Some guys escape to the city to forget where they came from. In Leather (2013), Andrew is forced to drive back into the woods, straight into his dead father's house, a bearded childhood friend and a boyfriend who is slowly falling apart. Nobody is really the villain here, but someone is definitely going home alone.
Leather (2013): Gay Love, Grief and One Very Patient Mountain Man
Leather (2013) is one of those quiet little films that sound simple when you describe the plot, and then you suddenly realize it crawled under your skin while you were watching guys make coffee and fix a roof. It is a story about a dead father, a city boyfriend, a bearded mountain man and one gay kid who never really made peace with where he comes from. And yes, there is also a rabbit. Of course there is.
A city boy, a dead father and a road into the woods
We start with Andrew, a New York grad student who gets the classic phone call: his estranged father Walter is dead up in the Catskills. Andrew did not exactly leave home with a hug and a casserole. He ran away from a man who called him names, mocked his body and his queerness, and made sure every dinner felt like a small emotional accident.
Andrew goes back with Kyle, his boyfriend, who looks like he got lost on the way to a fashion shoot and somehow ended up in a pickup truck with a bunny in a cage. Kyle is anxious, sharp, funny and a little too attached to that rabbit. You can feel from the first scenes that this relationship is already tired. They love each other, sure, but it is the kind of love that comes with a lot of sighing.
Enter Birch, the bearded memory
When they arrive at Walter’s house, it is not empty. It is occupied by Birch, Andrew’s childhood friend who never left the mountains. Birch stayed, moved in with Walter, learned carpentry, leather work, gardening and all those things that Instagram calls a lifestyle and he just calls Tuesday.
Birch is all beard, flannel and calm hands. He knows every tree around the house, he knows the dog Copper, he knows how Walter spent his last years. In his version Walter is not just the yelling father from Andrew’s memories. He is also a man who changed a little, softened, sang songs and built church pews with Birch. And already you feel that Andrew is going to have to rewrite his own history, which is much harder than cleaning out a closet.
Three men, one cabin, and a lot of old feelings
The dynamic sets up fast: Kyle is the city boy on the edge of a meltdown, Birch is the grounded outsider, and Andrew is stuck between them, juggling grief, guilt and attraction. Kyle looks at Birch and sees a suspicious hick who maybe manipulated a lonely old man for a house. Andrew looks at Birch and sees the boy he used to run around with in these woods, now grown into a quiet, competent man who seems strangely comfortable in his own skin.
There is a lot of cooking, fixing, walking in the forest, talking about Walter, talking around feelings. The film takes its time, and sometimes it feels like nothing is happening. But under all that chopping and cleaning, you can sense the tension shifting. Andrew starts defending Birch. Birch starts reading Andrew better than Kyle ever did. Kyle starts panicking, both about work problems in the city and about losing Andrew to something he cannot compete with: a version of Andrew that is not performing for anyone.
Sex, labels and the messiness in between
At some point, Andrew and Birch stop pretending they are just old friends catching up. There is a night in the woods, a fire, a tent and all that unspoken stuff finally crosses the line. The film keeps it awkward and human. Nobody gets a perfect romantic speech, nobody turns into a villain. It is just two men who have been circling around the same feeling since they were kids.
What I like is how Birch talks about it. He is not interested in a political identity war. He basically says “I am gay for you” and leaves it at that. No big declaration, no crisis, just an honest sentence. It is almost annoyingly healthy compared to the way Andrew twists himself into pretzels to justify everything he does.
Kyle, of course, is the one who gets hurt the most. He is far from perfect, but the film does not torture him for sport. He is scared, lonely and hanging onto a career that is already falling apart. When he loses the rabbit, he completely breaks down, and it is both ridiculous and sad. You suddenly see that he is just as fragile as Andrew, only with better styling.
Fathers, puppets and the stories we tell ourselves
There is also May, a local therapist who works with puppets in a little theater that Birch built for her. She makes Andrew re-enact his coming out to Walter using dolls, and that scene hurts more than any shouting match could. In ten minutes of puppet therapy you see exactly why Andrew ran away and why he is so desperate to hold on to the idea that his father never changed. If Walter softened at the end, if he became a better man with Birch, then Andrew has to admit he was not there to see it. That is a heavy thing to swallow.
Through May and Birch we get a different angle: maybe people are not just the worst thing they ever did. Maybe Walter was both cruel and scared and then later a little kinder. The film never completely redeems him, and it should not, but it lets the story be more complicated than one bad memory.
Is Leather a masterpiece? No. Is it worth your quiet evening? Yes.
Leather is low budget, sometimes stiff and definitely not the most polished queer film out there. Some scenes drag, some lines land a bit flat, and the love triangle resolves a little too gently to be fully convincing. But there is a warmth to it, and a kind of emotional honesty that is hard to fake.
If you like queer stories in this gay film where people actually talk, cook and work through their stuff instead of throwing drinks in each other’s faces, this is one of those slow, wood-smelling films that stay with you. It is about how hard it is to leave home, how much harder it is to come back, and how sometimes the person you are looking for is the same one who used to climb trees with you when you were ten.
Also, just so you are prepared: yes, there is cheating, yes, there is a bearded man with a dog, and yes, you might find yourself having feelings about a pair of handmade sandals. Do with that information what you will.
