Set in London in the late 1980s, at the height of the AIDS pandemic, David Turpin’s somber, stunning feature debut, Ancestors, unfolds like an evocative elegy to the legion of young gay men who were virtually erased by the disease and by a society that shunned them.
This beguiling non-linear cinematic poem centers on the love between two very unlikely people.
Irishman Beau (an extraordinary Éanna Hardwicke) works in a local London café own by aging queen, Maurice (the iconic Rupert Everett), and often hangs out with his bestie Shell (Jessica Reynolds, a Sarah Douglas doppelgänger), when he’s not cruising a nearby park for hook-ups.
Twenty-year-old Tiny (Jack Wolfe, captivating) literally walks into the café and Beau’s life one day, changing it forever. “Maurice likes to collect strays,” Beau insultingly tells Tiny. “Did he find you in the park?” “Of course, he did,” he mutters, without waiting for an answer. A bit later when Tiny sweetly asks if he could go home with him, not having any place to stay, Beau is initially dismissive but cannot resist the young man and a strange but potent relationship begins to form. Alas, Tiny has AIDS. And Beau will also contract the disease. Then, one day, Tiny ups and disappears and the non-linear narrative starts to take shape in a fever-dream-style that visually captures the manifestations of a once dazzling but now clouded mind, infected by a debilitating disease.
“Where do we go when we die?” Tiny is plagued by this question as I’m sure so many young people with AIDS were in the 80s and 90s, before there was any hope of a life with HIV.
In a particularly touching and defining scene, Beau watches Tiny sing the haunting song, “My Love My Brother,” (written by Wolfe, with additional material by Turpin) at a gay bar. It’s a heartbreaking moment.
The camera loves all of the key actors and Turpin is clever enough to let the close-ups do the lion’s share of the narrative work. Hardwicke does a masterful job of showing us Beau’s tremendous anguish, sorrow and regret. And Wolfe is an absolutely mesmerizing enigma.
Everett is wonderful as the gay obsessed with goddesses of the silver screen like Greta Garbo, Bette Davis and the fictional Gloria (the gorgeous Christina Hendricks), a glorious femme fatale—and a seeming nod to Hector Babenco’s Kiss of the Spider Woman.
The filmmaking style is reminiscent of early Todd Haynes, recent Andrew Haigh and even a dash of Rainer Werner Fassbinder–there is a nod to Jean Genet, who’s Querelle is inspired by the writer.
The exquisite ending allows for some hope in the quagmire of despair, something that an entire generation of gay men could not even conceive. Ancestors is a tribute to those we lost, those that were intentionally, unconscionably erased, and those that we must remember.
The film had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.
