In a unserious yet probably honest way, falling in love with a hot straight-ish guy in a toxic relationship and then having to deal with the whole Brokeback Mountain situation could feel like the Oedipus complex for many gay men. Neil Ely and Lloyd Eyre-Morgan’s wittily heartbreaking comedy Departures begins from that familiar emotional trap. Starring Eyre-Morgan himself as Benji, the film follows his painful journey out of a relationship with Jake (David Tag), a ten-out-of-ten eye-candy personal trainer whom he first meets at departures after their flights to Amsterdam are cancelled. What begins as a chance encounter turns into a romance, and later into heartbreak, as Benji returns to Amsterdam after their breakup, revisiting the memories of the time they spent there together. Through his narration, the film blurs reality and memory, past and present, as the city becomes both a romantic fantasy and the site of emotional reckoning.

Inspired by Ely and Eyre-Morgan’s lived experience as gay men, Departures is not the most formally challenging film, but it does speak to a noticeable shift in recent queer cinema. Alongside contemporary gay films such as Pillion (2025), it suggests a new wave of gay filmmaking that is less centred on historical trauma and public suffering, and more concerned with private, intimate experiences of dating, desire, heartbreak, and romantic self-deception. That does not mean the shadows of the closet, childhood shame, and inherited trauma have disappeared. Realistically, they will probably remain part of queer storytelling for a long time. But Departures is interested in how these older wounds shape ordinary contemporary gay life, especially in relationships that feel both universal and sharply specific to queer experience.

The film is particularly good at locating pain in the textures of gay dating culture: the pursuit of the fit body, the shame that comes with not matching that ideal, the pull of toxic masculinity, and the coercive or degrading sexual dynamics that can hide beneath desire. These things may have equivalents in straight culture, but placed within a gay context, and rendered through such direct detail, they take on a different charge. With its Heartstopper-like handwritten cartoons accompanying Benji’s narration, Departures balances comedy, gay satire, and self-mockery with the traumatic nature of a breakup story. This gives the film a more accessible commercial appeal. Unlike studio-backed comedies such as Bros (2022), however, it is less interested in making a broad political statement about gay life, and more invested in capturing the emotional texture of ordinary British gay experience.

Although the film is told from Benji’s perspective, Eyre-Morgan manages to weave both Benji and Jake’s childhoods into the narrative, building a loose connection between their past and present selves. These flashbacks create a parallel between the two men, showing how different childhood experiences shape the ways they love, hurt, and protect themselves. The film also renews the traditions of gay screen presence by shifting the root of trauma away from the more familiar frame of historical social oppression towards something more personal. Jake’s choices, and his struggle between the two sides of his life, although shaped by childhood experience, are not treated as excuses for the way he manipulates the exploitative nature of this kind of toxic relationship, while also using that relationship as an excuse for not facing his true self.

In this way, Departures builds Jake as a more complex and troubling character: someone whose pain is real, but whose pain also becomes part of the harm he causes. His tragedy shows how traditional expectations planted in childhood can create a dead end for everyone caught inside them. Yet, compared with the complexity of his character when he is dealing with Benji, the section focusing on Jake’s current life, and the reason for the breakup, occasionally feels too dramatic and does not entirely escape familiar gay drama tropes.

Although an indie film like this may not win over the strictest festival programmers in Europe, Departures is made with heart and honesty, and will hopefully inspire a new generation of queer storytellers.

In cinemas nationwide now