This riddle of a film is directed by a man who narrates the DVD with a commentary that makes about as much sense as the film. When you finish hearing it, you will have no more understanding of the story or characters than you did before--except for one thing. You will learn that he harbored sexual fantasies about young garbage collectors that he viewed as they went about their tasks outside his window. Thus, he made up a scenario about such fantasies.
The faults are extensive, beginning with the disjointed screenplay which sheds no light at all on any of the authority figures surrounding the young protagonist or why they are all forcing him to submit to sexual humiliation. His obsessive desire for the man of his dreams is based on one chance meeting and thereafter he stalks the man until he finally "catches" him--by tying him up in tape and handcuffing him, then depositing him in a dark alley behind his house where he leaves him to wander off to a place that holds endless fascination for the director--a garbage dump.
The sexual scenes are not even sensual, let alone truly erotic, and most of them take place in the dark, with some of them simulated and not graphic at all. The actors are all unknowns with no previous experience and go through their paces with a modicum of credibility.
It's as though the director tried to say something important without saying anything at all except to give us visual images of a deserted landscape, a handsome boy and his quest for some sort of sexual bonding with another man. But a story about dark obsession needs a script, needs characters, needs a beginning, middle and end and this has no structure at all. Fittingly, it all ends in a garbage dump.
It's a riddle that not even the Director's Commentary clears up. He himself seems to make no sense of most of the proceedings, so why should we? It's pretentious, at best, and hardly more than a cheap exploitation film.
Astonishingly, it has won a few awards at film festivals which can only make you wonder what they were thinking.
The faults are extensive, beginning with the disjointed screenplay which sheds no light at all on any of the authority figures surrounding the young protagonist or why they are all forcing him to submit to sexual humiliation. His obsessive desire for the man of his dreams is based on one chance meeting and thereafter he stalks the man until he finally "catches" him--by tying him up in tape and handcuffing him, then depositing him in a dark alley behind his house where he leaves him to wander off to a place that holds endless fascination for the director--a garbage dump.
The sexual scenes are not even sensual, let alone truly erotic, and most of them take place in the dark, with some of them simulated and not graphic at all. The actors are all unknowns with no previous experience and go through their paces with a modicum of credibility.
It's as though the director tried to say something important without saying anything at all except to give us visual images of a deserted landscape, a handsome boy and his quest for some sort of sexual bonding with another man. But a story about dark obsession needs a script, needs characters, needs a beginning, middle and end and this has no structure at all. Fittingly, it all ends in a garbage dump.
It's a riddle that not even the Director's Commentary clears up. He himself seems to make no sense of most of the proceedings, so why should we? It's pretentious, at best, and hardly more than a cheap exploitation film.
Astonishingly, it has won a few awards at film festivals which can only make you wonder what they were thinking.