MQFF REVIEW: Pit Stop (2013, Dir. Yen Tan)

Now is as good a time as any to admit that I've grown weary of the woe-is-me homos that litter queer cinema. I don't want to dismiss the experience or anything like that, it's just that I've grown beyond it myself and I'd like to think the community has as well.

That's probably a self-centred take on the queer experience nowadays. And, I'll admit, from the middle of my inner-city, latte sipping, relatively homophobia-free lifestyle, it's super easy to be self-centred.

The view is no doubt very different in small town Texas, the setting for Yen Tan's Pit Stop. There, sexual secrets still weigh heavy and hook-ups, when they can be arranged, are stuffed into shabby roadside motel rooms. At least that's how it goes for Gabe (Bill Heck), Ernesto (Marcus DeAnda) and Luis (Alfredo Maduro).

All three men, as well as just about every other person in the film, including Gabe's ex-wife, Shannon (Amy Seimetz), is in some stage of dealing with a broken or breaking relationship. Everyone is wounded. Everyone is healing. Everyone is moping around licking their broken hearts.

Distance is the overwhelming preoccupation of Tan and his co-writer David Lowery (who was responsible for last year's interesting but similarly meandering Ain't Them Bodies Saints). The act of keeping people physically close but emotionally distant is repeated over and over. Tan treats us to scene after scene of Gabe and Ernesto and Shannon and Luis in their respective silos feeling sorry for themselves. It is an interesting comment on modern relationships and a brave narrative approach, which Tan could have pulled it off with a little more depth to his characters. Unfortunately, characterisation is restricted to different shades of despondent, so there's little in the way of emotional colour or narrative momentum and conceit gets wearing relatively quickly.

On a side note, to Tan's credit, Shannon isn't left to dangle in the narrative void like the women in so many homos-with-issues features. She's given some flesh and the breakdown of her relationship with Gabe still reverberates through the film despite happening well before the opening credits.

While I respect Tan's approach, and even recognise its relevance outside Pit Stop's removed setting, I still struggle with the idea that this blanket loneliness is quite as engulfing as modern queer cinema (especially modern American indie queer cinema) would have us believe. Tan does well to come at a familiar refrain from a different angle but, enough already. Diversify.

★★☆

Trailer:

Pit Stop screened as part of the 2014 Melbourne Queer Film Festival.