Jason A. Heidemann
COAST GUARDED Characters keep their feelings hidden in The Lost Coast.
If Halloween is all about role playing and identity shifting, then this evening of masquerade serves as the perfect backdrop for filmmaker Gabriel Fleming’s haunting new film. In The Lost Coast (2008), three pals come to grips with their strained friendships during one fateful Halloween night in San Francisco.
Screening at Reeling 2008: The 27th Chicago Lesbian and Gay International Film Festival on Monday 10, the film centers on high-school besties Jasper, Mark and Lily, who reunite in their mid-twenties for a night of revelry. But over the years, relationships have changed. We learn that, during their high-school days, Jasper, who’s now engaged to a woman, secretly had a sexual relationship with Mark, who at the time dated Lily. Mark now identifies as gay and shares an apartment with Lily in San Francisco. Hidden feelings abound: Jasper’s sexuality is ambiguous at best, Mark clearly still harbors feelings for Jasper, and Lily must confront her own decision to live with the ex who jilted her for a guy. As they wander together through the city in search of booze and Ecstasy, the film flashes back to a high-school weekend the trio spent together in Northern California’s Lost Coast, where tensions reached a crescendo.
The Lost Coast is the second film from the 34-year-old Fleming, who wrote the script in three days. Raised in West Marin County—a wooded, expansive and mostly wealthy enclave just north of San Francisco (where much of the film was shot)—Fleming studied film at the University of California–Santa Cruz. While living in San Francisco for a few years, he wrote and directed 1,000 Years (2001), about time travel, the apocalypse and a girl with a crush on a cool guy. He has since relocated to L.A., where he edits reality shows (America’s Next Top Model, Making the Band).
Fleming, who identifies as bisexual, says he wanted to make a film exploring sexual ambiguity. “What I was going for with the film was to try and get some sort of picture into this gray area of sexuality that a lot of people occupy and isn’t really given very much attention in our culture,” he says.
Although the director says the Jasper-Mark relationship doesn’t reflect an experience of his own, he adds it’s nevertheless a common one. “This story of having had a sexual relationship when you’re young with someone who, to this day, is straight is very common in the gay world,” Fleming says. “What are these guys who Jasper represents? Are they closeted and gay, or bisexual and closeted, or are they straight and just experimenting? I don’t know.”
Since it debuted at this year’s South By Southwest in Austin, The Lost Coast has made the rounds at festivals both mainstream and gay. Interestingly, Fleming says that by a show of hands at each screening, queer viewers identified Jasper’s character as closeted, confused or bisexual. Straight audiences (perhaps unwilling to recognize Jasper’s sexual ambiguity) immediately pegged Jasper as gay. “I’m waiting for a straight guy to come up to me after the screening and say, ‘It happened to me,’ ” Fleming says. “I want those guys to see this most of all.”
The Lost Coast is the rare Reeling film that transcends niche audiences. Straight women may find common threads in Lily’s reluctance to let go of her gay ex; questioning (or open-minded) viewers can appreciate a film that explores sexual fluidity; and audiences of any sexual orientation can identify with that coming-of-age moment when we wonder what place our high-school friends still have in our lives. But The Lost Coast is also a cinemaphile’s film. The handheld camera work, eerie tracking shots and beautiful cinematography capture a moody San Francisco that Hollywood typically avoids. “We shot in the rainiest month in San Francisco history,” Fleming says. “The side benefit was that it was overcast so we had this really beautiful flat light, which was perfect.”
The Lost Coast screens Monday 10 as part of the Reeling Film Festival.