Boy Meets Boy **** (2021, Matthew James Morrison, Alexis Koutsoulis) – Movie Review

Ah yes, When Harry Met Johannes.

Co-writer/ director Daniel Sanchez Lopez’s German gay romantic drama Boy Meets Boy (2021) stars Matthew James Morrison as young English intern junior doctor Harry, Alexis Koutsoulis as the beautiful blondish Berlin boy Johannes he meets on the dance floor of a nightclub in Berlin.

Outside, Harry realises he has been partying for 48 hours and has just 15 hours left till his flight home to London and hasn’t seen Berlin. Johannes offers to show him the city and help him print his boarding pass. Johannes is a dancer, and a pretty good one obviously, as we see during the opening credits, and apparently a carefree but a very careless man, who soon loses both his wallet and his bike.

Harry takes Johannes up on his offer, and the two boys spend the day together wandering the city and talking of their lives and values and finally their truths. The contrasting two men make a connection, as deep as any possible in just 15 hours.

What’s good here are the two central performances, more or less the film’s only performances, the two men’s sparky and sparring chemistry together, the wish-your-were-here tour of the real Berlin, the script’s wit and wisdom, and the director’s ability to conjure up the joy of a brief encounter.

The writers are Daniel Sanchez Lopez and Hannah Renton. Their screenplay is a total talkathon, or ‘feature length mumblecore’ if you prefer, but, hey it worked for Before Sunrise (1995) and it works here. Writers and actors really make you care about their story and make you desperate for the duo to stay together, to prolong the moment for ever. The two boys are toothachingly sincere and nice, and the film’s mix of the realistic and the romantic is effective and appealing. It is all quite beguiling.

Alexis Koutsoulis’s English is beautiful and almost perfect, and the film runs almost entirely in English.

It is screened at the BFI Flare London LGBTQ+ Film Festival (virtual cinema) from 17 March 2021.

© Derek Winnert 2021 Movie Review

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