Nonfiction films don’t have to be explicitly character-driven, of course, but director Thomas Wirthensohn’s Homme Less is most definitely that, and it benefits from having as its subject a figure who possesses the holy trinity of traits that most documentarians would desire in any interviewee: candor, introspectiveness and the ability to articulate their feelings and desires. A premiere at the Kitzbuehel Film Festival and the Grand Jury Prize winner at this year’s DOC NYC, the deceptively unadorned Homme Less is an affecting, thought-provoking look at a middle-aged indigent man who belies conventional notions of what modern American homelessness looks like.
The film centers on Mark Reay, a 52-year-old New York City fashion photographer and former model who quotes Joseph Campbell and seems fairly self-aware. Fit and possessing a stylish salt-and-pepper haircut (Reay more than passingly resembles an older Montgomery Clift or Rock Hudson, as someone points out late in the movie), Reay subsists on his glamour photography hustle, occasional royalty checks for a handful of past acting appearances, and sporadic day-player work on films and TV shows. He has friends and health insurance (through the Screen Actors Guild, for which Reay says he pays around $280 per month), as well as a gym membership at the YMCA, whose lockers serve as his de facto storage unit. He also sleeps under a tarp in a hideaway nook on the roof of a building across from a friend’s apartment (unbeknownst to said friend).
The exact conditions informing Reay’s vagrancy remain somewhat cloudy (he talks about living in Chelsea much earlier, in the 1990s, and then getting a $30,000 check to move out of an apartment for which he was paying $300 per month), but it’s clear that economic considerations factor heavily into his circumstances. He seems not to have enough money—and specifically regular income—to make monthly rent payments. But could Reay, certainly no idiot, get another job to supplement his freelance photography work? Probably, it seems. But what would then become of his dreams?
Describing his life as one of “great adventures but no real achievements,” Reay oscillates between contentedness and a more understandable anxiousness and depression over his situation. “I really don’t mind it,” he insists early in the movie. “It’s odd, but I feel like a survivor.” Later, after mentioning his inability to ever tell anyone outside of his nuclear family that he loves them, he comes to a darker conclusion, almost whispering, “I’m on the wrong path.” It’s a credit to the movie that both statements feel equally true in the moment.