The movie opens with a very good-looking man driving a truck along a desert highway. It is Teddy Rappaport (John Ort), a young aspiring writer on his way to his professor's isolated house to complete his first novel. He stops to pick up Leo Spaulding (Gregory Marcel), a handsome man waiting at a bus stop and the the mysterious caretaker of the house. When Leo and Teddy first meet they have sex after a beautiful interlude in the sun. Thus begins a romance which is filmed as soft core porn. Layers of memory and hallucination unfold that intertwine the two men. This is is the only part of the film that seems real.
Suddenly the plot switches both locations and chronologies and no explanation is given why. What could have been a beautiful love story becomes nonsense and questions are left unanswered, and even if we knew the answers I don't think we would care. When Teddy attempts a drunken seduction, Leo reveals a murky, mysterious and possibly dangerous past. What is the true nature of Leo’s relationship with Crispin (George Stoll), the older gay gentleman who owns the desert house where the two young men are staying? We witness Leo's slow sexual awakening, in painful conflict with his prejudices, obsessed with the idea "I am not homosexual." It is the supposed heterosexual who appears inwardly divided, in contrast to Teddy who knows that he is "completely" gay and draws an inner balance from this consciousness, in spite of his moments of despair. The loneliness of this couple in the middle of the loneliness of nature creates lots of atmosphere.
Intrigue and surrealist imagery dominate this gay-themed drama. Contemporary issues of sexuality, identity and creativity are explored through the young men's quests for love and intimacy. However, a plot with possibilities has poor and clumsy editing, horrible close-ups, and the overuse of the word "amazing". "Sun Kissed" is not a good movie. Typical viewer comments are "This is a nothing movie with a nothing story that feels and looks like a bad high school play" and "The quality of the film was horrible, sections of the movie must have been filmed with an 8 mm camera." It does have redeeming features though: good looking men, nudity and great music. Rockers "The Sea and the Cake" supply the music and if the songs were not there the plot would have been a disaster and the underlying bisexual theme would have suffered. Yet the music alone cannot make a good movie. It seems to be an Irish stew that would be a fine short, but as a full length film it falls flat. Of course, it does have some admirers. Patrick McGuinn wrote the screenplay and directed. He is the son of former "Byrds" rock band member Roger McGuinn.
