Review - Leviticus

Starring Joe Bird, Stacy Clausen, Jeremy Blewitt, Mia Wasikowska. Written and directed by Adrian Chiarella. Rated R. 88 minutes. In theaters.

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Leviticus 18:22 prohibits male same-sex intercourse, decreeing that the penalty for such is that both parties shall be put to death. You hear about this Old Testament passage a lot from homophobic Bible bangers trying to justify their bigotry on religious grounds. The same section of the Good Book also forbids sleeping with your daughter-in-law, trimming your beard, getting tattoos, having sex with your slave, marrying your wife’s sister while your wife still lives, eating shellfish, touching the carcass of flying insects, letting your hair become unkempt and having sex with a woman during her period. Far be it from me to suggest that folks might be cherry-picking lines from an ancient text to validate their rancid personal sexual hangups, but I don’t see any of these assholes organizing boycotts of Red Lobster the way they freak out over rainbow T-shirts at Target.

First-time writer-director Adrian Chiarella’s conversion therapy horror story is set in an isolated, ultra-Christian community way out in the middle of Nowhere, Australia. It’s a barren, industrial wasteland of refineries belching smoke, where a romantic walk gets interrupted by the sight of a snake chowing down on a desert frog. Hip, cosmopolitan young Naim (Joe Bird) is having a hard time fitting in, having just moved out there with his newly single mom, played by Mia Wasikowska. (She’s doing mom roles already? That was fast.) We first see Naim roughhousing around an abandoned old mill with Stacy Clausen’s Ryan, a jockish sort with curly blonde ringlets and a mischievous smile. He ignores Naim at school but fools around with him in private, where shoving and wrestling lead to kisses and more. There’s something hilariously Australian about boys throwing rocks at each other’s chests as a form of foreplay.