Testosterone: Volume Four

By: Amos Lassen

"TESTOSTERONE: Volume Four"

Five Short Gay Films

Amos Lassen

TLA Releasing once again brings us a collection of gay short films and they keep getting better and better. This collection includes:

"THE HANDYMAN" from director JC Calciano in which a single, gay man finds creative ways to have a hunky repairman continue to have to come back to his house to fix things. It all begins with a clogged drain that causes the young gay man to call in a handyman. To his surprise, the handyman is quite good looking which brings about a shirtless fantasy daydream in the kitchen. As he becomes more obsessed, he schemes to sabotage some household appliances in order to get the handyman to come back for more work (and perhaps more fantasy). You will probably have fantasies of your own after watching this.

Robert Jones Torres's "WRITHING" is made up of ethereal realism and dance. It follows a young man facing the probability of an HIV+ diagnosis.

"FACES" directed by Ben Emphey, Ryan meets Nathan and they fall in love during their first date. It's only later, as their relationship progresses, that Ryan starts to wonder if his boyfriend is who he thought he was and is he, himself, who he thought he was. They experience joy and pain together, trying to overcome the painful fear of whether or not if it is possible to really know another person.

From Israel comes Ori Aharon's "RUBBER DOLPHIN", a gay love story set in a one-bedroom apartment in Tel Aviv. They meet, they have sex, they fall in love. The film's emotional impact is intense Within a short period of time we go from meeting to love between two twentysomething men. Once sexual tension has been released, the short film looks at masculinity, homosexuality, body image, sexual positions, and love.

Neal Mulani's "THE FISH TANK" is about a college student who goes to his first hookup with a mysterious older man and he must decide whether his anxieties point to a darker truth about his host for the night. Tristan McIntyre arrives for an online hookup and he is already nervous. It is his first time with a man every little thing seems to frighten him a little more. It feeds into his paranoia and the difficulty of separating how his sexuality may not be wrong but maybe this other guy's is. We sense a creeping horror built in large part from what Noah takes in with him, but never able to be dismissed as simply that.