Flowers (2023)

At this year’s East Village Queer Film Festival, a highlight was Nicholas Hansell’s highly effective short, “Flowers.” Here another winsome high-school youth, Josh (Rocco Roberts), a soccer player, is yearning to connect with an openly gay peer. How does we know the object of his desire, Eddie (Henry Leith), is openly queer? Well, he’s reading a book daily while sitting with his back against a tree. That sort makes you wonder if any heterosexual has a library card. With time ticking away — the film’s only 20 minutes long — Josh has to go to a party and kiss a girl in a bathroom without causing himself or anyone else to barf. Why? He’s trying to prove to his sports-mate (Blake Weise), a hunky homophobe, that he’s not that way. Can true boy-on-boy love win out before the end credits roll? Well, with the aid a whole lot of daisies, a happy ending blooms forth as does the sense that there’s a fruitful career ahead for the director, who’s currently working on a full-length feature. Hansell, formerly a location scout for several features, noted at the talkback after the screening that Brokeback Mountain was a major cinematic turning point in his young life. He didn’t, however, reveal if he identified more with Ennnis Del Mar or Jack Twist.