Dragonfly Boy (2021)
7/10
A Likeable film ..with temptations to fast forward.
14 November 2021
Warning: Spoilers
A nice film about the acceptance of orientation and of coming out. I tried to really like it more and was tempted to fast forward. This film is probably most interesting to younger adults, perhaps under 35yrs. The cinematography does have an air of a school project and the actors were good but do appear not very experienced. If you can overlook some of the soliloquize philosophical-like dialogue about one's orientation, the film is quite good. There are a lot of these cliche conversations to tempt one to fast forward. Do not read below, I may have over analyzed it.

The storyline revolves around a young man Graham, 21yr old, and his struggles of acceptance of being gay and of coming out. He has several conversations with one particular friend, Dahlia. The conversations to me sounded just so scripted. There is a beach scene where each of them appear to be delivering a philosophical dissertation on being one's self and acceptance of yourself without mentioning the word gay. The word gay isn't spoken until the film climaxes at the point where he does come out to Dahlia. On reflection I can see that this was most likely intentional by the director given the subject matter of the main character. Even after this scene Graham still does not use the word gay when he breaks up with girl friend. Instead he says, .. I like men the way I'm suppose to like women. Probably the best line of the film. Another quirky small story line is how is it he falls for the Filipino Asian, Connor. He met Connor only twice. Connor get kicked out of the family for his orientation and goes to Graham for solace. Given the story location of Maine, I looked it up to be 94% white and 1% Asian, the chances of these two meeting in a small town seem so unlikely. Is this the attempt of diversity for the film for 2021. In the film Alice his room mate says she is his best friend in a heated conversation yet there is hardly any dialogue between them. One last quirk is why does Graham have no male friends. Is this somewhat a stereotype of a young gay man. The ending is cheesy, perhaps this is a good afterschool special of a film.
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