It’s a beautifully made movie packed with emotion. I got emotional at a couple of scenes but it didn’t make me cry at all because I was confused and trying to make sense of it.

There were two main emotional arcs in the movie. Adam’s longing for reconnecting with his dead parents and romance with his new boyfriend. The latter was touched much more lightly than the former, and the dialogues between the two men felt superficial compared to Adam’s conversation with his parents. Regardless, I started rooting for Adam and Harry’s lovey-dovey relationship because I saw Adam finding comfort in Harry’s arms. With Adam’s longing for his parents getting stronger due to the addictive nature of reconnecting with the dead, I naturally wanted Adam to find solace in his romantic relationship.

However, at the end of the movie, it was revealed that Harry died on the same night when Adam declined to let him inside his apartment when they first met, which was a few days or weeks ago; Adam discovered that the body started getting decomposed. Then the movie shortly ended with Adam comforting Harry’s ghost in bed, where the image of the two became a star in the universe with other stars lit from each other in distance as if they were lonely strangers.

If the goal of the movie was to do a poignant portrayal of every gay man’s fear, loneliness, I’d call this a moderate success. But even this portrayal felt unconvincing because none of Adam’s relationships shown in the movie were real. Even though I was puzzled by Adam progressively retrograding as he continued meeting his parents over and over, at least there was a deep connection and a closure at the end. However, given Harry’s death, technically there was nothing between Adam and Harry. And with the thin and generic conversations between the two throughout the movie, it was difficult to accept the ending, the consolation.

Plus, when a lot of gay men out there, who suffer from loneliness, try to create their own chosen family, and redefine and expand the traditional meaning of family, Adam remained emotionally attached to his dead parents, and sought approval from them. I understand that we are forever children before our parents, but it looked like Adam interestingly never or rarely experienced finding love in others (and his new boyfriend was his imagination), which was surprising because this was made by a gay filmmaker. I even thought the movie might have been better if Harry’s character did not exist and the movie was solely about Adam’s reconnecting with his parents because then the gay culture undertone would have been weaker.

Meeting dead parents as an adult and hanging out with them as if they are our friends is a sweet and moving idea, like when Adam’s mom looked at him proudly when he said he became a writer. However, I think the movie ran with the idea into a strange and confusing direction where I could not even understand the message it wanted to deliver. Several critics wrote that to enjoy this movie, one needs to embrace it as is and give in. Perhaps that was what I should have done. But, even if I’d give in, I would probably still refuse its brutal, but also somewhat cliche ending (yes I am talking about those stars).