Short Film Festival: Brotherly

Two brothers -- one a teenager, the other a pre-teen -- develop a sexual relationship as a way of coping with the tumult caused by their parents' alcoholism. This short film operates essentially as a monologue expanded for the screen. A man sits at a table speaking to an unknown interlocutor (the camera positions him to speak directly into the lens and thus, implicitly, in direct address to the audience). As the man begins to tell his story, which a prefatory title card has affirmed to have been "based on a true story," the scene shifts to flashbacks of the events being narrated. Two very attractive young actors perform the roles of the teen and the tween; the camera captures their adolescent (and pre-adolescent) beauty with meticulous attention (including several shirtless sequences). As the narrator tells the story of how his relationship with his brother developed a sexualized intimacy, we can see that the adult younger brother is somewhat tormented by this intimate secret. (For a moment, I even believed that he might have murdered the elder brother, as the setting for the present-day, reflective monologue is vaguley but unmistakably "institutional" in style and affect.) Yet no such dramatic revelation manifests and the monologue concludes only with the speaker's confession that he's never told anyone this before. The film, which is very professionally executed and which contains an array of beautiful images, lacks a necessary urgency in telling the story.