Jess & James

Oh, will someone please spare us from any more of these predictable road movies! This one sees the slightly hedonistic "Jess' (Martin Karich) have a one hour stand with the overly mothered "James" (Nicolás Romeo). That ought to have been it - a short film about an hook up, but no - we have to have a road trip around Argentina where they encounter the third wheel for their wagon - "Tomás" (Federico Fontán) before ending up at the home of the former man's brother. The narrative meanders as if it were a country lane with some beautiful photography of the Pampas scenery, the odd snog in an idyllic place and the usual menage-à-trois scenarios as the boys come to what was, for me anyway, an inevitable realisation. It is a nice film to watch - the light is brilliant at times, but the rest of it is really nothing new. The acting talent is easy enough on the eye but the story takes 90 minutes to take us nowhere.

The script is really rubbish. Not a very believable story. Performances are quite weak as well. Just pretty faces can't make a movie. Not worthy!

This has all the ingedients of a genuine roadmovie, even with a decent Werdegang in the main characters. Two gay guys (one openly, one closeted) hook up for a sex-date, find out that they like eachother and decide to escape their suffocating home environments by going on a (short) trip through the countryside. They have fun, bicker, make love, fight, meet weird people, hook up with a third party, and at last (as some sort of ultimate goal for their trip) find the long lost brother of one of them.

Jess is closeted, anxious and defiant, while James is caring and longs for Jess's love. It's only at the end of the movie that Jess dares to openly aknowledge his love for James. The adventures along the road are actually very small and uneventful, no heavy problems or complicated twists and turns, it's as if the makers deliberately wanted the story to evolve in it's own natural course. So the (simple but no less important) moral in the end also comes as a matter-of-course: to take the leap to adulthood and self-realization, you have to follow your heart.

Martín Karich and Nicolás Romeo play both main characters very convincing and sure are sexy! Talking about sex: for a movie in which gay sex plays such a pivotal role, it's all a bit prudish. Apart from a surprisingly rough sex-scene at the very beginning of the movie where some ample skin is shown, all other sensuous scenes are just suggestive and filmed very discreetly.

I was enthralled with "Jess and James". The acting is excellent and the story beautifully told . And the cinematography is memorable for its use of Argentina's countryside, sky and clouds as a backdrop for a tastefully told love story.

Some smouldering passion underlies Jess & James a couple of young Argentine gay 20 somethings who pick each other up in a Buenos Aires park and have one of the most intense sexual scenes I've seen on film and that includes porn.

Both guys, Martin Karich and Nicolas Romero, are good looking as all get out and the two set off on a road trip to find James's brother Tomas who they think will be at least tolerant of them.

Some beautiful location photography of rural Argentina, the legendary Pampas plains where the guys travel on the road trip is the second best feature of Jess & James. The rest is the intensity of Karich and Romero.

A must for a gay film festival.