Carbon & Water is well intentioned. We don’t get to see movies that focus on the lives of older gays. We barely get movies in general about LGBTQ+ characters and when we do, it’s all about our trauma and pain. Or it’s a coming out story with some teen in high school. Hollywood ignores the fact that we continue past high school and into college and everything that comes afterwards. We’re still here. And Carbon & Water tries to explore that in the film by Christopher Clarke, who also stars in the film as the leads close friend Bob. But it’s overwhelmed by the underlying sinister nature of what is going on between the two central characters of the story.
Within Carbon & Water we have Vince and Carl. Vince is an older gay who is assigned a nurse by the NHS after some health concerns. He’s dreadfully lonely and doesn’t seem to have any family or friends besides Bob. And as someone who is coming to grips with their solitude, I understand this loneliness. It’s monotonous and repetitive. It also hurts when you feel like you’re stuck or ignored by the world. And when Carl appears and moves in as Vince’s lodger, things seem to be looking up for once. Vince can now have some companionship and Carl can have some normalcy while reconnecting with his past. But again, the whole thing is marred by this menacing undercurrent of obsession that feels sinister.
I was put on edge by Vince once Carl appeared because he felt like he was owed something by Carl. Vince didn’t understand that Carl was his lodger and was paying rent. They don’t have to be friends but they can. But Carl certainly does not owe Vince any affections, sex, lust, or love. And it was really uncomfortable to watch Vince make Carl uncomfortable with his clearly unwelcome advances, rummage through his things, and then steal something that Carl expressly said was of deep sentimental value to him because of its connection to his father. Switch up the gender of Carl and the music, and you have a thriller where Carl is going to end up fighting for his life because Vince lets his obsession turn violent and all consuming.
Carbon & Water read to me like one of those cautionary tales you hear as a woman about those Craigslist rentals. It looks like an offer that you can’t resist. Good rent, great location, and a seemingly chill roommate. But it’s not chill. This guy/girl stalks you while you’re living your best life and trying to reconnect with your past. They steal your precious items, dress up in sexy leather-wear and wait for you in the living room, and invade your space while you’re sleeping naked. To top it all off, Vince tried to make it seem like it was love. It wasn’t. It was lust. And the best thing that Carl did for himself is get another job and get out of there.
In a way, I can see what Vince did as the result of loneliness. It can make us do crazy things. But the final nail in the coffin for me was when he stole Carl’s fossil and then sat down with Bob to obsessively act like this was The One Ring and he was Gollum. This fossil was his precious. And it “belonged” to him. It was like he was single-white-femaling Carl to the point where he seemed to have found peace at the beach where Carl connected with his father. He was co-opting someone else’s love and experiences instead of realizing how good his life is. He has a home above his head and a bed to lie in at night with no need to worry about funds. And if you’re lonely, time to join a club instead of stalking someone like it’s straight out of a cautionary tale.
Vince is the kind of man they tell you to watch out for. The kind of man that thinks that he owns you but doesn’t know you. No one owned Carl, he didn’t deserve to be stalked, robbed, or treated like an exotic pet or shiny object by Vince. And this is without taking into consideration the editing in dialogue of Carbon & Water. If you’re wearing headphones, some of the noises will seem so out of place that you’ll jump or look around trying to place them. The scenes and visuals are a mixed bag between jarring and in your face. And the dialogue from Vince in particular felt like he was talking at the viewer instead of us joining him on this adventure, even if the creep was the central character.
So as much as I want to love Carbon & Water for the way that it explored an older man’s journey through life and allowed this older gay to be a hot mess, it made me increasingly uncomfortable with the way Vince got away with his obsessive behavior with no lesson or resolution in sight.
Carbon & Water is available to rent on digital.
Queerly Not Straight posts Saturdays (or when I feel like it) with opinion pieces, listicals, reviews, and more focused on the LGBT community (and occasionally about the Latine community since I am Latine.) If you’re reading this somewhere outside of Fangirlish, it has been stolen.
