Henry Gamble’s Birthday Party succeeds through paradoxes: it’s a coming of age story, but it all takes place in one day’s time, it’s mostly the story of one individual, Henry Gamble, but to tell that story truthfully it must use a large ensemble of characters. For Henry is not growing up alone, but in a very regulated context, that of his tight-knit nuclear family and more importantly, in the just as tight-knit confines of his church family, both centering on Henry’s pastor father. While a denomination is never explicitly named, the Gambles’ Church seems to be on the Fundamentalist side of beliefs - biblically literal, wary of secular culture, and disapproving of homosexuality. But this is far from a one-note condemnation; most of the church members are portrayed as well-intentioned, if sometimes oblivious, people, trying to live uprightly in a confusing world. But if the larger world is confusing for the adults of the church, that confusion is multiplied for their teenage children, who are feeling their sexuality awaken in ways that scripture hasn’t prepared them for, an awakening that will come to a head at the pool party thrown for Henry’s birthday.

The film begins with the sexual tension already dialed up to 11; Henry (Cole Doman) lies in bed listening to his friend (Joe Keery) describing what he would do if their school’s hottest girl with him. Henry listens attentively, but he’s less interested in the hypothetical girl, than in his friend inches away, as we perceive that Henry is hiding his attraction to men. The next day, we meet Henry’s parents Bob (Pat Healy) and Kat (Elizabeth Laidlaw) as they prepare for their guests and hide their own marital problems, as well as Henry’s sister Autumn, home from her first year of college and trying to reconcile her beliefs with her new experiences. The film is adept at revealing character through small exchanges and plants clues early on at the buried tensions that will erupt before the night is through. Overall, the film shows the character of this church community in general; very interconnected, potentially stifling, full of people who want the best for each other, but who define that in a very narrow way and can only be shaken from those entrenched beliefs by overwhelming evidence.

Director Stephen Cone contrasts the characters’ pious conversations with visuals that luxuriate in exposed flesh, and frequently shows characters’ faces as they see and feel this massive gulf. Music is Henry’s connection to the larger, secular world and in the film the soundtrack is often, relative to the visuals, jarringly loud and bass-heavy, suggesting buried libidinal urges struggling to the surface. The action escalates organically and satisfyingly, if not particularly surprisingly. By the end of the evening, the community’s convictions will be shaken, and many of the characters will have confronted truths they can no longer ignore. Henry Gamble’s Birthday Party is an intimate and sympathetic portrait of a large and (in the movies) underrepresented sector of American life, and Henry’s efforts to reconcile what he’s been taught and what he feels in his heart.