Leather 2013

Andrew Glaszek plays Andrew, a gay city-dwelling man who travels with his lover, Jeremy Neal as Kyle, to the mountains to clear out his estranged father’s hoarder-filled home. The journey quickly shifts from a routine cleanout to something far more opaque and emotionally charged, as the trio confronts a complicated past and uneasy present.

There they encounter Chris Graham as Birch, a leather worker who has been living in the father’s house and who has just ended a straight relationship with a woman who moved away. Birch’s presence unsettles the delicate balance Andrew hoped to maintain, and his arrival introduces a volatile mix of charm, secrecy, and need.

Birch arrives with a magnetic certainty, claiming to wield a new will that grants him the home and property, and he has allegedly forged the father’s name on checks. The claim is contested by Andrew, who questions its value and legitimacy. The two men, who were once childhood companions, find themselves drawn into a tense confrontation that blurs lines between resentment, memory, and desire.

What follows is a fraught and intimate negotiation borne out of that conflict. The two men navigate an uneasy understanding, and their interactions take on a dangerous, almost hypnotic heat in the woods, where secrecy and longing intertwine in erotic moments that complicate loyalties and motives. Kyle’s discovery of a gun, a substantial cash stash, and some paperwork that remains unseen adds another layer of danger and mystery to the mounting tension.

The evidence—forged checks, the gun, the cash—begins to feed the viewer’s suspicions: might Birch have killed the father to seize the inheritance, leaving behind a trail of questions and possible lies? The father’s burial on the property, conducted without doctors, a death certificate, or an autopsy, deepens the mystery and invites doubt about what truly happened.

Birch is depicted with a disarming ease that makes people trust him, leaving room for doubt about his true character. Is he a caregiver who lost his way, a crafty opportunist, or something more dangerous—someone who could twist affection into a foothold on the inheritance?

Kyle returns to the city with the knowledge that Andrew is involved with Birch, while Andrew remains entangled in his relationship with Birch. Birch even writes to the ex-girlfriend to encourage a visit, a move that hints at manipulation and the possibility of deeper plans. The film leaves questions in the air rather than offering tidy answers, inviting viewers to weigh Birch’s potential innocence against the darker possibility of calculated deception.

The story unfolds in a moodily renders the tension between trust and ownership, between past friendship and present temptation, as the mountains guard a house—and a legacy—shrouded in ambiguity. It asks whether a person can truly belong to a place—or to another person—when the price of that belonging is measured in doubt, desire, and the ever-present risk of betrayal.