In The Lost Coast – a new
film on DVD that may prompt some curdled nostalgia for the good old days of
Halloween blowouts in the Castro -- a couple of guys, who know each other only
because of their close ties to a third fellow, embark on some rather cruel
drunken banter at a party neither is enjoying.
“What’s the difference between a
gay guy and a straight guy?”
“I give up.”
“Six beers – does it bug you
everyone thinking that you’re gay?”
“Does it bug you that nobody likes
you?’
“Zing! I’m glad I didn’t know you
fuckers in high school, because that would have fucked me up good.”
“Tell me how does it feel being
Mark’s bitch?”
“Sorry, I forgot you were his
original bitch, unless there’s some guy in junior high I don’t know about.”
“If anything, Mark was my bitch. “
“I heard that you did each other,
which actually would mean that you were each other’s bitches, if you want to
get into the semiology of being someone’s bitch.”
Gabriel Fleming’s debut feature
makes good use of our town to tell the story of four friends confronting
desire, danger and heartbreak on a classic Halloween night in San Francisco. As
the party in the Castro careens along Upper Market Street, Mark (the perky
Lucas Alifano spends the entire film in a bone-chilling climate in Jockey
shorts and a trench-coat) confronts unresolved feelings for his
straight-identified high school buddy, Jasper (Ian Scott McGregor). Tagging
along are a close female friend (Lindsay Bonner) and an annoying bumpkin pal
(Chris Yule).
The story is cleverly framed in a
long e-male from Jasper to his out-of-town girlfriend: we learn the boys had an
unacknowledged but painful encounter on a camping trip to the Northern
Californian coast. On a fog-shrouded night in search of an elusive private
party, the friends stumble through a ghostly Golden Gate Park, tripping over a
dead body and their own conflicted feelings.
Nils Kenaston’s cinematography
provides an acid trip like appreciation for the great outdoors, both in North
Country and the park.
Fleming has a short story writer’s
eye for the telling detail, turn of phrase and embarrassing caught out moments
that enrich the kind of tale normally only attempted in a short film.
Leads Alifano and McGregor deftly
revive their characters’ old pattern for relating, a schoolboy brand of rough
housing that was once an effective shield to disguise the degree of Mark’s
desire and enable Jasper’s denial. In the end one old friend stares out at the
ocean reflecting sadly, “We never kissed.”
Features include director &
cast commentary and deleted scenes with commentary.