Motel Room

In the movies, it is very rare that anything good happens in a motel room. Barring the conception of John Connor in ‘The Terminator’, you’ve got criminals - ‘From Dusk Till Dawn’, weirdness - William Friedkin’s ‘Bug’, and of course, most famously psychopaths - The Bates Motel in ‘Psycho’. Therefore, you’d be forgiven for walking into ‘Motel Room’ with trepidation, fearing an onslaught of horror or debauchery, but what you actually get is something extremely earnest and heartwarming.

The film follows the friendship that develops between a young Armenian teenage boy, Sevag (played by Sebastian Rosero) and the prostitute, Megan (played by Tammy Kaitz) that the boy’s father hires to take his virginity. His father, Massis (played by David Gianopoulos) is a hyper-masculine figure, one whom has plenty of experience with Megan - even requesting the Massis special for his son as he kisses her and hands him over. He doesn’t understand his son, nor does his son understand him. To his father, a boy losing virginity at the age of fifteen is normal, however, for Sevag it is the last thing he wants to indulge in, not least because of his repressed homosexuality.

It’s established smartly in the film’s opening that the film takes place in the midst of the AIDs crisis, on the night of Freddie Mercury’s death no less. For a while these fears are left to simmer in the background, but they never go away, and has its undertones in every line, for which credit must be given to writer Sahag Gureghian. When it does come back to the fore it potent and sensitively handled, serving only to amplify Sevag’s fears of both sex and coming out to his father - who thinks AIDs only affects gay people, whom he says have to die.

All this is revealed tenderly to Megan, herself a fully fleshed out character. There’s regret in what she does, but you sense that in talking to Sevag - rather than forcing the poor boy into something he doesn’t want to do - there’s some redemption or relief that she has taken that path in life. She helps him, of course, that is what the film is ostensibly about, but under the surface, he helps her too.

Such tenderness is reflected in the directing by Bradford Lipson, whose use of soft lighting only adds to the warmth and genuine care with which Megan handles Sevag. Each shot is well directed and at no point does the pace lag, it is an altogether well made film from a filmmaker with a bright future. Furthermore, Lipson brings the most out of Sebastian Rosero and Tammy Kaitz, who each give dynamic, vulnerable performances, and bounce off each other well.

‘Motel Room’ is a beautifully, tragic film in many ways. It is one that remains important even though we’ve moved on from the times that it depicts, and that in itself is tragic, but it is beautiful because it contains such warmth and ultimately hope for a better, more understanding world.