Movie Review: A Pedophile Reconnects With The One That Got Away In Morbidly Moving “Blue Film”

9/12 ForReel Score | 4/5 Stars

Elliot Tuttle’s Blue Film is entirely uninterested in making sense of itself for a straight audience. Its gritty, confrontational tone harkens back to when queerness was a topic that could only be authentically portrayed via fringe independent cinema from filmmakers like Gregg Araki or John Waters. While their films frame their subjects as soulful outcasts misunderstood by society as degenerates, Blue Film unflinchingly reckons with transgressions that are impossible to justify. We meet two haunted and broken men who reconnect under the most morbid circumstances possible and Tuttle just lets us sit in the deep sadness that lies underneath their distinct perversions.  

We meet camboy Aaron Eagle (Kieron Moore) in the midst of his solo sex work. We sit through multiple minutes of him flexing every corner of his body while talking dirty. His words are not just horny, they’re riddled with a deep contempt and self loathing augmented by his constant use of a particular slur. His customers don’t seem to mind, though. That night, he heads to the house of a masked man who has agreed to pay him in exchange for a lengthy confessional interview followed by sex. After that interview veers into a tangent about how Aaron got into sex work by performing and becoming energized by rape play, he gets angry and demands that the man take off his mask. Underneath we find Hank Grant (Reed Birney), an English teacher from Aaron’s hometown who was imprisoned for making a sexual pass on a student. Aaron (who we learn from Hank is really named Alex) was not this victim. Hank never physically molested Alex, he was just infatuated with him. He’s come to LA to find out if he can love and be attracted to the adult that Alex has become or if that attraction was fully rooted in his childlike innocence. Against his better judgement, Alex sticks around for the night and the two partake in wildly uncomfortable discourse punctuated by some of the most awkward sex ever put to screen. 

Blue Film walks a very thin line by allowing these men to find some understanding of one another. It could’ve easily drawn an offensive direct parallel between queer sex work and pedophelia.  It’s true that Alex and Hank decide to meet each other on an equal playing field for the night, but in talking to one another, they only become more baffled by each other despite a deranged attraction that lingers throughout. Aaron feels no shame about his activities or the contempt he holds for those he is forced by nature to be in community with. It is not just money for him. It is an unstoppable driving urge that stimulates him enough to drown out his inner thoughts. This drive to feel nothing pushes him deeper into this interaction. It's self flagellation. He wants to see how much he can take and even enjoy in a sick way. Hank might be trying to live a less fraught life, but does not view his attraction to children as wrong or even sexual really. You see, he’s found religion, and believes that his sickness must be some kind of divine closeness to powers we do not understand. At one point, he compares himself to an ancient Greek Pederast, implying that his mindset is not something he can change and is only psychotic from a modern standard. 

Kieron Moore and Reed Birney are both tremendous here, soulfully giving themselves over to these deeply uncomfortable characters. Moore has the harder role, breaking down the layers of a cynical and nasty person by forcing him to face elements of his twisted childhood. I never grew to like him but he did eventually force me to confront that his self hatred is rooted in a deep sense of abandonment and pain. Birney has an eerily warm and friendly demeanor that does track for an English teacher. We see how he fooled a school into hiring him. His delivery is often so soft that I had to replay his lines in my mind for the depravity to truly register. He’s never sympathetic but Tuttle and Birney do not shun him for his mere presence. We’re forced to see this man as human being and reckon with the fact that this perverse struggle haunts all too many folks of otherwise coherent mind.

I am grateful that Blue Film is an independent movie that will largely be seen by the niche in-group who will understand its intentions. Had this wound up being a prestige driven production that we’d find in the midst of awards season, it would’ve created an unbearable dialogue amongst those who would either bounce off of its heavy themes entirely or use them as fuel for their own bigotry. As is, Blue Film is a fascinating and nonjudgmental exploration of a dynamic that seems impossible to portray with anything but venom. A very bitter pill that you should swallow with extreme caution but worthwhile if you’re willing to plunge into two characters who will give you chills at the very thought of them after the credits roll.