(2013, 101 min)
Country: U.S.
Director: Patrick McGuinn
Studio: Breaking Glass Pictures
Language: English
SYNOPSIS: A truly original comedy of "city meets country," shot with a spot-on 1970s aesthetic and featuring a gorgeous folk soundtrack, Leather is an entertaining and erotically-charged tale of modern gay urbanites forced to adjust to country living.
When New Yorker Andrew (Andrew Glaszek) hears that his estranged father has died, he travels with his boyfriend Kyle (Jeremy Neal) to the cabin in the Catskill Mountains where his father spent his final years. Upon arrival, Andrew is shocked to find his childhood friend, Birch, is living in the cabin and spent the last few years being mentored by Walter. Birch spends his days fishing, practicing carpentry and making items from leather. Though Birch embraces a peaceful lifestyle free of modern technology, his presence leaves Andrew with conflicting emotions - regret, jealousy, suspicion and possibly desire.
REVIEW:
Producer-director Patrick McGuinn’s (Sun Kissed, Eulogy for a Vampire) latest film is this tender, sexy and unconventional romance.
Upon news of the death of his estranged father, blond twenty-something Andrew (Andrew Glaszek), with his boyfriend Kyle in tow, travels from New York City to a cottage in the remote wooded area of the Catskill Mountains - where his father lived and where Andrew was raised.
There he meets the bearded Birch (Chris Graham), Andrew’s childhood friend who had lived with Andrew’s father in a simple 19th-century style. Meeting Birch proves to be unsettling as he seems to be the son his father always wanted – someone he could fish and hunt with, someone who could work with one’s hands.
As they spend time together, dynamics begin to shift and Andrew’s initial distrust of Birch morphs into physical interest and empathy - while young Kyle (a hilariously animated Jeremy Neal in a scene-stealing role as the pouty, queeny boyfriend) becomes increasingly threatened.
Leather is a fascinating, decisively unusual character study of three men, devoid of distractions, as they navigate an unsettling world of resentment, anger, emotions and rising sexuality
-- Raymond Murray, TLA Video (http://www.tlavideo.com)
