Absence of Love is an intimate and taut portrait of three lives: James and Michael, on the far side of a once passionate romance, and James and Samuel, estranged brothers, coming to terms with their father's death, a Baptist minister in the deep south. The film plays with time: the present, in which the story follows these characters as they form a complex love triangle; the past, through the window of childhood memory; and the love story, out of time and place. A richly textured film, Absence of Love viscerally captures the deep-rooted alienation of gay youth in the African American experience.