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Candid Love

Country: USA, Language: English, 55 mins

Watch these Films | Gay | Documentary | 2015

Director: Kurtz Frausun

CGiii Comment

Damned if you do, damned if you don't...that's the conundrum that many documentarians have to face.

Frausun seems to have been caught between a rock and a very, very hard place...the evolving film demands an appearance by himself...to justify what in God's name is going on...why film this on-screen, demon-winning annihilation?

When reviewing a documentary, it's not only the subject matter that's in the frame...the filmmaker has to be held to account.

What is a documentary?

"A film or television or radio programme that provides a factual report on a particular subject."

The best documentaries tend to be informative, harrowing, enlightening, revelatory - even, exploitative...Candid Love is torture, for everyone involved, including the audience.

Still, this is a documentary within the definition.

Jon and Daniel's lives and relationship are in - what seems to be - an irreversible meltdown, like limpets on an eroding rock - in a storm - they relentlessly cling on. A most futile endeavour.

This 'meltdown' is evidenced by their DIY footage and aided by Frausun - call it intervention, call it interference?!?! But...it is invention.

Documentarians have been a little too complacent for too long - they make a film, they expect it to be seen, perhaps a few Q&As at film festivals...the end.

How about: all filmmakers should be held to account for their produce - especially if it is publicly funded (as many are). Surely, that would make things a little more interesting.

What Frausun has succeeded in doing is producing a finely photographed film for a niche market - there is a market for this brand of nihilism, YouTube is full of it. But - more importantly - he has stepped over and blurred documentary lines...big questions are asked - all on a minuscule budget...now, that's filmmaking - whether you like the film or not.

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The(ir) Blurb...

Kurtz Frausun captures a gay couple's relationship struggles and the death of a parent, set in the backdrop of their Plano, TX apartment during a snow storm, in the new documentary, "Candid Love." Jon and Daniel have been working on building a life together after both have experienced recent difficulties. But the news of Daniel's father having an aneurysm sends the already strained relationship into a panic-mode when he must disappear to Wisconsin to be by his dad's side. Sadly, by the time he arrives, it's too late. His father has fallen into a coma and the family decides to end treatment. Jon remains in Dallas, trying to keep the home going and being a rock for Daniel to rely upon, their phone calls to one another being a source of both hope and heartache. But with Daniel's history of alcoholism and depression, a failed marriage to a woman who was the "love of his life" overshadowing his mental health, and Jon's bi-polar fluctuations, the strain becomes...