Two classmates - one smart and openly gay and the other a standout on the school's swim team -- grow as friends and discover their attraction to each other.
Watercolors (2008)
Imdb user:
This is one of those rare movies that stays with me for hours or days after, a “must see” that I know after only one viewing that I will return to again and again.
On the whole it is simply sensational, in plot, acting, direction etc. It is beautifully photographed (including some incredible underwater scenes).
The title puzzled me a bit until I realized it captured the key interest of both of the main characters: Danny, the artist, and Carter, the swimmer (“water” colors, get it?).
Trailer:
Occasionally one has to suspend disbelief but such moments are far outweighed by the overall impact. Example: the scene where it rains inside the living room, but the effect of that rain is to give the scene a surreal or magical quality that helps us feel what the characters themselves are feeling.
The ending is ambiguous rather than your standard happy ending but strangely “right”.
In places the sound was a bit odd, e.g. a scene where Carter’s skate board almost drowns out the conversation, and it was hard to hear the first few words of the scene where Danny’s mom is talking to him on a bench at the beach in long shot (as soon as we came in close the sound returns to normal…I think this is a post-production error). But such fleeting flaws were not enough for me to reduce my score on the movie overall.
It’s awards are well earned and this movie should be a ‘must see’ for anyone with an interest in gay cinema.
