B&B | A gay couple unwittingly book in for an ordeal in Joe Ahearne's lean LGBT thriller

By Jason Best
( What's on TV )
published

B&B Sean Teale Tom Bateman

B&B Sean Teale Tom Bateman

They made their bed. Now they have to die in it.

Gay husbands Marc (Tom Bateman) and Fred (Sean Teale) get more than they bargained for when they return to the remote English B&B whose fundamentalist Christian owner Josh (Paul McGann) refused them a double bed a year earlier.

Having won a court case against him, smug Marc wants to gloat in their victory, much to the discomfort of the conciliatory Fred and Josh’s closeted teenage son (Calum Woodhouse). But the situation turns even tenser when a hunky, heavily tattooed Russian also books into the B&B. Is he also gay, or a neo-Nazi gay basher looking for fresh victims?

Things get rather confusing and contrived in the final third, but until then writer-director Joe Ahearne’s lean thriller does a good job of juggling our sympathies and ratcheting up the suspense.

Certificate 15. Runtime 83 mins. Director Joe Ahearne

B&B

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYjOJE-E5AE

Jason Best
Jason Best

A film critic for over 25 years, Jason admits the job can occasionally be glamorous – sitting on a film festival jury in Portugal; hanging out with Baz Luhrmann at the Chateau Marmont; chatting with Sigourney Weaver about The Archers – but he mostly spends his time in darkened rooms watching films. He’s also written theatre and opera reviews, two guide books on Rome, and competed in a race for Yachting World, whose great wheeze it was to send a seasick film critic to write about his time on the ocean waves. But Jason is happiest on dry land with a classic screwball comedy or Hitchcock thriller.