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Drifting

By Justin Lowe

Canadian director Quentin Lee delivers his second feature film Drift, a gay love story of sorts, which he wrote, shot and co-produced. Mostly about questioning love, rather than being in or out of it, Drift manages to be both obscure and self-indulgent at the same time, never rising much above anecdotal mediocrity. The film will likely be popular with niche audiences, but has slim breakout potential beyond the festival circuit.

Shopping for Fangs, Lee’s 1997 first feature (co-directed with Justin Lin) was a stylish, quirky “comic thriller,” weaving together the storylines of Phil, a young API accountant who thinks he may be turning into a werewolf, and Katherine, a bored, bipolar corporate wife whose alter ego is the chatty sunglasses-wearing waitress, Trinh. Even if the narrative doesn’t exactly hang together (we never find out if Phil really is a werewolf, or the exact relationship between Katherine and Trinh), Shopping is witty and well-crafted.

Lee employs a similar intertwined plot structure with Drift: After Ryan (R.T. Lee), an aspiring screenwriter, meets Leo (Jonathon Roessler), a college student, at a Los Angeles party, he decides to move out on Joel (Greyson Dayne), his longtime boyfriend, shortly before their third anniversary. Ryan explains that he is worried about his writing career, stressed out about hi

Quentin Lee Directs Greyson Dayne and T. Jerram Young in Drift. Photo courtesy of Larsen Associates.

s status as an illegal Canadian immigrant and confused about his relationship with Joel. At this point, the plot diverges in three different directions, each branching off from Ryan’s breakup with Joel, as Ryan “drifts” into various configurations with the other characters. Each of the plotlines reaches a different conclusion based on Ryan’s love quest.

In the first variation, an infatuated Ryan pairs up with the flattered Leo, a virgin experiencing his first gay love affair. The second strand finds Ryan returning to Joel after his fling with Leo, convinced he still loves his boyfriend, only to find that Joel’s already moved on to a new guy. In the third segment, Leo rejects Ryan and falls for Joel, who’s too busy pining over Ryan to take any interest in Leo.

The love triangle is nothing new to romantic drama, and the multiple-outcome viewpoint has worked well elsewhere, in films such as Sliding Doors and Run, Lola, Run, but here it seems forced and trite. Lee barely sketches in the backgrounds of his characters and it’s hard to see what they have in common, other than Ryan and Leo’s fascination with serial killers. Ryan, Joel and Leo seem to be brought together simply to make the rather obvious point that sometimes relationships don’t work out, but rarely does the audience understand the underlying reasons.

Drift was largely funded by a $40,000 Canada Council for the Arts grant, based on a script written after the disintegration of Lee’s own three-year love affair. With a limited budget, Lee chose a small cast and crew, and shot on digital video in order to keep costs down and lend an intimate feel to the production. Adopting some of the Danish Dogma 95 school’s style of loose scripting, low-budget digital video aesthetics and psychological inquiry, Lee nonetheless strived for a film with “significant commercial potential,” a goal clearly at variance with Drift’s alternative script and stripped-down production values.

In spite of its limitations, Drift is not without promise: with several screenplays in development at Wesley Snipe’s production company, Lee may yet successfully combine Shopping for Fangs’ pop sensibilities with Drift’s intensely personal point of view in one of his next features.