Fringe! Interview: Travis Mathews "I Want Your Love"
Friday, April 13, 2012 at 9:01AM Craig here, with a preview of Travis Mathews’ debut feature I Want Your Love and an interview about the film with the director.
Jesse Metzger stars in the explicit drama about a performance artist leaving San Francisco
This week sees the return of the Fringe! Gay Film Festival to East London. From the 12th to the 15th of April a wide range of films (new features, experimental shorts, premieres) are showing alongside a host of parties, shows and events. This year’s opening film was I Want Your Love, Travis Mathews’ (In Their Bedroom – Berlin) poignantly affecting and intimately explicit debut feature. It stars Jesse Metzger as Jesse, a love-lost San Francisco performance artist about to leave his life and career frets behind for a fresh start in Ohio. We see him hang out with friends, and follow how their lives reflect, and differ from, Jesse’s as they prepare to throw him a leaving party.
Jesse Metzger and Ben Jasper in a flashback to their relationship
There’s an easy charm to the story of this group of amiable guys. Mathews films in a close, intimate way that allows revealing insights into their easy-going personalities. The characters feel real, unaffected by some of the over-familiar clichés that more mainstream gay cinema offers up. The performances – especially Metzger, as Jesse, and Brontez Purnell, as one of his witty friends – are pitched perfectly and entirely natural. The real sex peppered throughout the film acts more as culminations of built-up feeling than a way to shoehorn overt sexuality into the story.
Mathews emphasizes atmosphere throughout. Some segueing shots are delicately composed to establish an evocative sense of place and time of day: the harbour at dawn, hazy afternoons chatting in shops, empty streets at dusk. You get a feeling for a rich, charming San Francisco that chimes with the film’s plot arc: why does Jesse need to leave when what he has here is so close-knit? What is it that he needs to change in his life? I Want Your Love offers up these questions, and plenty more, for its audience to mull over while depicting 21st century gay relationships in an honest, open way. In a small way, I Want Your Love is an affectionate retelling of Maupin’s Tales of the City in microcosm for the now.
I spoke to Travis last week about I Want Your Love, the Fringe! and his feelings about his work...
Writer/Director Travis Mathews
Craig for The Film Experience: I Want Your Love is great. A splendid addition to not just gay cinema, but invigorating filmmaking in general; and early word is hugely positive. You must be very proud.
TRAVIS MATHEWS: Aw, that's really nice of you to say. I'm proud to have just survived it, let alone come out with a movie that I'm excited to share with people. Making features - I'm learning - is like running a small business...
I Want Your Love, LGBT, London, Travis Mathews, film festivals, interview, pornography, sex scenes 
