Writers: Lloyd Eyre-Morgan
Directors: Lloyd Eyre-Morgan and Neil Ely
Admitting that their biggest challenge was managing shot consistency of writer-director and star Lloyd Eyre-Morgan’s hair between takes, Departures filmed over a series of weekends arrives at BFI Flare in an exploration of toxic relationships that distils the real experiences of Eyre-Morgan and Co-director Neil Ely. Taking place over 18-months, the film begins with the concept that to go forwards you have to go backwards, exploring the emotional impact of someone you just cannot shake off even if they were never that nice to you in the first place.
Recently out of a long secret relationship, Benji decides to return to Amsterdam to confront his heartbreak head on, but every corner of the city reminds him of Jake and the monthly weekends they spent together there. Never identifying as gay, Jake’s anger when Benji tries to solidify their connection becomes a recurring them, but can he find any salvation in these complex memories?
Departures opens with high energy, a reminder of those late 1990s films like Human Traffic and Trainspotting that depict a lifestyle of drink, drugs, clubs and random sex, a dizzying whirl of activity in which Benji tries to block out his consuming heartbreak yet only takes himself deeper and deeper into despair. Making its world premiere at BFI Flare Eyre-Morgan and Ely’s film eventually balances this distraction culture with a more introspective examination of both Benji and Jake whose life together and independent of one another becomes an important focus, giving the story an added depth.
A deeply personal experience for its creators, there is an honesty in the depiction of Benji that anyone who has experienced inexplicable rejection will recognise, especially in the self-destructive impulses that follow as he continues to pick partners that ultimately make him feel worse while unable to stop thinking about Jake. Jake could easily have been a screen baddy, a man of secrets whose daily and emotional life are constantly out of Benji’s reach, and while there is a cruelty in Jake a well as a temper, the writer gives him a narrative strand of his own to better understand his motivation and the things that have drive his behaviours.
The films perhaps spends too much time on childhood flashbacks for the protagonists rather than focusing on their life outside the weekends they spend, and it would help to flesh out Benji’s character to see more about his wider circle and why he just cannot shake the experience of being with Jake. Boiling a character down to their romantic and sexual life does emphasise its consuming nature but the intensity of his feelings would be enhanced by seeing more of his mum (a wonderful Lorraine Stanley), friends and even his work life.
Eyre-Morgan plays Benji with an authenticity that clearly matches the raw narrative of some of the film’s themes and it certainly captures the trajectory of pain, indulgence and acceptance, a devotion to someone that makes him stay with Jake in spite of every message telling him it is over. David Tag’s Jake is, naturally, more enigmatic but is given his own emotional confusion that adds dimensions to the performance.
A tragi-comic film that takes its subject seriously while equally satirising the extremes that unrequited love can induce, Departures is perhaps the most unfiltered film at Flare.
Departures is screening at BFI Flare 2025 from 19-30 March.
