A love story trying its hardest.

Charlie is a New York, college student who loves love. He loves the way James Dean and Natalie Wood shove their mouths together with the sublime punctuation of a swelling orchestra and the way nothing turns him on more than Laurence Olivier's vow to take Joan Fontaine behind a tree and make "violent love" to her. 

But when Charlie finds his romantic pursuits leading to icky online encounters, seedy back-rooms in leather bars, and the unexpected tears of cute freshmen who aren't "really out," Charlie starts to worry that his homosexuality is an incompatible factor with the classic, Hollywood romance he's aspiring toward.