I generally go to bat for Pat Rocco, but SOMEONE is near impossible to sit through. Pitched as an introspective melodrama, it's really more of a student exercise - evidence of a good director starting to learn his craft, but utterly narcotizing as cinema.
The statuesque Joe Adair, also of Rocco's later (and infinitely better) DRIFTER, stars as the unnamed protagonist, first glimpsed getting out of bed, wandering to his bathroom and going about his daily routine. A model, Adair is called in by lecherous photographer Joe Caruso, where he engages in a silly montage while being photographed in a variety of mod '60s outfits. Having met the luscious Bambi Allen on the way to the shoot, Adair pops by her place and they have dinner, after which Allen paints him in the nude. But a luscious young hitchhiker (David Russell) Adair meets soon after may spell doom for this budding courtship, as well as for Adair's macho self- image.
Containing about 10 minutes of plot dragged out to a grueling 80 of runtime, SOMEONE is a film school endurance test, where every scene and movement is stretched to infinitely languid and repetitious extremes. Curious about Adair's digs? You'll get to spend 5 minutes surveying his apartment while listening to him whistle in the shower. Wondering how Adair gets from his place to the photo shoot? Fear not, Rocco documents the process with almost cartographic fervor. And don't get me started on Adair's dates, where (first) he and Allen spend minutes caressing the spines of her books as though high on ecstasy and (second) he and Russell endlessly wander the beach with a bottle of champagne. By the time Adair plunks down in a piano bar to watch a sad-sack chanteuse sing a broken-hearts anthem, I thought I was about to slip into a coma, a escape which by that point would have come as a welcome relief.
Credit where credit's due, Rocco does know how to frame a shot, and he delivers knock-out after knock-out in the outdoor scenes, while also managing a number of interesting gel-tinted set-ups inside. The problem is that these aesthetic flourishes are all the film has going for it, and even they're pretty shaky. While the compositions are often excellent (a back-lit Adair and Russell on the beach, Adair and Allen bathed in red and blue by the fireplace, etc.), they're edited together with the crudeness of a first- year student film, repeating the same type of shots (panning from a scenic vista to a character, racking focus to start a scene, etc.) ad nauseum and butting them together like a reel of outtakes more than a finished film. While SOMEONE's basic plot is profoundly simple (and theoretically plenty engaging), the film swaths it in so many layers of over-stylized nonsense that by the time viewers can figure out what it's going for, they've long stopped caring.
Pat Rocco was a pioneer of gay cinematic representation, directing not just some of the first male nudies of the late '60s, but many even more important historical documents of the burgeoning gay rights movement. As his early shorts show, he was certainly capable of delivering sexy and entertaining fiction films as well, but SOMEONE reveals him as not quite ready for prime time. Nearly impossible to see at this point (the few copies that survive seem to reside solely in archives), SOMEONE, it pains me to say, is probably better off that way, an early experiment recommended only for die- hard Rocco enthusiasts and those with near limitless patience.
The statuesque Joe Adair, also of Rocco's later (and infinitely better) DRIFTER, stars as the unnamed protagonist, first glimpsed getting out of bed, wandering to his bathroom and going about his daily routine. A model, Adair is called in by lecherous photographer Joe Caruso, where he engages in a silly montage while being photographed in a variety of mod '60s outfits. Having met the luscious Bambi Allen on the way to the shoot, Adair pops by her place and they have dinner, after which Allen paints him in the nude. But a luscious young hitchhiker (David Russell) Adair meets soon after may spell doom for this budding courtship, as well as for Adair's macho self- image.
Containing about 10 minutes of plot dragged out to a grueling 80 of runtime, SOMEONE is a film school endurance test, where every scene and movement is stretched to infinitely languid and repetitious extremes. Curious about Adair's digs? You'll get to spend 5 minutes surveying his apartment while listening to him whistle in the shower. Wondering how Adair gets from his place to the photo shoot? Fear not, Rocco documents the process with almost cartographic fervor. And don't get me started on Adair's dates, where (first) he and Allen spend minutes caressing the spines of her books as though high on ecstasy and (second) he and Russell endlessly wander the beach with a bottle of champagne. By the time Adair plunks down in a piano bar to watch a sad-sack chanteuse sing a broken-hearts anthem, I thought I was about to slip into a coma, a escape which by that point would have come as a welcome relief.
Credit where credit's due, Rocco does know how to frame a shot, and he delivers knock-out after knock-out in the outdoor scenes, while also managing a number of interesting gel-tinted set-ups inside. The problem is that these aesthetic flourishes are all the film has going for it, and even they're pretty shaky. While the compositions are often excellent (a back-lit Adair and Russell on the beach, Adair and Allen bathed in red and blue by the fireplace, etc.), they're edited together with the crudeness of a first- year student film, repeating the same type of shots (panning from a scenic vista to a character, racking focus to start a scene, etc.) ad nauseum and butting them together like a reel of outtakes more than a finished film. While SOMEONE's basic plot is profoundly simple (and theoretically plenty engaging), the film swaths it in so many layers of over-stylized nonsense that by the time viewers can figure out what it's going for, they've long stopped caring.
Pat Rocco was a pioneer of gay cinematic representation, directing not just some of the first male nudies of the late '60s, but many even more important historical documents of the burgeoning gay rights movement. As his early shorts show, he was certainly capable of delivering sexy and entertaining fiction films as well, but SOMEONE reveals him as not quite ready for prime time. Nearly impossible to see at this point (the few copies that survive seem to reside solely in archives), SOMEONE, it pains me to say, is probably better off that way, an early experiment recommended only for die- hard Rocco enthusiasts and those with near limitless patience.
