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Love, Resentment and the Messiness of Relationships: Love Languages.. and Other Illusions Comes to NewCinema/NewVoices+
Blake J Askew’s debut film Love Languages.. and Other Illusions will be streaming on Whush as part of the NewCinema/NewVoices+ showcase.
Produced in Germany in 2025, the 11-minute English-language film follows Ben and Christian, a couple whose nine-year relationship reaches breaking point during an intense confrontation. Long-held resentments, unspoken expectations and emotional wounds come to the surface, leaving both men facing the possibility that love itself may no longer be enough to keep them together.
Rather than presenting a straightforward account of one partner being responsible for the breakdown, Askew is interested in the contradictions that exist within relationships — and in the possibility that two people can simultaneously have legitimate reasons for feeling hurt.
The film draws partly on real-life events, but Askew says his intention was to move beyond the specifics of one relationship and examine something more universal.
“Relationships are relationships, be they gay, straight, open, poly-amorous etc.,” he explains in his director’s statement. “People are people and by nature, complicated.”
For Askew, it was important that audiences could understand the perspectives of both Ben and Christian. The film deliberately avoids identifying a clear victim or villain, instead presenting two people who continue to love one another while confronting problems that may no longer have a solution.
A Relationship Without Easy Answers
That ambiguity is central to Love Languages.. and Other Illusions.
Askew wanted to create a situation in which viewers might find their sympathies shifting between the two characters as the confrontation develops. Depending on personal experience and perspective, audiences may side with Ben, Christian, both of them — or neither.
The lack of a neat resolution is equally deliberate.
Askew describes wanting the audience to watch something resembling a “car crash unfold,” without providing the kind of definitive conclusion that fiction often imposes on relationships. For him, that uncertainty is closer to the reality of breakups, where responsibility can be shared and questions can remain unanswered long after a relationship has ended.
The filmmaker says reactions to the film have reflected that intention, with different viewers siding with different characters. Others have recognised elements of their own relationships in the dynamic between Ben and Christian.
Askew hopes audiences ultimately take away an acknowledgement that life and relationships can be messy and unresolved, and that a breakup does not necessarily require one person to be entirely right and the other entirely wrong.
Memory in Black and White
The film's black-and-white photography is another deliberate creative decision.
Askew describes the monochrome image as resembling both a memory and a photographic negative, reflecting a story dominated by regrets, recriminations, resentment and loss. Rather than looking objectively at the end of a relationship, the film remains emotionally connected to its past.
Music also plays an important role. Edward Elgar's Cello Concerto is used to mark what Askew describes as the relationship's “point of no return.” He draws a parallel with the historical circumstances surrounding Elgar's composition of the work following the First World War — a period in which the world had undergone changes that could not simply be reversed.
Together, the black-and-white imagery and classical music give the contemporary relationship drama a heightened, reflective quality while keeping the focus firmly on the emotional confrontation between its central characters.
A First Film for Blake J Askew
Love Languages.. and Other Illusions marks Askew's first film as a writer and filmmaker.
Originally trained at South Africa's National School of the Arts, Askew later returned to the United Kingdom and established a career as a classical actor, working across comedy, classical theatre, musicals and opera. The film represents a move into writing and directing, with Askew choosing to begin by drawing upon personal experience.
He describes making the film partly as a form of catharsis, but also as an important first step towards developing his filmmaking career. Writing from something he knew personally allowed him to begin with material he considered raw and organic rather than manufacturing a story simply for the sake of making a debut.
Seven Awards for a Debut Film
The film has already built a strong awards record, receiving seven awards across several festivals.
Among them are Best LGBT Film at the Direct Monthly Online Film Festival, the Audience Choice Award at the Pinewood-affiliated First Time Filmmakers Film Festival, and Best First Time Filmmaker at the Krimson Horyzon International Film Festival.
It also received Best LGBT Film at Cult International Film Festival and Best Psychological Film at Best Hollywood Day Players.
Most recently, the film collected two awards at the Afterlight Film Festival, with Best Actor for Blake J Askew and Best Drama Short.
That recognition provides a notable start to Askew's filmmaking career, particularly for a debut built around an intimate and deliberately unresolved conversation between two people.
Now joining NewCinema/Experiment+ on Whush, Love Languages.. and Other Illusions offers a closely observed examination of what happens when years of accumulated frustration finally enter the conversation.
Its same-sex relationship is important to the characters, but Askew's larger concern is deliberately universal: how two people who genuinely love each other can reach a point where neither is entirely right, neither is entirely wrong, and love may still not be enough.
Love Languages.. and Other Illusions (Germany, 2025), written and directed by Blake J Askew, runs 11 minutes 21 seconds and will stream worldwide on Whush as part of the NewCinema/NewVoices+ showcase.
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