Trick

Gabriel writes musicals and works in an office. Nobody takes the song he has written seriously. His flatmate Katherine acts and is always at home; Gabriel does not even have a room of his own. One night he meets Mark on the subway. Mark dances at a club. The two want to go somewhere. But Katherine is at Gabriel's, Mark's flatmate is at his, a friend's apartment is full, the club's toilet is closed. They spend the whole night looking for a place in New York. Looking takes time, and they talk. Jim Fall directs. Christian Campbell plays Gabriel and John Paul Pitoc plays Mark; Tori Spelling is in the cast. It is an American production. The film screened at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival. It was made on a low budget and shot in New York. The premise is simple; one night, one aim, and a meeting that keeps being put off. The matter it treats is the absence of privacy; finding somewhere to be alone in the city becomes the problem. The film is among the examples of independent gay cinema of the period that used the romantic comedy shape; the narrative builds no drama and looks for no tragic ending. The character Tori Spelling plays carries the comic weight. The narrative leaves neither character one dimensional; the dancer is its calmest side. Its limit is scale; the production is small, there is little event, and the ending short. Who it is for: viewers who like independent romantic comedy and nineties New York films. Who it is not for: it is small in scale, uneventful, and the ending open.