I’ve written extensively about how much I’m not fond of the current Hollywood ecosystem. The glut of blockbusters has given way to a glut of ‘event’ films. Lost among all this are the small, intimate films. The kind the studios have begun to swear off publicly.
Filmmakers like Josh Cox. His latest film, Far From Water, is a five-minute short exploring tenderness, desire, and anxiety between two young men. Like all great short films, it shows a deft ability to juggle much in its brief runtime.
Cox adores putting his characters against parallel backdrops. Whether it’s a woman-loving woman couple reveling in the moment in the bustling city or a young Queer person pining for someone in the countryside. The setting emboldens the themes of his stories. However, he prefers setting his characters in nature, allowing their emotional interiors to clash or mesh with the environment.
Far From Water is no different. Two young men, played by Lucas Nealon and Jarid Dominguez—we never know their names—frolic on the beach. The sky is a romantic yet melancholy grey. Like Dino at the Beach or Summer Day in Brooklyn, Cox is looking at a fleeting moment. These moments, while tiny, are no less powerful, sometimes more so.
As usual, Cox is pulling a John Carpenter and doing everything. He’s a one-man studio; he crafts a breathless look in a few moments. The young men wrestle, laugh, kiss, and make love. Afterward, they urinate and go their separate ways, one of them asking if it meant anything.
The clouds around them grow darker as the encounter grows, not to symbolize impending doom but impending lust. Yet, in the end, like Dino at the Beach, the two men are left wondering if what happened meant more than just the act, the fear of the other’s answers written on their faces.
Cox opens the short with two crabs walking along the beach, being washed away by the tide. Treasured moments washed away in time. Yet, here, unlike so many of Cox’s films, there’s a timelessness, a kind of dreamscape. Put into relation with other work; it feels the most drawn from personal experience- or, possibly, just a feeling he had once.
His short films often feel like Roger Vadim-inspired postcards. His camera and editing frame the moments like flashes one gets when reminded of something. Yet, underneath it all is a longing and a quiet sense of loss, not in terms of grief, but instead a loss of direction—the aimlessness of youth and desire for not just touch but connection.
Far From Water is at once like Cox’s other films while tapping into something a little more ambiguous. The ending feels pregnant with possibilities. It is as if perhaps the short might grow into a feature. If so, I can’t wait.
Images courtesy of Americana Pictures
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