Sam McConnell’s Test, written by Brock Yurich, is a fraught love letter to bodybuilding that flexes with Spartan elegance. Eddie (Yurich) is an amateur bodybuilder eager to go pro. For years, he’s been coached by his mother, an evangelical raising him to physically and emotionally fit the shadow of Eddie’s father, a pro bodybuilder who abandoned the family when he was six. After losing another competition, Eddie quietly approaches a well-regarded coach named Mike. Slowly, things between Eddie and Mike become romantic, and in a dramatic and surprising climax, Eddie is forced to address questions he’s long been letting others answer about who he is and what he actually wants.
This is Yurich’s feature writing debut, and his adoration for bodybuilding breathes life into Test. The movie has an aesthetic of restraint befitting the self-deprivation inherent not only to bodybuilding, but also to Eddie’s faith. It was shot on location in northeast Ohio, where Yurich grew up and began his (short-lived) bodybuilding career. Unknown to most outside barbell sports, Ohio has a huge bodybuilding culture, and Yurich never misses an opportunity to draw from this. He dials in on posing—an oft overlooked aspect of the sport that’s separated many good competitors from the greats—and uses it as an extended metaphor.
I wanted to dislike Test because the film is driven by gay shame and religious trauma; queer movies seem to get made faster if they touch on either of those themes (or AIDS), as if homosexuals can only appear onscreen if they are suffering in at least one of these ways. Between that and how the sex scenes are shot—there’s a disparity in time and sensuality between Eddie fucking his former high school girlfriend versus Eddie fucking Mike—the movie feels like it assumes a straight audience. But I think it’s redeemed by an arresting subtlety, particularly how it contrasts the roles Eddie is assigned with the ones he chooses.
Most interesting is how women entrusted with Eddie’s care regard him compared to who he allows himself to be with Mike. In one standout scene, Eddie runs off after a male coworker accidentally cuts him. A female coworker admonishes the knife-holder, then follows Eddie to comfort him. Quickly things shift from her soothsaying and administering first aid to her sexualizing his physique and slipping his hand between her legs—something it’s unclear if Eddie wants but that he seems to go along with to avoid upset. Overhanging Eddie’s relationship with Mike is the implicit power imbalance between mentee and mentor, but as Eddie repeatedly reminds him, he’s a full-blown adult, not a child. Nothing emphasizes this—and that this isn’t an offspring-parent dynamic, either—quite like Mike’s son showing up and demanding that Mike prep him for the same competition. Mike’s relationship with his son is an effective contrast, not only to Eddie and Mike’s relationship, but also to Eddie’s relationship with his mother.
Some aspects of Test feel underdeveloped, the ending a bit rushed. But Yurich’s debut is confident enough that I wonder: What will his next movie bring? 113 min.
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