Sequin is the screen name for the questing 16-year-old at the slowly awakening heart of
Sequin in a Blue Room, a 2019 Australian film only now reaching the UK.
Sequin is the screen name for the questing 16-year-old at the slowly awakening heart of
Sequin in a Blue Room, a 2019 Australian film only now reaching the UK. The graduation project of its New Zealand-born director and co-writer Samuel Van Grinsven, the 80-minute movie charts a mostly compelling path from multiply meaningless gay hook-ups through to something at least resembling a connection, if the image of shared popcorn at the end offers any indication of happier times ahead.
Sequin in a Blue Room: LGBTQ drama casts an otherworldly spell
Samuel van Grinsven’s Australian coming-of-age story is never judgmental
Film Title: Sequin in a Blue Room
Director: Conor Leach, Simon Croker, Jeremy Lindsay Taylor, Anthony Brandon Wong
Starring: Conor Leach, Simon Croker, Jeremy Lindsay Taylor, Anthony Brandon Wong
Genre: Drama
Mirroring Gregg Araki’s boldly queer 1992 classic The Living End, this stylish debut feature opens with a declarative title card: “A homosexual film by Samuel van Grinsven”.
A deftly constructed coming-of-age story that plays like a thriller, Sequin in a Blue Room concerns a 16-year-old schoolboy who, using the glittery mononym of the title, sleepwalks through school lessons, oblivious to teachers, peers and his romantic admirer, Tommy (Simon Croker).
Directed by Samuel Van Grinsven
SAMUEL VAN GRINSVEN’S wonderfully arresting debut feature is an affecting, queer, teenage coming-of-age story all rolled into one.
Set in Australia, the film is a frank and uncompromising examination of sex and social media today as seen through the eyes of 16-year-old Sequin (Conor Leach) as he explores his blossoming sexuality through anonymous, no-strings sexual encounters via an app.
His modus operandi is to never to see the same person twice, ghosting them after their hook up.
That is, until he discovers The Blue Room, a strictly no-names sex party where he meets a captivating stranger (Samuel Barrie) with whom he becomes obsessed determined to track him down in the real world.