If Only You Were Mine – Review/Summary (with Spoilers)

The seduction of someone older and more mature meets realizing their maturity doesn’t mean they are ready for you.

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Film Summary

Dominik, young and impressionable, falls for the older, more accomplished Adam. Someone who seems to have a history of rebounding from intense relationships with younger men. But is Dominik different, or just another guy in Adam’s pattern?

Things To Note | Question(s) Left Unanswered

• Reason(s) for Film Rating: The Male Gaze: Hide and Seek is overall rated R, but outside of smoking and it being clear Dom has an eating disorder, there isn’t anything major here. Even Dom and Adam having sex is more so hinted than visible, as seen in another short of the compilation, Stanley.
• Jump Scares/ Laughs/ Tear-Jerking Moments: N/A

Cast & Characters

Dominik

Dominik is a young student struggling with an eating disorder and who is very much in love with Adam.

Adam

Still reeling from a past relationship, Adam has moved on with Dominik, but with Dominik not smoothly integrating into Adam’s life, there is a question of whether they will last?

Review

Highlights

Dominik and Adam Relationship

Like most, I’m sure, I’ve been conditioned in seeing and growing accustomed to the young woman, older man dynamic. Now, in If Only You Were Mine, this doesn’t necessarily exist since Adam surely isn’t 5, 10, or more years older than Dominik. However, you do get the same vibe of you recognizing someone smitten with an older person because of what they know, what they can expose them to, and the insecurity of feeling like you are always playing catch up.

Never mind constant insecurity because, outside of your youth, there is the question of what do you offer them? Is it a boost to their ego, after a break-up, someone enamored with them, despite them not really being notable to people their age?

When it comes to Dom and Adam, you are torn between how much is in Dom’s head or you just hoping Adam isn’t trash. Especially as you are tasked with noting their separate lives.

There Was More To Both Leads Than Their Relationship

With Dominik having a life outside of Adam, which included a difficult to manage eating disorder, and school, it allowed you to see he wasn’t wholly consumed by Adam’s world. Not to say he didn’t want to be, and often would abandon his life to be in Adam’s, but to know Dominik had people and things outside of Adam made him feel more real.

The same goes for Adam. With establishing his ex, he has a pattern when he rebounds, and noting what makes him so attracted to Dominik, it made it so, despite the short being 23 minutes, it felt less like we were missing something and more things were to the point.

Overall

Rating: Positive (Worth Seeing)

Is If Only You Were Mine perfect? No. However, it fits what we believe shorts should be – an advertisement of what the director and their team could do if they had the budget to do more. And with Adam and Dominik’s story, we’re given a cute, and sometimes devastating, love story. One that plays with the usual older man vibe makes the younger counterpart male and sees what actually is changed when the gender is. Hence the positive label.

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