BIG EDEN
written and directed by Thomas Bezucha with Arye Gross, Tim DeKay, Eric Schweig, and Louise Fletcher opens June 8 at Broadway Market
DESPITE ITS AVOWED idealism, one of Hollywood’s favorite mantras, “simplify, simplify,” often yields results closer to Dubya than Thoreau. Cities are impersonal, empty wastelands of toil and thievery, but the rural life forges friendship, love, tradition, and all-around decency sturdier than your pa’s trusty pickup.
Thomas Bezucha likewise sees virtue in cringe-inducing clich鳠like “small-town values,” “the quiet life,” and “home cookin’,” but he filters them through a delightfully nontraditional looking glass. Would “small-town values” have the same icky, conservative connotation if tolerance were one of those values? What if the slow-drawling Marlboro Man and pie-baking biddies conspired not to set up Dick and Jane at the monthly hoedown, but Dick and Dick instead?
That is what Big Eden imagines, and that is its only exemplary trait. Writer-director Bezucha adds nothing else nearly as interesting to what is otherwise essentially a gay, middle-aged Pretty in Pink.
We’re told how protagonist Henry (Arye Gross, a Spacey doppelganger) previously left the fictitious titular Montana town after high school, then found success and respect as a painter in the Big Apple. Naturally he drops everything (even a gallery opening—gasp!) to fly west when his beloved grandfather Sam has a stroke. When Henry arrives in Big Eden, it’s as if he’s only been gone overnight; his self-described “gay city-slicker artist” identity is just an alter ego. He acclimates wonderfully to familiar surroundings and the predictably quirky townsfolk, then decides to care for Sam indefinitely.
Again, we’re simply told how Henry fled Big Eden after a falling-out with high school buddy Dean (Tim DeKay) who’s now thirtysomething, studly, single, and . . . has children. Unfortunately, Bezucha gives few clues about Dean and Henry’s rekindled but still-awkward relationship. The final component of what evolves into a love triangle is general-store handyman Pike (sexy Eric Schweig), who was so crushed out on Henry in high school that he now stammers like Frankenstein in his presence.
A tell, not show, filmmaker, Bezucha doesn’t give his characters much depth. Instead, he has everyone in the enlightened town of Big Eden fretting like a bridge club over Henry and his romantic possibilities. Cute once or twice, but ad infinitum? Nauseating.
Still, Big Eden is almost singlehandedly redeemed in a heartbreaking conversation after Pike fails to impress Henry with lavish meals. “I just want things to be nice for him,” he dejectedly tells a room full of burly, straight bubbas (keeping the gay subtext to himself). “Yeah, Pike,” one replies knowingly, “but we kinda want things to be nice for you, too.” It’s a sweet thought, but audiences deserve better, too.