We need to talk about Jacob Elordi. Again.
The 26-year-old Australian actor first rocketed to fame via Netflix’s teen juggernaut The Kissing Booth, then shed the heartthrob gloss with darker, brooding turns in Euphoria and Saltburn, proving he’s more than just cheekbones and charisma (though he has plenty of both). Now, with On Swift Horses, Elordi trades in the chaos of modern-day drama for a tender, stripped-back queer love story — and the result is pure cinematic thirst trap meets emotional gut punch.
Not because he’s impossibly tall or sculpted like a Greek god (though, let’s be honest, he is). No, this time it’s because he’s finally delivering the tender, sultry, queer romance we’ve all been starving for — and the heat he brings opposite Diego Calva in On Swift Horses could burn a hole through your screen.
“It’s hard not to do a hot scene with Jacob shirtless,” Calva said in his Attitude cover interview. Which — fair. “Believe me, being naked around Jacob Elordi is intimidating! He’s like a fucking god! He’s too perfect!”
Yes, Diego. We noticed.
The film doesn’t flinch when it comes to their affair — it dives right in, all white briefs, whispered glances, and bodies in motion. They meet in the rafters of a casino, drenched in neon and suspicion, and from there it’s a quick slide into unspoken connection, late-night confessions, and some of the most emotionally charged sex scenes queer cinema’s had in recent memory. These are not the usual blink-and-you’ll-miss-it “representation” crumbs — this is love, lust, longing, and a whole lot of Jacob Elordi looking like temptation incarnate.
“They’re two sweet guys who really fall in love,” Calva said, recalling what director Daniel Minahan emphasized on set. “I don’t want a classic story of tragedy around these queer characters and then they have kinky sex — no, no, no.” Instead, what unfolds is a romantic slow dance, made more powerful by its refusal to sensationalize. There’s no shame. No tortured coming out. Just two men drawn to each other, trusting one another in a world that offers them no safety — except in each other.
Elordi plays Julius like a man with a dozen locked doors inside his chest, and Calva’s Henry is the only one with a key. Their scenes together crackle — not just with sexual chemistry, though there’s plenty of that — but with something rare: softness. In a hotel room that becomes their secret hideaway from the world, they’re not con men or outcasts. They’re just boys, giddy with love. “It’s like when you fall in love with your first love when you’re eight,” Calva explained. “Something really sweet, platonic, in a way.”
That kind of sentimentality could feel saccharine in lesser hands. But Elordi grounds it with a performance that’s raw and aching — like he’s carrying every queer kid who’s ever had to love in the shadows. The way he looks at Calva? It’s poetry. And when he loses him, the heartbreak is palpable. He searches across cities and borders not just for Henry, but for a version of himself that dares to believe love like that can last.
Minahan — who also helmed the gloriously gay Fellow Travelers — knew exactly what he was doing. On Swift Horses is queer not just in plot, but in spirit. The clandestine meetings. The coded glances. The fact that Julius and Henry never have to name what they are to each other. It’s the kind of story that speaks in the language so many of us know intimately: “I see you. I want you. Let’s run.”
And while the film shares its screen with Daisy Edgar-Jones and Will Poulter, let’s be real: this is Elordi and Calva’s world. Everyone else is just visiting.
So, is On Swift Horses as gay as we hoped? Gay enough to make you clutch your pearls and your crush’s hand. Gay enough to linger in your mind long after the credits roll. And gay enough that when Diego Calva says “It’s hard not to do a hot scene with Jacob shirtless,” you’ll nod and say, same.
Jacob Elordi, thank you for your service. And by “service,” we mean that scene — you’ll know it when you see it.
I get that this isn’t a review although it does appear that Eugene actually saw the movie and isn’t just retyping stuff from Attitude and elsewhere, but this is mostly a good showcase for Edgar-Jones, who notwithstanding how nice Elordi looks at the start in his cap and pea coat (which was probably free versus the $300-500 one would pay for a good quality wool peat coat for a 6’6″ man today), and that dear skin jacket he runs around in Tijuana, but Daisy gets all the glam scenes and even her and Sasha in their underwear dancing look better than Diego and Jacob in their boys white briefs.
I almost think those scenes would have been better if Henry wore something skimpier, with color, that looked perhaps what people might think a kid from Mexico would wear, and that Julius’ character was in the wife beater but with white, naval surplus boxer briefs, especially with how tall and certainly how very lean Jacob Elordi is. I do agree that the kissing and faux frottage shown between them is decent, but again Edgar-Jones gets more heat in her two sex scenes with Sasha Calle than in the multiple scenes between the guys.
The plot holes and especially the ending (sometimes, as a friend of mine said afterwards, a horse should just be a horse, and not a metaphor) make it clear that this was directed by someone from TV; talented yes, but this needed either to be about Daisy-Jones, or been about Henry and Julius (with many of those San Diego scenes cut out); it was TV clear that Henry was going to take the money and do what he did, but all those scenes, and the Tijuana scenes, have no real urgency because they make no sense. We don’t need to know why Henry would fuck up something and then, off screen, travel to whole other town for a coincidental coda, or how Julius all of sudden turned from someone who didn’t make connections in the first hour to someone deeply feeling for someone else in the second.
Don’t get me wrong, everyone I went with was glad to have spent the time. It gives a B-List Brokeback feel, except Julius doesn’t share Jack’s fate and Henry doesn’t have Ennis final set of scenes. But we were also glad to catch a late afternoon matinee and not to have paid full price.
Also, at least we got to see one of the boy’s ass, if barely, even if it wasn’t Jacob or Diego’s.