Miles Warren’s Narrative Debut Bruiser is a restrained consideration of a well-known premise. Two men with shared histories crave respect, approval and affection, but the stifling boundaries of hyper-masculinity keep them from asking for it. They instead fight for domination, a quest that plagues their respective journeys with undercurrents of violence. Warren is very interested in trying to understand this path, in portraying what cruelty does to individuals and their communities.
Bruiser tells the tumultuous summer between 7e and 8e rating for Darious (Jalyn Hall of Until), a recalcitrant teenager struggling with puberty and life in his sleepy suburb. His mother, Monika (Shinelle Azoroh), spends most of her days giving private violin lessons at home, while his father, Malcolm (Shamier Anderson), sells cars at his dealership. With both his parents at work, Darious, whose relationship with his old friends has faded since he went to boarding school, doesn’t know what to do with himself.
Bruiser
It comes down to
A soft and compelling twist on a familiar story.
Form: Trevente Rhodes, Shamier Anderson, Jalyn Hall, Shinelle Azoroh
Director: Miles Warren
Screenwriter: Miles Warren, Ben Medina
1 hour 37 minutes
The film, written by Warren and Ben Medina and screened on AFI Fest after the TIFF premiere, begins as a soft observation of Darious’ fraught ties to his neighborhood, his parents, and his peers. Cinematographer Justin Derry builds a gripping imagery from the first scene, which shows Monika picking up Darious from school. Every moment has a softness, an unobtrusive intimacy, the combined effect of close-ups and scenes bathed in a caramelized light.
On the car ride home, Darious would rather put in his earplugs than listen to his mother’s questions about his school crush or the car radio that plays Otis Redding’s “Cigarettes and Coffee.” (The song becomes an aural motif throughout the film.) The teen’s moodiness feels off-putting at first, but Hall’s performance—characterized by slightly shrugged shoulders, an evasive gaze, and a lilting voice—slowly reveals that the irritability is a sign. is of a complicated and tense emotional interior.
Darious, like most people his age, struggles to identify and express his emotions. His attempts translate into silence (like in the car with his mother) or temperamental outbursts. After arguing with an old friend, Darious runs into the woods and stumbles upon a docked boathouse. The owner, a stoic, muscular man, watches in silence as the bloodied-lipped teen washes his face with creek water before coming closer. The immediate exchange – punctuated by deliberate but unpleasant silences – arouses Darious’s curiosity about this mysterious man named Porter (an excellent Trevante Rhodes).
The appearance of Rhodes on screen naturally invites comparison with Moonlight, Barry Jenkins’ tender coming-of-age film that similarly negotiates the terms of masculinity. But considering that Moonlight also openly struggled with sexuality and the formation of a queer identity, Bruiser strictly adheres to the paternal ties. Darious returns to Porter’s house more often during the summer, finding it easier to confide in him than his parents. The young teen confesses to feeling insecure, worried that his girlfriend at school doesn’t like him anymore and that he feels disconnected from his father.
Porter listens to Darious and gives the young man only occasional advice. It soon becomes apparent that Porter is no stranger – to Darious or to his family. The revelation is not shocking, and Bruiser rightly does not address it. Instead, the film considers its effect: how Darious gets stuck between Porter and Malcolm, who were best friends before their hatred of each other calcified. When Porter goes to Malcolm and Monika to ask if they can be in Darious’s life, Malcolm refuses even to participate. Unable to get past Porter’s mistakes, the latter makes it clear to his old friend that he doesn’t trust him.
The men represent two sides of the same coin. They both struggle with emotional regulation and self-expression – but while Porter is honest about his challenges, Malcolm clings to respectability like a shield. While Warren and Medina’s screenplay falls into clichés, it avoids living in that area by expanding the inner lives of these two men. Rather than relying on explanatory speeches, Warren experiments with scene staging, camera angles, lighting, and music to emphasize the differences and similarities between Porter and Malcolm. Occasionally, Bruiser relies too heavily on Robert Ouyang Rusli’s beautifully sonorous score, but the attempt to connect the visual vocabulary with an auditory one is welcome.
Performance is what ultimately determines Bruiser separately as a debut, signaling Warren’s potential as a director. This is a film whose action takes place through conversations between the three central figures: Darious, Porter and Malcolm. Hall, Rhodes and Anderson deliver fine renditions that allow their characters to maintain their allegorical functions without losing their dimensionality. Their exchanges are tinged with the pain of old wounds and the hope of future forgiveness. We understand how these relationships develop through the way the actors position their bodies, look at each other (or don’t look) when the characters feel most vulnerable, or the way their voices change when they try to act instead. of being involved. That kind of care and detail makes for an investment in the story and the people who populate it, leaving us bound together and wondering about their decisions even after the credits come out.