Pain, Humor, Immaturity: ‘Get Over It’

Nick Katsapetses says he made his bracing, bristling, near no-budget “Get Over It” in response to “a swamp of feel-good queer cinema.”

Katsapetses, however, is an equal-opportunity critic. He’s hilariously hard on all self-indulgent twentysomethings in need of growing up, regardless of their sexual orientation or uncertainties about it. He’s tougher by far on men than on women, but then men tend to hang onto immaturity more tenaciously than women.

Katsapetses casts himself as the unfeeling Derek, who without warning dumps his handsome, sensitive lover Steven (Troy Morgan). Derek writes pompously that he “can no longer compromise [himself] to fit into your insecurities.”

Devastated and given to repeated poundings on Derek’s apartment door, Steven, a film student, turns for solace to his best friend, Pam (Deborah Cordell), a hearty, blunt type whose solution to Steven’s pain and depression is to invite their L.A. friends up to San Francisco for a weekend.

Steven, who says he feels like a character in a Gregg Araki film, is rightly appalled, yet being bruised by this group of by and large selfish, self-absorbed types might--or might not--be beneficial in the long run in providing him with perspective on himself and in developing some resilience and self-determination.

Steven’s and Pam’s friends tend to be desperate to connect sexually and emotionally, and once they have, they become callous to all others.

Epitomizing the group’s self-absorbed tendency is Spencer (Christian Canterbury), who’s been with Elisha (Alison Jean Trotta) for five years but now decides to experiment sexually with men. “Get Over It” swiftly becomes a sexual free-for-all for the men in the group while the women, initially amused, become increasingly fed up with the men’s behavior.

A senior at the San Francisco Art Institute, Katsapetses lets us feel the real pain of rejection and longing that Steven, well-played by Morgan, is feeling. In his shot-from-the-hip but actually quite beautifully composed and stylish film, Katsapetses is himself not advocating or approving callousness but rather commenting on the perils of trying to establish committed relationships in the ‘90s.

* Unrated. Times guidelines: The film is much more talk than action when it comes to sex, but its language and themes are definitely not for children.

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‘Get Over It’

Troy Morgan: Steven

Deborah Cordell: Pam

Christian Canterbury: Spencer

A Strand Releasing presentation of a Verging Production. Writer-director-photographer-editor Nick Katsapetses. Executive producer Marcus Hu. Producers Katsapetses, Patrick Fitzgerald, Eduardo Morell. Lighting-sound Morell. Music Andrea Terry. Running time: 1 hour, 25 minutes.

* Exclusively at the Grande 4-Plex through Thursday, 345 S. Figueroa St., Los Angeles, (213) 617-0268.