SEQUIN IN A BLUE ROOM
Australia, 2019, 80 minutes, Colour.
Connor Leech, Jeremy Lindsay Taylor, Anthony Brandon Wong, Ed Wightman, Samuel Barry, Simon Croker, Patrick Cullen.
Directed by Samuel Van Grinsven.
In fact, with the title, this film declares that it is a “Homosexual Film”. Some of it is based on the experiences and imagination of the co-writer and director.
At the centre of the film is a 16-year-old, Sequin, still at school, with some school sequences, especially with the female teacher talking about classics which describe relationships, such as Heathcliff and Wuthering Heights. However, Sequin spends most of the class time on his mobile phone, various sites, homosexual links, especially the Blue Room.
Sequin also lives at home with his father, single father, trying to relate to his son, affirming him, but eventually exasperated by his staying out at all hours, unwilling to have conversations with him, finally angrily ousting him from the house.
Sequin is preoccupied with gay life and encounters. In fact, he makes himself available to a number of clients, a young sex worker in the making, knowledgeable, standing up to others, but with quite an amount of inner insecurity. He gets information about a gay club, the Blue Room, and ventures there, making contact with one of his clients, meeting other men who are attracted to him, but his attention given to another man, Edward, with whom is fascinated and later fantasises.
There is also a boy in his class, Tommy, who makes an advance, their meeting in the toilets Sequin seeming superior but, in conversation, agreeing to go out with Tommy to see a movie.
However, he is preoccupied with his images of Edward, makes enquiries and tracks him down, and the harsh reality of Edward’s life and relationships not corresponding with Sequin’s fantasies.
At one stage, Sequin is bashed, takes refuge in a Drag Queen club, especially looked after by the sympathetic Drag Queen, Virginia, a good listener, very good with advice, urging Sequin to make contact with his father.
This is a young man’s story, a story of precocious sexual behaviour, still leaving the uncertainties as to what the future holds for Sequin. After all, in the film he is only 16, his life before him.
