Directed by James Bird
Country: USA
“Honeyglue”, a lugubrious romance written and directed by James Bird, got trapped in its own melodramatic tones and couldn’t free itself from that sticky viscosity.
Fastidiously overstaged, the film never manages to convince and takes a steep decline after just a few minutes.
Morgan (Adriana Mather) and Jordan (Zach Villa) introduce themselves through video footage, adding that what we’re seeing is a digital love letter to each other and a farewell statement. Both have their heads shaved and they convey both assurance and a weird sense of fate.
The narrative immediately winds back to tell their peculiar love story.
The couple met at a nightclub where Morgan, who was only given three months to live due to a galloping brain tumor, gets super curious about Jordan, a boy dressed as a girl. It was her birthday, and he seemed as much attracted to her as she was to him. Despite the instant chemistry between them, she gave him the wrong phone number while he stole her wallet. The next day, Jordan regrets the bad deed and pays her a visit to return her belongings. However, her parents get shocked with the way he dresses and talks.
Despite this prejudice, the couple falls in love and decides not only to get married, but also live the three months left doing everything that might come to their minds. The enthusiasm leads them to rob a little store, to pay a visit to Jordan’s estranged mother, and to become the center of the attention in a bar – the most contrived scene of the film.
I can’t find a good reason to recommend “Honeyglue”.
If a story of this nature doesn’t touch you in the heart is because something is wrong with it. The ideas of tolerance, acceptance, and love are conveyed with a deplorable lack of freshness, likely because Mr. Bird has never found the adequate bright tones to do better than overload us with predictability and tedium. Actually, here, the word bright can only be associated to the tonality of its cinematography.
