Displaying items by tag: Quentin Davis Araujo

ELLIOT LOVES

US, 2012, 93 minutes, Colour.

Fabio Costprado, Quentin Davis Araujo, Elena Goode, Robin de Jesus, Antoni Parowski, Monte Bezell.

Directed by Terracino.

The film is described as a coming-of-age story. However, it is much more complex than that.

The central character is Elliot (and many explain to him that in German it means loved by God. His mother comes from the Dominican Republic, his father a local New Yorker who has abandoned mother and child. The film is very strong with its New York atmosphere.

The film continually moves from Elliot as a little boy, living with his mother, at home, dealing with her many boyfriends and bad choices, at school, to Elliot as a 20-year-old, living on the streets of New York, hustling, male clients, from his mother, but desperately wanting to be someone and to have someone to love him.

The two actors playing Elliot are both very persuasive in their roles, a surprising performance by the little boy, Quentin Davis Araujo. He is seen initially as very young, in the bathroom, performing a routine of a television ad for a hair lotion. An initial indication that the focus will be on Elliot as gay.

Elena Goode is very convincing as the mother, young, inexperienced, desperate, making wrong choices with men, treated badly, abandoned. She has a love for her son but is erratic in her attitudes towards him building up to the 15-year-old Elliot very angry and walking out from home.

In the present, the narrative is more as expected from this kind of story, though Elliot is certainly a very lively and engaging personality, his clients and casual sex, going to bars, being picked up and imagining that this relationship will be the one, continually disappointed, confiding in some of his friends, but, with his memories and his disappointments, ultimately coming to some kind of decision that he should do something more with his life – and find a reconciliation with his mother.

In some ways a conventional story but, with some persuasive characterisations making the story come more alive. (There is an interesting sequence where Elliot, with something of a Catholic background, goes into a church to sit and pray, looking for a sign – and a young priest approaching and then telling him that the church is closed – and Elliot noting that God is open 24/7.)