In from the Side

It is an ambitious debut and though a more rigorous edit may have evened out its overall tone, it is clear that Carter’s heart and head were certainly in the game.

The script gives us less about their emotional connection and to be honest, the will-they-won’t-they-stay-together drama is a bit of a snore. The best scenes are down the rugby club, portrayed with tremendous warmth as a happy-ish semi-dysfunctional family.

It will be interesting to see what this capable filmmaker does his next time around with, hopefully, a larger budget and a few more objective voices helping to guide his choices.

This one almost makes it, but a boggy script slows it down.

The awkwardly titled gay rugby romance In from the Side is so padded out at 134 minutes with both rugby games and sex scenes that the final effect is numbing, and writer-director Matt Carter doesn’t bother much with either plot or character to fill out his narrative.

Though Carter is competent at making the chaos of a rainy match or the ecstasy of a clandestine tryst watchable, his characters feel like sketches with barely any idiosyncrasies. What’s the point of watching the game if you don’t care about the players?