August

I was a nice portrait of lost love The hurt The missing The Lust The Affection The crazy person who you can never get over with, I mean never. Movie started of with lost lover troy coming back to L.A cause he misses his old life, and for love of his life Jonathan. And Jonathan is living with his lover Raul, who's is an immigrant. And he's married to one of Jonathan BFF Nina. Movies takes is turns and kinda of slowly in the middle, but I enjoy the end feeling of the movie. And movies gives you a feeling that love never die that easy, and its never easy to let go for the person who you long for, the person who hurt you so much still does matter. And all you left is hurt, its a feeling that we never wanna let go.

A boring movie about love affairs made for teenagers with lots of blank spaces.

Now and then along comes a film that is far more adventuresome than the PR suggests and such is the case of the very well constructed AUGUST. Written and directed by Eldar Rapaport (with Brian Sloan) this is a hard look at love relationships and how the test of time influences the success or failure of commitment. The choice of title reflects the generated heat of contentious relationships and just happens to be set in the time of the infamous Station Fire in Southern California in 2009, the largest and deadliest of the multiple wildfires, burning 160,577 acres (or 251 square miles), destroying countless homes, and killing two firefighters - a time when the Los Angeles basin was without electricity, full of smoke and ashes, and all nerves were on edge regarding the carnage.

Jonathan (Daniel Dugan) and Raul (Adrian Gonzalez) are a contented couple: though they live separately (Raul has married Jonathan's best friend Nina - Hilary Banks - for immigration purposes so they must maintain separate homes) they are devoted to each other and Raul is in the process of planning Jonathan's 30th birthday party. As an unexpected development Troy (Murray Bartlett), Jonathan's ex-boyfriend who has been living in Spain for several years after a painful breakup, arrives in Los Angeles at the height of the heat wave and moves in with his married brother Sean (Bernhard Forcher) and family. Troy calls Jonathan, arranges a meeting for coffee but is sure that Raul will enter the coffee shop to demonstrate the Jonathan is in a committed relationship. But old flames simmer and soon Troy is convincing the not unwilling Jonathan to rekindle their old passion, a liaison that becomes apparent to Raul. At Jonathan's 30th birthday party Nina and her chef boyfriend Nick (Mike Vaughn) invite Troy and Troy's good friend Devon (Brad Standley), and by the end of the evening the group hits the bars to smoke pot and drink. Raul then invites Troy to their home to join Jonathan and him in a physical liaison that results in Troy's 'wakeup call' about commitment as he sees the degree of passion between Raul and Jonathan: Troy as an outsider steps away and eventually returns to Spain - but we never know what will occur next.

AUGUST is blessed with a very fine cast of excellent actors who are able to pull off the intimacy of the story with decorum. There are some problems with the film: the director loses the audience with what feels like inadvertent non-linear storyline that disrupts the flow of the story, and the editor of the film David Au has cut and spliced the film in a disturbing and distracting manner. The musical score by Yuval Ron is heated Middle Eastern in flavor and at times covers the dialogue. But the story works in large part because of the exceptional acting and appeal of Murray Bartlett, Daniel Dugan, and Adrian Gonzalez. As the PR states, ' It is an irresistible gay romantic drama!

Grady Harp

The moment the producer of this film introduced this film is a full length feature version of the short 'Postmortem', I was super excited because I had no idea. That had been one of my most favorite shorts and for some reason had stuck with me. I was super excited to watch a feature version and when I saw that 2 of the principal characters were retained from the short, it was all the more better, The actors just suited the part so well in the short that I would have hated to see someone else play those parts. I would strongly recommend the short also to people to watch it.

Jonathan and Raul are a very happy couple of few years. They practically live together though Jonathan still has his apartment. Raul is married to Jonathan's best friend so that once the immigration goes through, they can have Raul stay in the country so that they both can live happily. Enter Troy from Spain who is planning to move back to LA. Troy and Jonathan were ex-lovers and apparently Troy broke Jonathan's heart and left for SPain. It took a long time for Jonathan to get over him. Troy is trouble and naughty. We can see that all he wants is Jonathan back. Jonathan is also not completely over Troy and they have a sexual tension between them. They meet for coffee after Troy comes back but something takes Jonathan back to Troy's house and after initial reluctance on their second meeting, they end up sleeping. Raul suspects something but doesn't say much. He expects a mature man like Jonathan should know what he is doing. This goes on for a while. Jonathan doesn't really know whom he really wants, Troy trying to get back to Jonathan and Raul's dilemma when he knows and pretends to ignore what is going on. Finally on Jonathan's 30th birthday, Raul encourages the 3 of them to get in a 3way because they are drunk and stoned but Raul knows exactly what he is doing. He wants to see the extent of their passion. This incident outs some sense in Troy's head. He decides to move back to Spain leaving the 2 men to deal with each other on their own.

The director and editor of the film have very excellently used time jumps and creatively edited the film. The scenes going between past and future add a different feel to the film. We have all seen many love triangle gay movies but this one is handled very differently. Raul's character is the most complicated because he is going through various emotions to decide what o do with jonathan, try to make him understand. He had to speak a lot with his eyes and I must say he did an excellent job. Jonathan and Troy acted very very well too. here is something about Jonathan that makes him very charismatic, at least for me. The film shows how at various points in our life we always keep looking for true love, have to make some very tough decisions to get through the phases in our life and how compassion and passion can make us stop looking at things in a more logical way. Special mention to the background music. It was mostly middle eastern which for some reason fitted so well with the theme and the mood of the film. It was excellent. I wish I could get my hands on the music of the film. I really really loved this film. It is hard to describe in words but the way some of Jonathan's actions are showed are interesting because he thinks what he is doing is OK but from Raul's point of view, he is trying to show that he still has a thing for Troy and as we all know that Troy is trouble.

I strongly recommend this film. An excellent example of how direction and editing can do wonders to a film. I so wish our US based directors who make all kinds of bad film in the name of gay cinema can learn something from this.

In the world of never ending clichés and re writes of similar scripts and screenplays with only character changes, 'August' is a true summer day. It felt like the first day of summer holidays after a year long of school.

It's amalgamation of east and west is brilliant. The world view director holds and the complexity of modern relationship in the time of economic recession is very thoughtful. It's a story for all of us, haven't we all wanted something we lost or left behind? I have never seen more synchronized screen play, visual treatment and music. All come together to progress the story. 'Synchronicity'- If you have seen the movie, you will understand why I used this word here! For those who have watched it, I can see you smiling! Yes Eldar! It is all about Synchronicity and your movie is one of the greatest I have seen! Hope you do more movies and have a great future.