Benjamin: “It’s about my inability to love, but I’m fine now.”

(image via IMDb)

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In Simon Amstell’s affecting, bittersweet comedy, a rising young filmmaker is thrown into emotional turmoil by a burgeoning romance and the upcoming premiere of his second feature.
(synopsis via IMDb)

If you are to believe countless representations of falling love, all it takes is openness, a romantically fairy, god or best friend, and two willing soulds and hey presto! True love blooms.

But we all know that in the real world, where love doesn’t always live up to the PR, things rarely work out so seamlessly or trouble-free.

Someone who could speak to that with great conviction is Benjamin (Colin Morgan), the titular star of, you guessed it, the film Benjamin, written and directed by Steven Amstell whose life and professional career when, quite unexpectedly, he falls head over heels in love with a French music student Noah (Phénix Brossard) which, as The Guardian, which calls the film a “funny, charming and overpoweringly personal comedy”, observes causes Benjamin to “dimly … register that caring for someone other than himself might be the key to happiness after all.”

Difficult, messy and awkward it most certainly is but the film also celebrates that if you manage to wade successfully through all those minefields, that the rewards might be utterly beyond anything you imagine.

Benjamin is screening on Sunday 22 September in Sydney, Australia as part of Queer Screen Film Fest 2019.

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