GIVE OR TAKE is about love, loss, connection, acceptance, and what it truly means to be home. It’s heartfelt, funny, and real. In the end, we learn that there’s a comfort to the complexities we allow each other, that love can always surprise us, and that a person is far more than the stories we tell about them.
Martin’s (Jamie Effros) a pragmatist who’s checked the boxes of an acceptable life yet feels disconnected, especially from his father, Kenneth, a distant man Martin could never figure out.
Their relationship got more complicated when Kenneth came out after his wife died. For the first time, he was able to live openly and honestly as a gay man. He found love with a younger man, his lawn guy, Ted (Norbert Leo Butz), and they’d been living together in Ken’s house on Cape Cod ever since.
When Kenneth dies, Martin goes home to sell the house while sharing it with Ted. Grieving, they circle each other, butt heads, and negotiate how to remember the different man they both loved, and the significance of what he left behind.