MQFF reviews: Shelter

Written and directed by Jonah Markowitz under the auspices of the new movie production arm of US gay cable network, Here!, Shelter (USA, 2007) is a simple yet effective story about love, family and responsibility.

It's this year's 'gay surfie' movie, following on the heels of last year's Tan Lines, which was shot in Australia by young UK director Ed Aldridge. Tan Lines was really more an exploration of small-town life, and a flawed but fascinating exploration of the Australian Gothic, than it was a surf movie; whereas in Shelter, sand and surf are far more central to the action.

When he’s not babysitting his nephew, five-year old Cody (Jackson Wurth), for his good-for-nothing sister, Jeanne (Tina Holmes), would-be artist Zach (Trevor Wright) spends his time surfing and spray-painting walls around his Californian coastal home. Already unhappy, the return of Shaun (Brad Rowe), the gay older brother of his closest friend, Gabe (Ross Thomas), unsettles Zach’s already turbulent world.

At its heart, Shelter is a gentle film about love, trust, and creating your own families. Its mawkish plot about coming out and following your heart is compensated for by the tender chemistry between the film’s two male leads, although wooden acting, expository dialogue, and awkward sex scenes are further detractions I could have lived without.

In addition, the film's editing was poor; as was the pairing of music with certain key scenes - a surfing scene and a sex scene, to name two key examples - while the cinematography is rather routine.

Perhaps the greatest flaw of Shelter is that it fails to give us a sense of the characters' internal lives. Zach is an artist, but we only ever see him in longshot or extreme close up as he creates his work; there's no believeability to such scenes, no sense of the act of creation; nor the sense of inspiration that, in theory at least, motivates him.

Likewise, Shaun is supposedly a writer, a role which is quickly established via awkward dialogue but again never fleshed out. Nonetheless, the tenderness that is expressed between Zach and Shaun gives a real sense of the pair's burgeoning romance, and lifts the film enough beyond the ordinary that I was prepared - just - to forgive its flaws.

Two and a half stars out of five