Aussie Gay Coming-Of-Age Film Lonesome Is Gritty, Brooding & Unapologetically Erotic

Award-winning Australian director Craig Boreham has a lot to celebrate. His latest feature film Lonesome has attracted critical praise and awards buzz.

The gritty, brooding and unapologetically erotic film, which has been making a splash on the LGBTQ film festival circuit is set for an Australian release on February 23, 2023.

“It’s kind of still kind of rare to have an Australian LGBTQ film screening in cinemas in Australia… so it’s very exciting,” Boreham told the Star Observer. “I think we’re still pretty conservative when it comes to sex onscreen.

Film Has Some Intense And Explicit Sexual Content

Lonesome tells the story of two emotionally wounded men (powerfully played by Josh Lavery and Daniel Gabriel), who meet and form an unexpected and challenging connection. They resist the deep attraction they feel for one another and both have lost the ability to be vulnerable and open.

The film is decidedly erotic and includes some intense and explicit sexual content, which was something Boreham set out with a clear intent to make.

“It was important to us when we were making the film that we represented queer sex on screen, honestly and didn’t shy away from it, and didn’t pan away to a tree when anyone got intimate.”

“There is quite a bit of sex [in the film]. A lot of what the film is about is the way gay men especially use sex in their lives and their day to day, whether it’s to relieve boredom or whether it’s transactional, or whether it’s actually more intimate. We knew we wanted to make a film, and explore that stuff really viscerally.” 

Working With An Intimacy Director

The sexuality of the film required a lot of trust from the actors in the material and the creative team. “When we were casting it was a conversation we were having with everyone. This is what the film is, this is what you’re going to see. And we found people who were excited about that idea, and wanted to explore it as well.”

“We worked with Leah Pellinkhof, a fantastic intimacy coordinator. It was good to have a queer intimacy coordinator, who understood what we were trying to talk about…She was invaluable.” 

“There was a lot of resistance to the project because it was so gay and so much about exploring sex and sexuality and a lot of people were; I’m not going to say homophobic, but you know, had some reactions to it,” Boreham says with a wry laugh. 

Ian Roberts co-stars in the film in a surprisingly intense supporting role. “I loved working with him and I wrote the part very specifically for Ian because I knew he was great to work with and he’s a very talented actor. He often gets cast in roles that are you know more about his physicality but he’s a very subtle and a really great actor…he nailed it; he killed it.” 

Queer Indies

Lonesome may remind audiences of seminal art house Indie films of the 1990s like Gregg Araki’s The Living End and Gus Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho, due to a shared naturalism and organic quality. Boreham says he drew inspiration from a perhaps surprising source.

“When we [Boreham and cinematographer Dean Francis] were talking about the film and how we wanted to make it look, we were talking about a lot of those kinds of Queer Indies.”

 “We were also looking at westerns and bringing in some of the imagery from traditional western films. There’s a really nice overlap between Queer stories and westerns. There’s a lot of imagery that we borrowed from that world, and, it’s got a rawness about it. But it’s also got some nods to camp cinema and we have this kind of really rich, lush, visual style.”

Lonesome releases in select cinemas on February 23.