Tan Lines 2005

Tan Lines 2005
1h 36min | Drama, Romance | 2006 (Australia)
Storyline:
From the sun-drenched beaches of Australia comes this sexy coming-of-age romance. Cute teen Midget Hollow (Jack Baxter) wanders through life riding big waves and partying with surfer boys. When Midget's best friend's gay brother Cass arrives on the scene, the two quickly dive head first into a clandestine sea of sexual awakening. As his lusty romance with the dark-eyed Adonis is soon discovered, Midget has to navigate between his friends' reaction and his newfound love all while growing up during a hot summer of fun in the sun!
User review:
I saw this last week at a gay and lesbian film festival, and quite liked it. It wasn't what I expected at all. I thought we'd have adorable blonde surfers caressed by the bright Australian sun during carefully timed outdoor shoots. The guys are cute, but mainly because they're young and do something physical — they're not preposterously cute. They're a bit … well, not vacuous, but limited in their interests. There's no indication that anybody willingly opens a book. The town they live in may have a beach and waves but it's a dreary little backwater where money is hard to come by and people fall into sex situations for lack of much else to do. The kids may be inexperienced and untutored but they're not particularly innocent, and the adults don't seem to be much different from the kids — just various degrees of Older.
The director seems unsure how to go about making a conventional film properly, so he gropes, and ends up making the movie very interestingly. There are establishing shots we don't need, of things that aren't important. And somehow the arbitrariness of that echoes the characters' ennui and drift and cluelessness.