Three Months

9/8/2022

Three Months is such a sweet, touching little film that it makes me wish the script didn’t force the protagonist, Caleb, to ride around solo on a tandem bike. Sure, Caleb has an emotional attachment to the thing (it belonged to his dead father), it comes in handy to the plot now and then (in a ‘hey, I have an extra seat in case you need a lift’, or ‘oops sorry, there’s three of us and only two seats’ sort of way), and it doesn’t even look like it’s that much harder than riding a normal bike — but still, the whole idea smacks of a desperate cry for attention; writer/director Jared Frieder’s way of making sure we know how quirky his main character is supposed to be. A movie can be, and this one otherwise is, original and spontaneous without making its main character look dumb or crazy, ne

9/5/2023

I was watching this for ages before I cottoned on that Viveik Kalra was the young lad from the Springsteen-themed "Blinded by the Light" (2019). In this, he plays the slow-burning love interest for "Caleb" (Troye Sivan). This latter man had a one night stand that exposed him, inadvertently, to an HIV risk that requires him to spend the next three months behaving himself and waiting for a series of test results to, hopefully, give him the all-clear. His doctor advises that he attend a group therapy session and that's where he meets the shy "Estha" and... This starts off quite strongly and it's easy to see why Sivan is successful as an "influencer" - he has charisma and personality which he brings, quite cheekily, to this drama. The story quickly runs out of steam though, and despite some ch