In Bloom
There is something so beautiful about love. It’s not just about the electricity flowing through your veins, it’s about that bustling electricity becoming a hum of a dim light and still illuminating the sun. It is less about the grand gestures made every day and all the time, it’s about homemaking pizza and curling up to watch a movie. It’s knowing that this person, whomever they are, melts into your skin and wraps around your bones. That every gesture they adore and you equally shower them with praise, that even when cracks show, their flesh is golden. What I love more than love, in general, is love portrayed realistically in movies. That slow burn of days goofing around, the pissy little arguments that erupt randomly and last two minutes; if you get it right on camera, I will swoon because realistic love on camera is beautiful.
Only, it is not ok to then rip that away from me.
With this in mind, meet independent flick In Bloom. Set in the hazed and thriving city of Chicago, it centres on Paul and Kurt. This couple spend their days in glorious routine. Kurt is a drug dealing and a popular face on the party scene. Paul work in a dead end retail job, only perforating the tedium with text messages to Kurt. However, the slow drag of relationship life starts to suffocate Kurt. It doesn’t help that a sexy new customer, Kevin, has started flirting with him. But is the love Kurt and Paul have strong to survive?
In Bloom is a stirring and magnificent effort that showcases this utterly human people trying to adjust to their emotions. Played empathically well by Kyle Wigent and Tanner Rittenhouse, Paul and Kurt become much more than an onscreen couple. The impressive talent allows them to transcend, perfecting how to hit the perfect silence, the stumble awkwardness and the cute poignant moments that collate as a relationship. Wignet and Rittenhouse are compelling and earnest, shaping through both the faults and the fortunes of their character. You relate to both, whether or not you believe Paul is the better person or Kurt is, and it is astonishing to watch. Add to the sweeping cinematography and it is an intense film revolving around this core.
But it isn’t a perfect movie and there are moments that jut out against the otherwise excellent story. For a start, there are points of the story that make no sense. The perplexing sub plot with the murderer doesn’t fit at all, never drives the plot forward and one death is added on unnecessarily that it feels as if the writers couldn’t trust the complexities and drama of love to pull the story through. These off moments damage the tale and you are willing for more intense sense and poetic words between the pair and their exterior world rather than a murder mystery moment. Not to mention, Kevin is the most irritating character played haphazardly too.
In Bloom has stunning visuals and a wondrous centre that you can happily enjoy it. It is one of the more realistic love stories to date and in that sense, it is beautiful.