“I’m not sure I remember how to be myself. / I’m not sure I remember when I need your help. / I don’t know who I am. / And I don’t know who you are,” croons Benjamin (Mark Clennon) in his climactic performance in I Don’t Know Who You Are.
The performance by the saxophonist/singer offers a triumphant, full circle, and deeply cathartic bridge for the film. Benjamin does some serious self-reflection over the dizzying 48 hours that precede the concert. He’s not sure of himself, what he wants, or how to find that direction. But there in the spotlight, holding his sax and singing into his lover’s eyes, he finds his grounding.
Anchored by a rock-solid, soul-searching performance by Mark Clennon, I Don’t Know Who You Are should leave a viewer breathless. It’s a taut, tense, and nerve-wracking exploration of queerness and alienation in Toronto’s concrete jungle—a raw portrait of how those two factors often go hand in hand in this bleak impersonal city.
Clennon’s extraordinary performance fuels pretty much every frame of the film as Benjamin finds himself racing against time. A disappointing date with his boyfriend, Malcolm (Anthony Diaz), inspires him to let loose at a party, which is worsened by run-in with his ex (Kevin A. Courtney). The night takes a bad turn when a passerby on Benjamin’s walk home sexually assaults him. Feeling abused and violated inside and out, Benjamin realizes the worst when he confides in his friend (Nat Manuel) that the assailant didn’t use of condom.
The situation isn’t good for Benjamin. He’s a hot mess on a nice day, but things spiral out of control when a visit to the clinic brings an HIV test and some advice. He needs PEP, a post-exposure drug that reduces the virus’s effect. But PEP has two key downsides: it’s expensive and has a 72-hour window to curb exposure.
I Don’t Know Who You Are sends Benjamin on a whirlwind race around Toronto to get the $900 he needs for the potentially life-saving drugs. $900 might not sound like lots of money, but for a starving artist living paycheck to paycheck, it is. Clennon, who served as story editor with writer/director M.H. Murray, ensures that the stakes of Benjamin’s plight are palpably real. Rubbing his face and swaying his braids in desperation, there’s no end to the anguish he faces. It’s literally do or die, and even getting the money means a likely long-term setback to repay whatever debts he accrues.
While Clennon’s performance is a star-making revelation, I Don’t Know Who You Are proves equally notable as Murray’s feature debut. This drama is tough and lean, artful yet raw—a frenzied whirlwind of anxiety and adrenaline as emotions run high in a story with stakes drawn from daily life.
Scenes of Benjamin’s domestic life before and after the attack feel authentically real. This isn’t a blinged-out, yassified portrait of gay life in Toronto. It’s what life looks like in the city for people on the margins, literally and figuratively, especially when someone from their own community does them wrong and when few supports exist to make said community anything more than an ideal.
Some characters are admittedly a bit one-note, like the grumpy pharmacist who won’t cut Benjamin any slack. He serves as a sort-of stand-in for institutional malaise, while the chorus of creepy bearded white dudes who populate the film ogle Benjamin somewhat heavy-handedly, although a sense of violation permeates the frame when they do. Even when the film lays it on a bit thick, there’s a real sense of the discomfort of being seen as lesser-than.
However, personal relationships in Benjamin’s circle aid the slice-of-life portrait. Early scenes with Malcolm show a tender playfulness to Benjamin. They also highlight the cautious intimacy the men develop in this early stage of their relationship as Benjamin tries to seduce Malcolm with some home-cooking. However, the film team seriously needs a gay intervention if they think spaghetti with sauce from the jar will land a man in bed. But at least Benji seems to have stopped storing his red wine in the fridge since Ghost, the 2020 short film by Murray and Clennon that inspired the feature. The boys are quick learners.
That tenderness and bad food choices offer a sense of warmth and comfort that the aforementioned rape shatters. Benjamin spends his weekend running around for the drugs, but also desperately clawing back the reality that he felt so close to finding love. As he runs from gig to gig and friend to friend, he finds those bedrocks that remind him who he is.
A dinner with his long-time friend Agnes (Deragh Campbell) offers a much-needed wake-up call—but the tension with her husband at the dinner table underscores the currents of race and privilege that complicate even seemingly functional relationships. The film smartly observes the dynamics that run throughout a city as dense and diverse as Toronto, often without needing to put these realities into words.
Few words are needed, either, to bring Benjamin back to his happy place. When the musician picks up his saxophone at the film’s end—Clennon also wrote Benjamin’s songs—he practically makes love to the instrument while enriching the nightclub with the tenderness of a warm hug. When Benjamin finally finds himself, you can absolutely feel it.
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