Cicada

So many gay films are too light for me. Too many films about broken souls finding each other are too heavy. I saw Cicada online through Outfest LA and found a weighty LGBT film that is also a wryly funny and engaging love story about trauma survivors.

I don't want to give too much away, but both the main characters in this film have traumatic secrets and bucket loads of hurt as potential obstacles to companionship and love. One character hides his pain by being the joker (which feels very real to this trauma survivors), while the other tends to want to walk away from painful moments. Will they make it as a couple. Will they even make it on their own? Watch and find out.

I CAN say that the film seems more interested in hearing witness than it does in tidy epiphanies or huge declarations. I can also say that that the actors are sublime and make all of it complex AND real. I found myself alternating between laughing, wanting to yell at the characters, feeling floored by the emotional honesty and crying at the tiny moments of profound hope.