Lunar Sway

Cliff (Noah Parker) is a young bisexual man who’s stuck living in a rut within a small desert town. He works a menial job making neon signs and is caught between lingering feelings towards a past lover and two new budding romantic partners. However, his stagnant life changes when Marg (Liza Weil) arrives on the scene, claiming to be his birth mother. The meeting sucks Cliff into a strange odyssey as he drifts between a series of bizarre events and sexually charged encounters in Nick Butler’s captivatingly offbeat Lunar Sway.

Between Cliff’s romantic escapades, past heartbreak, and this new woman in his life who may not be who she says she is, there’s a lot packed into the short runtime. There are some story beats that consequently feel incomplete as they gradually fade out of the narrative’s focus. However, the plot is never the filmmaker’s main concern. Instead, the feature operates in an intoxicating atmosphere driven by a dreamlike tone and evocative imagery.

The dusty roads and small establishments where much of the film takes place convey a distinctive sense of place that merges small-town Americana with the Western genre, an image reinforced by characters frequently wearing cowboy hats and tasselled jackets. These locations are populated with peculiar characters and seem to be completely disconnected from the world beyond the town’s borders. Butler teases out plenty of wry and chaotic dark comedy throughout each interaction, with Grace Glowicki as unhinged bounty hunter Bailey being a constant highlight.

For as off-the-wall as Cliff’s journey can get, everything is supported by a strong emotional foundation. Cliff struggles with body image. He’s self-conscious about small blemishes and his tendency to cry easily. Discarded portraits of him that were painted by his former partner and are found throughout the film effectively underscore the soul-crushing rejection he feels. Surreal and charmingly low-fi sequences further heighten the character’s state of mind, coloured by a hauntingly melancholic score. As visually enticing and thematically rich as this feature can be, its more abstract inclusions run the risk of being too impenetrable for its own good.

Existing somewhere between Wild at Heart and Fargo, Butler creates an engrossingly weird exploration of queer youth with Lunar Sway. Although it occasionally stumbles over some of its more outlandish moments, it nevertheless delivers an emotionally resonating character study.