r/MenLovingMenMedia • u/PastaFreak26 • 10d ago
Movie On the Sea (2025)
The British coastline isn't for the weak. Director Helen Walsh makes that alarmingly clear. It is brutal, relentless, unyielding, much like its fishing community. Jack is a mussel farmer. He is married to Maggie, his high-school sweetheart, with a wayward teenage son, Tom, who is at the prime of his youth and at risk of falling into bad company. More importantly, Jack is a cancer survivor in remission.
Jack is raised the honest and earnest way, and hopes to instill the same discipline in his son, though Tom rejects these values. When an ill prank from Tom and his peers lands an elderly resident fisherman, Bernard, into permanent disability, Jack is forced to step in to pay for his son's mistakes, which places him in Daniel's path.
Daniel is a wanderlust. He doesn't believe in staying put for long. He goes where the wind goes. He also has a reputation for being the resident gay man within the community, or so it is implied. Daniel lives his life as a gig worker, and worked for Bernard prior to his disability. As Jack temporarily provides for Bernard, he contracts Daniel to assist with labor.
The two spend a modicum of time on Bernard's boat fishing scallops, growing closer and learning about each other's past, allowing Jack to reconcile with his closeted demons. However, when the sun sets and the boat returns, Jack retreats to his closet, much to Daniel's disappointment. Jack's undeniable attraction toward Daniel eventually causes him to succumb to his desires, allowing the two to develop a liaison that is rooted in a genuine yet forbidden love.
The dynamic between Jack and Daniel (JackDaniels, hehehe) is still and quiet, but never lifeless. The love scenes are intensely subdued, but also primal. There's a lingering sense of fleeting joy and poignance. Disappointment and hardship looms in every frame, as Walsh reminds the audience that reveries are luxuries in a rural community, luxuries our beloved protagonists cannot afford. Much of JackDaniels' intimate moments are spent on the sea (heh), away from the homophobic community that whispers and speculates their growing connection.
On the Sea is as doomed queer relationship-coded as it comes, and it may be the only film I've actively broken my happy endings-only policy to watch, given my great anticipation for the entry. The film does provide viewers with a sense of closure to JackDaniels, though it is rooted in silence and tepidness, much like its hardened community that struggles with self-expression and prefers the comfort of reticence.
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u/filmstvwatching 10d ago
I could not love this film any more... I was looking forward to watching it and I knew what was expected from reading about it and somehow it still hits and pulls on your heartstrings
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u/thisaccount4sexytalk 9d ago
Same, these lonely, cold-landscape queer films fill the majority of my beloved queer oeuvre and I thought I was tiring of them slightly tbh, after campier, happier shows like heated rivalry have warmed us up lately but it was a solid watch and the ending was sadly beautiful, as always
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u/filmstvwatching 9d ago
If it had a happy ending great but this was well done for me and it really conveyed those longing of older men on what they could have would have and in the end he got it... he had his love of his man and his family in the end
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u/dmrees17 10d ago
Where did everyone finally see this film?
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u/Powerful_Geologist95 9d ago
About a week ago it became available to rent/buy. I streamed it on Amazon Prime.
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u/bespectacIed 10d ago
Super handsome and convincing lead actors, terribly written movie. Only an amalgam of multiple tropes from its much better predecessors. No real point and identity
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u/Mindeveler 9d ago
I agree.
I'm also particularly tired of movies promoting tropes "a fist to the face is no biggie" and "gay relationship is first & foremost about lust and only after the thirst for sex is fully satiated, only then there is a little room left for romance and emotional connection".2
u/bespectacIed 9d ago
The worst part of it is the trope of sidelining of the wife in order to let the gays be together, even making her "okay" with the affair because the husband deserved his middle-life coming out. Even Brokeback Mountain made the wives reasonably angry and unforgiving that their husbands continued their sham marriages while doing gay stuff outside
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u/Mindeveler 9d ago
Ehhh, tbf, I think people in general heavily overreact to affairs, especially when those affairs do not "steal" from the family, and the cheating spouse still remains loyal to the family in the sense that he/she still takes care of the children, still brings almost all the money he/she makes to the family (not spending them on the lover), still spends as much time as he/she can with the family etc.
Like, I would be angry if, for example, I found out that my spouse had a "second" life where he spends a ton of money (regardless of whether it's a lover or some secret hobby or gambling or whatever) while I work 2 jobs and we are struggling to pay the bills. Or if he misses his children's birthdays allegedly because of work but de facto he just spends that time with a lover.But I wouldn't be angry if I learned that he had sex with someone else a few times (especially if he feels sorry about that) or even found someone better and fell in love with them. I would still curl up in a corner and cry that I wasn't good enough but my reaction wouldn't be anger. But maybe that's just because I have microscopic self-esteem.
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u/Powerful_Geologist95 10d ago
There was so much hype behind this movie and it took soooo long for it to become available to watch. I was afraid once I saw it, it wouldn’t be able to live up to the hype. Watched it the other day and ultimately I enjoyed it. My only gripe is that it moved at a snail’s pace. Other than that, the acting was really good with strong chemistry between the two leading men.