"Departures": Caught up in a bad romance

 

 

Departures is Pillion without the humor.

The theme song is “Bad Romance,” over and over. I would have walked out if I hadn’t paid for the ticket.

It’s as if your friend with self-esteem issues (Benji, Lloyd Eyre-Morgan) tells you in excruciating detail about the dead-end relationship that just ended. As he tells the story, you can spot every red flag that he ignored but he was so besotted that he just plowed right ahead. As relationships go, it wasn’t much of one, made up of eight marijuana-laced and boozed-up weekends in Amsterdam with an enigmatic 40-something hunk (Jake, David Tag), one a month. From the start, when your friend couldn’t tell if the guy was even gay and he brought a hooker to the apartment soon after they unpacked, it was clear that there was no way it could go on.To no one’s surprise it didn’t, and to your great relief it looked he found a way to get over it. In Greek drama that’s known as a deus ex machina, and here he’s named Kieran.

The usual disclaimer about the characters in the movie not resembling anyone living or dead ends the movie. Since Lloyd Eyre-Morgan is the screenwriter, co-director, and lead I have my doubts.

Finally, I have a bone to pick with New York Times film critic Chris Azzopardi. U.K. distributor Peccadillo Pictures touted Departures as a New York Times Critic’s Pick in a recent email and that made me think I needed to see the movie before it left the IFC Center. Azzopardi wrote, “A voice to watch, Eyre-Morgan wrote Departures and directed it with Neil Ely. The film balances a mordantly funny deconstruction of romance with the harsher realities of gay life: internalized homophobia, body dysmorphia, alcoholism, sexual abuse, parental expectations to be a “happy gay.” It’s a lot, maybe too much for some. Even the camerawork feels confrontational, with tight close-ups and high angles that subjugate Benji. Departures is still tender and winsome, with graphic-novel-style animation lightening the load, but is ultimately punishing in tone. It lives by a truth that might ring familiar for gay men particularly: Humor that cuts deep is a form of survival.”

First of all, there’s nothing funny, let alone “mordantly funny.” And it’s neither tender nor winsome, though it is definitely punishing. I felt undeservedly punished at many points of its 82 minutes that felt more like 102. “Humor that cuts deep is a form of survival”? Puh-leeze, Chris. If you can show me the humor, then we can discuss how it’s a form of survival.

After that review, Chris Azzopardi joins The New Yorker‘s Richard Brody as a critic to ignore. Read the full review here (gift link): ‘Departures’ Review: Finding Levity Amid the Pain.