A Lower Power
Not everyone gets to watch a video of his conception — or wants to. Thibodeaux sure doesn't, but such openness is the exasperating norm in the San Francisco Bay Area household of his parents, Hank and Stormy, whose nest Thibodeaux can't wait to leave. But what this young man thinks he wants collides with the hard reality of desire in a gay coming-of-age story where the coming of age isn't about being gay.
When neither the geeky, introverted sanity of his friend Steve nor the advice of torturously heterosexual stud buddy Mas provide an easy answer, Thibodeaux sets off on his own to college, where he hangs with bubbly Emmy and seeks a sexless social life. But Thibodeaux's chastity strategies meet their match in Todd, a cocksure biker and Old English scholar who teaches Thibodeaux the power of passion.
Even as Todd unleashes Thibodeaux's appetites and old friends come back into his life in surprising ways, Thibodeaux's repressive reflexes connect sex to misfortune and humiliation, until his contorted logic drives away his friends and the mythic man of his dreams. Questions of faith and the nature of luck lurk on the edges of Thibodeaux's tunnel vision, leading to a (literally) climactic revelation that his urges aren't nearly as dangerous as denying them.
Propelled by an original score by H.P. Mendoza ("Fruit Fly" and "Colma: The Musical"), A LOWER POWER is the debut feature by San Francisco's Robert O'Geen, from an original screenplay by Tim Bland.