From writer/director David Bly, and starring Leah Rudick (“Maid to Order”), Casey Biggs (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine), and David Bly (Same Boat), Sweet Parents premieres on digital this November from Quiver.
When members of a couple each have their own Sugar Mama or Sugar Daddy, they are effectively the dependents of Sweet Parents.
Sweet Parents follows the pursuit of success, and subsequent struggle, in the New York culinary and art worlds. Gabby, a sculptor, and Will, a chef, start side relationships with a successful older man and woman, or “Sweet Parents”, in the last-ditch hope of supporting their careers, ultimately pitting true love against ambition, demanding the sacrifice of the one you love for what you love.
Says director Bly, “Sweet Parents is incredibly timely — and becoming perennially so — as many artists, from the celebrated and renowned to the starving and unknown, are publicly lamenting their frustration with an increasingly expensive and oppressive New York, and opting to build new true artistic communities in cities across North America. The concept of older benefactors — sugar mamas/sugar daddies, or Sweet Parents, as we have labeled them — is trending in the zeitgeist, as young entrepreneurs are finding it to be the only way to make ends meet. The film explores the act of sacrificing the one you love for what you love and the consequences and feeling of numbness that can come with that decision. It explores the idea of jealousy in a relationship, although not the traditional, sexual manifestation, but rather how one’s feeling of self-worth and security in a relationship changes when a new acquaintance can better your partner’s life in a flash. After spending years supporting a partner’s attempts to be successful with uninspiring results, the prospect of someone else coming in and fulfilling those dreams with such ease would be excruciating.
Sweet Parents is not about the starry-eyed young couple fresh to New York, full of fire and passion, but rather, it’s about the couple that is burnt out, contemplating giving it all up, asking themselves “What’s the point? Why are we still here?” and making one last-ditch effort to avoid the feeling that they’ve wasted the last decade of their lives.
This is the film about the ride home on the subway where you stare at your feet, unsure why tears are forming, hoping you could ride forever. This is the film about holding your lover’s hand tightly as you walk through crowded streets, wishing you could make the whole world theirs, wondering how old is too old to still be ‘a fuck-up trying to figure it all out’. This is the film about having a dream so strong, that you’d make a terrible decision just to see it through, only to regret having ever dreamed it at all. Sweet Parents tells the story of how the greedy and covetous undertones of one of the greatest cities in the world can tear through a love so deep, leaving one to question if those decisions and sacrifices made along the way to the top were worth the price of getting there.”
The theme is reminiscent of other films addressing the strength or boundaries of relationships but unique in its delivery, character development, and charm. It’s a watchable drama, structured around the performances of a credible and competent cast.
Movie Rating Guide
1 Star = Unwatchable
2 Stars = Cannot Recommend
3 Stars = Great for the Fans
4 Stars = A Solid Movie
5 Stars = Must Own (DVD/Stream Download)
From Quiver, Sweet Parents is available On Demand on November 24.
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