Jake Wong is an avid school basketball player living in Vancouver and happily involved with girlfriend Valerie. When new boy Aleks moves in to the house behind, there’s immediately a spark and a shift in Jake’s sexual desires. And so begins a tangled tale, beautifully portrayed, of dreams, desires, family traditions, cultural pressures and the complex contradictions of adolescence.
What director Jason Karman presents us with is carefully interwoven stories and situations that often mirror one another: for instance Jake cheats on Valerie and his father George cheats on his mother Andrea. Both are outraged by the others’ behaviour which produces a dramatic irony that is lost on the characters.
The storyline, which also involves homophobia within the basketball team, shows fascinating and unexpected trajectories in each of the main characters’ lives.
But family traditions can be broken and family and sexual histories re-written. The film also deals with the growing insidious nature of social media – Jake’s loss of virginity to Val and his outing as gay at a party are both instantly transmitted across Instagram and the like.
The film has a slow pace for its romantic storyline set against the frantic activity of the basketball games, and this works really well to give another clash of realties.
It’s altogether a joy to watch and reaches its goal – Jake’s realisation that when he looks at himself, he likes what he sees.
Golden Delicious was showing at BFI LGBTQ+ Flare Film Festival. Look out for future screenings and releases, this link for tickets.
