Plot

An intense and bizarre study of obsession that is by turns lyrical and disconcerting, Duffer tells the deranged story of a teenage boy torn between the womanly charms of a kindly prostitute, and the relentless, sadistic attentions of an older man.—NMulholland8

A grainy, black and white peer beneath the floorboard and the title character Duffer (played in the film by Kit Gleave but given speech and thought by Dumaresq himself on the film's idiosyncratic soundtrack) sits on the riverside, contemplating his lot.We learn that the young man is on an odyssey of sexual awakening, seeking the warm,embracing love of a prostitute, whom he calls Your Gracie,while undergoing sado-masochistic torture and buggery with a rather unhinged older man,Louis Jack. Louis Jack is a man he sees as "only a dream and not a reality at all" as he sits reading his book by the river. Dumaresq's voiceover, as Duffer, traces this polar shift between the kindly prostitute and the insanity of Louis Jack's bizarre and often disturbing physical and mental torture. Yet, Duffer seems to rationalize it all as a process that he must go through because he loves both figures for specific and necessary reasons. All the characters inter-relate on the soundtrack as the images play by.Dialogue becomes narration as Duffer plods around a familiar London with its launderettes,lorries carrying Watney's ales and bedsits have Omo washing powder on their shelves. Duffer submits to asphyxiation,snuff film-making and rough sex.Dumaresq also plays the unhinged Louis Jack and we see that "what Louis Jack liked best was hurting me" as Duffer submits to asphyxiation,snuff film-making and rough sex.We hear strange incantations on the soundtrack, rambling non-sequiturs or cries of "womanimal!" as he wrestles Duffer to the floor in his squalid bedsit. It is the darkest of daddy/son relationships summed up by Duffer's explanation, "Louis Jack was one of the best, one of the nicest. Even now I think well of him. It's just that he shouldn't have done what he did. Still, even if you don't understand why he did those things to me, you can try. I hope you try." There is a later reflection on Duffer's deceased mother as he prepares to jump into bed with Your Gracie in which he considers the surrogate mother figure of the prostitute and comes to the conclusion that even though he didn't have sex with his mother he was well aware that "she was no Virgin Mary... and I was no Jesus either." As Duffer prowls the streets of 1971, and the route between the "flouncy bed" of the mother figure of Your Gracie and Louis Jack's nihilistic and soiled nightmare,we also see the downside of the counter-cultural revolution of the 1960s in the graffiti on the walls around him - "dynamite is freedom" is scrawled on a wall as he walks to Your Gracie's basement flat,"mind how you go"adorns a fence as he walks past a couple beating each other up in the road or he sees the same young couple, drunk, stumbling towards him with a huge billboard behind them, advertising Haig scotch, demanding 'Don't be vague.' Disturbing moments follow as the demonic Louis Jack spews worms from his mouth and covering Duffer's semi-naked body with them. Things come to a head when Louis Jack wants Duffer to become pregnant,and anally rapes him even though Duffer knows it's impossible. There's a sequence where all you can see are the hands and arms of Duffer and Louis Jack reaching out from inky blackness to cook up drugs over burnt down candles."Since Louis Jack wanted me to be a dog,the least I could do was obey his every whim," explains Duffer as Louis Jack drugs the title character in preparation for what he believes is an act of insemination. Sounds of rushing wind and electronic howls dominate the scene, part of a very experimental sound collage that includes the rantings of Louis Jack and the electronica. Duffer believes Louis Jack has made him pregnant,or he goes along with Louis Jack's delusion. Duffer wanders the corridors of his own mind (the encounter in the deserted street with a young mod,the peaches pregnancy test, a pregnant Duffer knitting bootees). Finally,Louis Jack ties Duffer in his apartment and tries to simulate an actual birth, but when Duffer of course cannot give birth to a baby Louis Jack sinks into despair.Duffer walks the streets and sees what he thinks is a little girl with a baby doll and steals the doll but we see it is actually a woman with a real baby.Duffer gives the baby to Louis Jack,who is at first overjoyed it to have a baby,but then his deranged, violent nature kicks and he kills the baby by slamming it on the floor. Duffer hurries away with the baby and finds a female clerk in a store who confirms that it's real and the horrified Duffer runs away and throws the dead baby in the trash compactor. He goes to Your Gracie for help and despair and she reassures him and puts him to bed in one of her dresses, then she goes to confront Louis Jack in his apartment and they argue and Louis Jack kills her in a fit of rage. Duffer has realized this could be a dangerous situation and he rushes to Louis Jack's apartment and finds Your Gracie dead.Duffer finally explodes and stabs Louis Jack to death. Duffer wanders the streets afterward in a daze and finally sits,worn out,by a bridge. The film concludes with the image of a prone Duffer on the riverside.We have heard voice-overs of Louis Jack and Your Gracie intoning "I am thou and thou art I."