CinemaSerf
5.0/10Oct 10, 2025
"Dean" (Lucas Near-Verbrugghe) gets his eyes tested - that's the title sorted out. The remainder of the film involves him receiving a message from his ex-lover "Alex" (Aaron Costa Ganis) and the two proceed to meet in the famous Joshua Tree National Park. In the fifteen years since their relationship abruptly ended, both have made new lives for themselves so auteur Tom Kirkman seems to be presenting us with a sort of gay mid-life crisis movie. The two men immediately recapture some of their past feelings for each other; plenty of sex (indeed, "Dean" is naked for quite a chunk of this) and there is plenty of probingly intimate pillow talk as they discuss past, present and future. The cinematography is skilful, not just the beautiful scenery but also in conveying quite a sense of the intimacy between the two men as they enjoy and challenge each other, now as more mature adults. The story has an inevitability about it though, and the ending was pretty poor. Not that it needed to be happy - or even sad - but this almost led me to expect that one of them was going to wake up and discover it had all just been a dream!
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