Relax

Steve, a gay man who lives with his lover Ned, has had multiple partners and is worried he may have the HIV virus. Ned tells him to relax and get tested. Steve can't relax: he's obsessed with scrubbing himself, he washes between his toes with a toothbrush. He doesn't want to know, but he does have the test. The five days' waiting for the result are agony. He picks a fight with Ned, who's long-suffering and cheerful. He dreams. He frets. He pictures death by drowning. The waiting almost over, he sits in the doctor's office and imagines the two possible results. In either event, is there a case to make for Steve to relax?

details

  • Runtime

    20 min
  • Country

    Great Britain
  • Year of Presentation

    1991
  • Year of Production

    1990
  • Director

    Chris Newby
  • Cast

    Philip Rosch, Grant Oatley
  • Production Company

    BFI Production
  • Berlinale Section

    Panorama
  • Berlinale Category

    Short Film
  • Teddy Award Winner

    Best Short Film

Biography Chris Newby

Christopher Newby (born 1957, Leeds, England) is a British film director and screenwriter.

He studied at Leeds Polytechnic and The Royal College of Art in London. He has made several short films, including The Old Man and the Sea, an evocative juxtaposition of marine, religious and body imagery, and Relax (a short film about a gay man awaiting the results of an HIV test, drifting into moments of fantasy). It won the Teddy Award in 1991.

He directed Anchoress (1993), a tale of paganism versus matriarchal Christianity set in a Surrey village in the early fourteenth century. It was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1993 Cannes Film Festival. In 1995, he directed Madagascar Skin, which starred John Hannah and Bernard Hill. He has continued to make short films, including Stromboli (1997) and Flicker (2001).