By Valerie Milano
Phoenix, AZ (The Hollywood Times) 6/26/24 – To be human is to be faced with the existential occurrence of pretending, in order to fit into societal norms. Viewers will be immersed further into this experience from the latest short film from acclaimed filmmaker Iggy London, Area Boy. We follow the journey of Eli, an aimless teenager who has recently moved to the outer edges of a provincial town with his mother. As he navigates the challenges of a new environment, Eli attempts to escape the bleakness of his life and wrestles with questions of self-identity. Caught between the influence of his delinquent friends and the solace offered by the church community, Eli is torn between two worlds. Through this poignant narrative, Eli’s struggle to find and embrace his true self unfolds, offering a raw and introspective look at the complexities of adolescence.
Area Boy goes the distance to prove what humans have in common when it comes to fitting in. We present ourselves in such a way that begs for acceptance from our societal peers. Director Iggy London unpacks, “What the film tries to tackle is youth. When you’re young, you just play about like normal people: you go out, you meet friends, you go to school. I feel as though, in certain people’s upbringing, they suddenly stop being kids even though they are kids; they have to pretend as though they are adults. They get into the wrong crowd, or they speak to the wrong people, and suddenly their way of behavior sort of changes. Area Boy is about performance where the main character feels as though he has to be someone that he is not. He tries to pretend to be this big cool, macho guy, but really and truly, he is someone that has a secret which is that he is experimenting with this idea of masculinity and femininity and whatever that looks like. Whether these ideas are something that will manifest later in life. It’s more about being given the opportunity to play and explore and experiment and that is what the movie is about. This young kid who doesn’t know whether he is directly interested or cares about this, but he’s felt for such a long time that he has been kind of suppressed by the codes of masculinity.”
Iggy continues, “being a man myself I have experienced men and so many different other people trying to be something that they’re not. There is this tipping point when they finally embrace themselves and I began to study them, how they poster themselves, perform, and pretend to be people that they’re not. The religious aspect, I grew up very religious. I remember being a child at catholic school, being Christian, being baptized, the whole thing. My inspiration for this film has to be my experience about religion and how that is sometimes at odds with what we consider to be secular or right and wrong. I also just don’t think you see a lot of stories that involve religion that are not only just talking about the dogma of religion but also talks about how we wrestle between the things we were taught and the things that we actually do and how they are at odds.”
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Just as Eli learns in Area Boy, when we hide ourselves from our loved ones, we often find that what we have chosen to keep in the darkness will not only come to light but will sometimes be accepted by the people we love the most. “When you suppress things, you can find that sometimes your peers do not take what you are attempting to suppress as seriously as you do. What I wanted to show is that there was a level of pretending that everyone in the film had; they were all in this level of pretending whether its identity or sexuality. There is a moment where Eli and Kevin talk for the first time after Kevin sees him in the makeup. I love how Kevin embraces Eli, but also, he tells him something that is a secret that makes Eli realize that they all sort of pretend and play a role in order to fit in. This exchange and trust really push the story further into understanding that Eli is not alone and that we all sort of pretend in the world in our own way.”
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