted and sophisticatedly directed, Blue Film is strong meat, but worth the chew. That's the review, spoilers follow in a discussion of the film's incitements.
Initially anonymous under his head gear, Aaron's client sets up a small video camera to interview him, the questions becoming increasingly more personal. From priorly watching Aaron on the stream, to filtering the experience through a lens once again, it is as if the frame is another objectifying method of control. Co-operating, Aaron tells about his initiation to BDSM, which involved authorizing a consensual rape fantasy featuring Aaron as a progressively enthusiastic top and real violence straight out of a Dennis Cooper novel. Yet as the dialogue progresses, it transpires that the client actually knows Aaron. He brutally rubbishes the content creator's Insta-ready origin story of coming from Florida by calling him by his real name of Alex and destabilising him (more coercion). And what's more underneath the balaclava it turns out that he is in fact Aaron's old high school teacher, Hank Grant (Reed Birney).
It's a bit awkward bumping into a teacher from your school days at the best of times, but it turns out that Hank has been an avid viewer of Alex's content for months, and, what's more, is a convicted paedophile. Years back, he attempted to interfere with a little boy in Alex's school – contesting that "he let him go" in a moment of clarity - and was accordingly in love with Key Stage 3 Alex, even throughout the time he went down for seven years due to his attempted assault (at this point in the movie even Todd Solondz is sitting up straight). The film then becomes a shifting play of power dynamics, with Alex challenging Hank's distorted sexuality while also capitulating to his caprices. Hank shaves Alex's body hair off, yet can't quite manage sex - he gets further when Alex role plays towards his fantasies. Throughout, the film maturely examines Hank and treats his desire to rape children as phenomena which could probably benefit from examination and something approaching compassion rather than vicious condemnation.
It is uncomfortable, and having to think about the implications of the film now is making me a bit sad and angry and sick days later. Is there a sense of sympathy for Hank? We do discover that he was systematically abused by a close family member throughout his childhood, and there is pontification about how there is a "purity in perversion" as a justification for his desire to abuse others: no mate, you're a fucking shorteyes who seeks cruel Eros in the domination of people weaker than you, who are frightened, and who are unable to fully process what you want to do to them. This is evident in the script (mentally rehearsed by Hank, no doubt) for the roleplay which the two enact, predicated upon Alex's character's absolute naivety. Even this flesh and blood facsimile is not enough though, as, in a similar cumulative dynamic to the frustrations of cam-sex, fully grown Alex is not the real thing.
An issue which I did have with Blue Film is the comparation of Alex/Aaron's trade and Hank's crimes. A man wanting to be beaten up and dominated is consensual, and paedophilia simply isn't (the hardness of the kink is irrelevant. I hate the term "vanilla" because all sex is intimate and monumental and there shouldn't be a pejorative connotation attached to people who, I dunno, don't particularly want to put a traffic cone sized dildo up their bottom or whatever. But I also believe that if someone does want the traffic cone treatment then have at it, because what does it have to do with me? It's not my traffic cone). Hank is an unrepentant menace, and the hope was that Alex would burn the house down with him trapped in it at the end (it tracks - no one would miss Hank, once the video was destroyed there isn't anything to link Alex with the location etc), but Tuttle's movie is more grounded than my impotent rage revenge imaginations. Instead, Blue Film finishes on a scene which is haunting in its quotidian ambiguity.
Blue Film is in UK cinemas from September 11th.
