Clear Reception

Happiness can only be faked but for so long. Eventually maintaining the elusion becomes tiresome and real feelings and needs either have to come out or they�ll eat us alive.

In writer/director John G. Young�s engaging second feature film The Reception, four people find themselves making compromises they can live with in the short-term, but which begin to strain normal levels of tolerance during one tension filled week at an upstate New York farm house.

The house belongs to Jeannette (Pamela Stewart), a single, divorced French woman, who along with her companion Martin (Wayne Lamont Sims), a Black gay painter, has escaped New York City and past negative experiences there in exchange for a bucolic life in the country. They both have enough money to live on, Martin has a converted barn for a workspace, and they have each other. Their relationship is one of genuine love and support in every way except physical intimacy.

They make it work by overlooking obvious signs of unhappiness. Jeannette has a weakness for red wine which she regularly consumes to numb hurt feelings from past failed relationships with straight men. Martin locks himself in his studio every day before tucking his drunk wife into bed at night, to avoid dealing with the absence of other Black or gay people in this town.

This daily routine gets broken up when Jeannette�s estranged daughter Sierra (Margaret Burkwith) arrives with her new husband Andrew (Darien Sills-Evans), another Black man. She has not seen her mother in years nor told her of a wedding, but Jeannette is willing to put all of that aside to have her daughter back in her life again. To celebrate, she plans a big reception, causing what was intended to be a two day visit to stretch to a whole week.

If time apart heals all wounds, perhaps time together opens new ones. Four people alone in a big farm house in the middle of the winter forces interactions that reveal true feelings and intentions. Jeannette was a teenage mother when she had Sierra and her ex-husband was not only abusive but adulterous. Her current mistrust of men was undoubtedly shaped by that experience.

Sierra stands to inherit the farm house with her life seemingly together now. Grandmother wanted it kept in the family and Jeannette will feel secure passing it on to a daughter married to a man in law school.

But being cooped up in this house has the most profound effect on Andrew and Martin and sheds light on the loneliness all four characters share. While at first keeping his distance from the openly gay Martin, Andrew forges a bond that opens a door to long untapped feelings and emotions which come to a head in one vulnerable, drunken moment. Martin�s quest to discover the cause of Andrew�s show of affection serves as the twist that unravels the self-deceptions all of them have created. From then on it is a precarious balancing act as they teeter between what they really want and what they are willing to live with.

Young has written a funny and smart script that while briskly paced at 78 minutes, still allows us to really know these characters. Issues of race, class, sex and sexual orientation are the obvious topics, but so is the true meaning of family and how people deliberately seek out those who make their lives complete. No heavy-handed sermonizing or ponderous plot devices, these are real people viewers will recognize, who have made choices of convenience. Now faced with new choices they have opportunities to get what they really want.

Seeing love expressed on screen between two Black men is rare and images of physical lovemaking rarer still but this film refreshingly captures both with realism and compassion. While Hollywood regularly offers up special-effects-heavy, poorly written crap shot on an 8 figure budget, The Reception–an independent film shot in 8 days for $5,000–eclipses all of their recent attempts.

The Reception is in limited release across the country and at Quad Cinema in New York City.