Holding Trevor (2007) – a film by Rosser Goodman

Author: Dr Jacques COULARDEAU from Olliergues, France, IMDB
7 January 2013

A small film about love but though it is interesting, there are many shortcomings.

The first one is that there are a great number of scenes in very dark atmosphere, I mean lacking lighting and that creates a sombre atmosphere that is not in touch with the subject.

The second is that Trevor’s psychology is not very constructive. He seems to be going through a rejection phase. He has made a choice and that choice turns sour. So he rejects everything and everyone when he is most needed and as if he had no responsibility in what is happening around him. In other words he is an escapist.

One of his friend and, ex-boyfriend, is on drugs and Trevor is satisfied with knowing that he is on methadone and he does not want to have anything to do with him any more, and he is brutal about it. His brutality ruins the party of his female room mate and he does not seem to give a damn and he even insults this room mate when she protests.

Another shortcoming is the fact that the gay scene, and more widely the young people’s sex scene is seen as being intertwined with binge drinking and drug addiction, with irresponsibility in such states that makes you take risks and play it bareback instead of safe. It is the female room mate who falls in that trap and she gets HIV positive of course. Slightly superficial and easy and hardly pedagogical about the problem.

Trevor insists, even too much, on his father as a negative castrater and depriver and frustrater, etc, that forced him all the time to leave what he liked behind and yet this father is magically regenerated when it is needed with a sentence that is more than surprising: when you go away you don’t have to leave things behind, or something like that. And he feels justified to go away from Los Angeles to New York with his lover who might be a life affair and leave behind without one thought about it all those who were his friends, shared his life and helped him in many ways to be what he is and even to meet his new and maybe lasting love of his, the doctor taking care of his drug addicted ex-boyfriend.