This is a gay-themed, French spoken arthouse film, so next to a serious story you might expect some male nudity and sex. Here however the latter by far predominates, while the narrative is enigmatic, the pace is for the most part extremely slow, dialogues (if any) are scarce, and apart from the many sumptuous sex scenes the screen time is mainly occupied by endless background-images of a building-compound in a snow-covered Canadian city; scenes with real meaningful (non sexual) action are only few and incomprehensible within the context of the (supposed) story.
We see a guy force his way into the apartment and the life of the guy that owns the apartment, and they develop a sado-masochistic relationship. There are no names, there's no kindness or affection, just raw sex. The movie does provide for each of them a tiny bit of background: the one is an injured acrobate in some sort of trapeze act, the other regularly visits a sick mother in a nursing home. It's totally unclear what these sub-plots mean for the story or add to it, or maybe I missed tons of metaphors. The two in the end have a fall-out, again totally unclear why. The very last scene is obviously meant to leave us puzzled at what might have happened, as we see the owner leave the apartment building while police is entering it.
Both characters are extremely unsympathetic, so you couldn't care less what happens to them. I guess I should call both actors brave for doing all these very graphic sex-scenes, but in fact I can only wonder at what they, as well as the director, think to achieve with this. It simply is not a nice or involving or even an interesting film to watch, it just impresses as basically a gay porn movie, alternated with some vague other scenes to fill up the time. I'm gay, I'm no prude at all, and I like sex, but there are a zillion sites on internet for this kind of material, there's no need for a wannabe arthouse film as an excuse.
We see a guy force his way into the apartment and the life of the guy that owns the apartment, and they develop a sado-masochistic relationship. There are no names, there's no kindness or affection, just raw sex. The movie does provide for each of them a tiny bit of background: the one is an injured acrobate in some sort of trapeze act, the other regularly visits a sick mother in a nursing home. It's totally unclear what these sub-plots mean for the story or add to it, or maybe I missed tons of metaphors. The two in the end have a fall-out, again totally unclear why. The very last scene is obviously meant to leave us puzzled at what might have happened, as we see the owner leave the apartment building while police is entering it.
Both characters are extremely unsympathetic, so you couldn't care less what happens to them. I guess I should call both actors brave for doing all these very graphic sex-scenes, but in fact I can only wonder at what they, as well as the director, think to achieve with this. It simply is not a nice or involving or even an interesting film to watch, it just impresses as basically a gay porn movie, alternated with some vague other scenes to fill up the time. I'm gay, I'm no prude at all, and I like sex, but there are a zillion sites on internet for this kind of material, there's no need for a wannabe arthouse film as an excuse.