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‘Straight Up’ asks: is it okay for a gay man to hate gay sex?

Directly

Welcome to Screen Gems, our weekend of diving into adjacent queer and queer past titles worth watching or revisiting.

The fiery: straight ahead

We fell in love with this indie comedy in 2019 when we saw it on the festival circuit. It would seem that many of our readers would agree that the film also won the Queerty Award for Best Independent Film.

Straight Up follows Todd, (writer / director James Sweeney) a gay man in his twenties who is completely afraid of gay sex and suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder. His solution? Date a woman. When he meets Rory (Katie Findlay), a lonely and struggling actress, the two immediately fall in love. They agree to start a romantic relationship with a strict rule: never have sex. Todd’s friends think his relationship with Rory is a disgusting farce, but does a good relationship really need some sexual chemistry?

Directly addresses the themes of mental illness, loneliness and the stigma surrounding gay sex. It also features great laughs, sharp dialogues and candid observations on the life of an artist. Beneath the surface, Directly offers a meditation on isolation and how the desire for affection far outweighs the need for sex. Although Sweeney writes, directs, and stars, the film never feels like a vanity project. On the contrary, it feels like a real artist trying to explore his own demons with naked honesty on screen.

Funny, personal, and bittersweet, we would recommend Straight Up to anyone who’s ever felt frustrated with sex, dating, or both (and we know that includes most of you). What the film ultimately says about its main characters is as elusive as it is intriguing.

Streams on Netflix, Amazon, YouTube, and iTunes.

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