Geronto (2026)
I will admit it, Geronto did not win me over straight away. For its opening stretch I thought I knew exactly what it was: a short about two men meeting by chance and going to bed together, and little more. I was wrong, and by the end this quiet, melancholy little film had got right under my skin. It is beautifully acted and cleverly framed, and I am happy to give it three and a half stars.
Based on true events, and set over a single night in the late 2000s, Mark Pluck's short follows a man in his twenties who meets a man in his sixties at a discreet gay pub in London. They go back to a nearby room and make love, and for a while it is tender and genuine. Then it fractures. The older man cannot quite believe the attraction was real, and wrongly assumes the younger one must be a rent boy, because surely no young man could have wanted him for honest reasons. It is a small, cruel misunderstanding, and it says everything about the shame and self-doubt the years have left in him.
What deepens it further is what we learn about the older man. He is married, but his wife is lost to some sort of dementia-related illness and no longer recognises him, so the evening carries a terrible undertow of loneliness and grief alongside the longing. It turns what could have been a simple encounter into something genuinely touching and sad, a portrait of two people reaching for connection across a gulf of age, class and circumstance.
It lives or dies on its two performances, and both are superb. Jason Watkins, whom I have enjoyed in plenty of things over the years, mostly on television, is fantastic here, finding all the fear and tenderness and wounded pride in the older man. And Noah Valentine, as the younger one, is a real talent, warm and open and quietly affecting. The framing and the acting together are what elevate the whole thing well beyond its premise.
Three and a half stars. Geronto is a short film that rewards patience, starting somewhere you think you recognise and ending somewhere far more moving and humane. It handles a difficult, often taboo subject with real delicacy, and on the strength of these two performances alone it is well worth seeking out.
Related on Movies With Macca
More from Country United Kingdom: The Red Shoes (1948), The Driver (1978), Interstellar (2014)
More from the 2020s: All That's Left of You (2025), The Whale (2022), Look Back (2024)
More drama: Delisted (2026), Lady (2026), These Violent Delights (2026)
