Early on in “Blue Film,” Aaron Eagle (Kieron Moore), a young Los Angeles camboy, is explaining to a high-paying client ($50,000 for the night, to be exact) exactly how he became entangled in the world of online sex work.
He tells a story about two guys (one white, one Asian, although Aaron uses a racial slur to describe the second man – all part of his degradation dom act) who took him home one night. One of those men asked Aaron to “rape” him – that is, to roleplay a rape fantasy with him. This request unlocked something inside of Aaron.
“Everything’s fake,” he tells his much older client proudly, like he’s unlocked some grand secret the rest of us aren’t privy to. The boundaries between us – social norms, polite society – are all constructed, he says. Nothing matters.
That’s a funny thing to say to a client who is wearing a ski mask and refuses to tell Aaron his name. It’s a funny thing for Aaron (not his real name, by the way) to say at all, really. For all of Aaron’s talk about stripping away the boundaries between people, he – a young man who mostly interacts with clients through a camera screen – is fundamentally uninterested in that idea. But “Blue Film” itself is all about crossing the line and making its audience sit in the discomfort of dissolution – deconstructing barriers for the sole purpose of making you realize why they existed in the first place.
Written and directed by Elliot Tuttle, “Blue Film” was causing controversy long before its theatrical release, and it’s understandable why. It turns out, Aaron’s anonymous client is Hank (Reed Birney), Aaron’s middle school teacher who was arrested for trying to sexually assault one of his students. Aaron was in high school at the time of the incident, but Hank has tracked Aaron down, allegedly with the intent of trying to “fix” him – of figuring out why he does this for a living. Why, you ask? Because Aaron, Hank says, is the love of his life. He’s been in “love” with him since Aaron was in middle school.
I don’t expect “Blue Film” to go over easily with audiences. It’s certainly a punishing watch, difficult to stomach in more ways than one. With it, though, Tuttle has achieved true provocation, forcing the audience to sit in the discomfort of watching a pedophile use every trick in the book to justify his returned presence into Aaron’s life – forcing us to watch the boundaries between these two people dissolve until only unspeakable anger remains. While the dialogue can be a little stilted, the performances are riveting – one too vulnerable and one too deluded to stomach.
Hank’s return into Aaron’s (real name, Alex) life is predicated on the idea that he’s upset with its trajectory. He is constantly saying things like, “You were a good kid,” the phrase tinged with a hint of romanticism that makes the stomach turn. In Hank’s mind, he’s only here to try and help Aaron be honest – because who he sees on Aaron’s webcam is not the kid he remembers.
Except, that’s not really it, is it? To me, it seems clear that Hank – whom Birney plays with unnerving lightness – is worried his perversion messed Aaron up. But not worried enough to not attempt to have sex with him.
“Blue Film” makes attempts to humanize Hank, diving into his own harrowing history with abuse and having him point out multiple times that he let the child who he was planning to rape get away, out of some crisis of conscious. These moments, and Hank’s mild manner, endear Hank to Aaron, but the movie and the audience are hyper aware of the ways in which Hank constantly contradicts himself, the ways in which his efforts to “help” are enormously damaging and predatory. “This one had a particular hold on me,” he says about his victim, a soft smile playing across his face like he’s remembering a past love, not an 11-year-old child. Moments later, he reprimands Aaron for laughing at his story. “How can you be so cavalier about this?”
The film draws on your unease throughout, a path of dread leading to the moment where you know that Aaron – Alex – will inevitably break. Home videos of a young child are used as a thematic device throughout “Blue Film.” While those specific moments don’t necessarily add anything to the discomfort you’re already living in, there is one usage of the home video aesthetic during a sex scene in which, after Hank shaves all the hair off of Aaron’s body, he asks him to pretend to be a child. In that scene, the aesthetic suddenly switches from home movie back to the world of the film. The switch in tone that it accompanies is one of the most harrowing things you’ll see all year.
Maybe that’s where “Blue Film” falls short for me – I felt provoked, certainly, but that provocation leads to a very harrowing place, and not much more. It’s well made, and certainly well acted. Moore is excellent as he slowly reverts from performative aggro boy to scared kid – there is a shot that has stayed with me, one that hammers home just how young he is, of him with his arms wrapped around his knees, chin tucked into his chest as he says, “You don’t want to f*ck me?” Birney is superb at playing a pedophile who has convinced himself that only he can save a young man from a life of sexual deviancy. But all he really does is force Aaron back into a hole that he didn’t really remember was inside of him.
Throughout the film, Hank constantly tells Aaron he just wants him to be “honest.” One of the most interesting things about “Blue Film” is how it understands that word – sometimes, honesty, however cathartic it might feel in the moment, is more harmful than we could ever imagine. “Blue Film” ends with one final upsetting reveal, the one that pushes this cursed interaction to its logical, traumatic end. It’s audacious, that’s for certain – but the sadness is almost impossible to stomach.
“Blue Film” opens at the Tara Theatre on May 22.
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