Ladymol's Review

A recurring image in this film is of the young man returning to a bridge over a motorway. There’s a hint that he’s contemplating suicide.

I found myself wishing he’d jump.

Just don’t bother. This film is too awful to waste my time reviewing it. I have x32 speed on my computer and even that wasn’t quick enough.

Cerisaye's Review

Maybe if I’d seen this film before all the others reviewed here, I’d have been impressed just to see adolescent gay love represented onscreen.  As it is, I was disappointed because the synopsis sounded promising, and I loved the title, but the film didn’t deliver.  The movie tries to be arty but comes over as pretentious.  It didn’t go anywhere and I never felt involved in the main character’s experiences, mainly because I didn’t understand what was going on.  How much of what we see is real or is it in his head? 

Shot in moody B & W (ho hum, at least two other movies we’ve looked at recently share that stylistic conceit so I’ve had enough already).

Set in Mexico, it features Geraldo, a lonely kid looking for grand passion.  As in the romantic songs he likes.  He thought he'd found it, but the other guy didn’t feel the same way. 

It’s meant to be a meditation on the difference between love and sex.  Filled with loneliness and yearning like a hot, hard ache, we follow Geraldo’s progress around the city.  A series of encounters chasing a ghost.  Bruno, his lover who wrote him a letter of rejection (except maybe he didn’t and Bruno is a fantasy). 

So, love hurts.  But we can't live without it.  It must be a two-way process, given and received…yeah, I’m struggling to find meaning here. 

Some good touches.  Cruising is dangerous, as we see when Geraldo picks the wrong guy.  Geraldo's mother rightly worries about her drop-out son, who works in a pool hall and has no real prospects. 

As well as being confusing, it's awfully slow.  Geraldo moons around, lovesick and forlorn, which gets very wearying. 

There's a nice scene in which Geraldo imagines his own hands and mouth are those of his lover, though it’s never clear whether sex really happened.  

Fragmentary and frustrating, it’s very unsatisfying.  The best thing is the way the film shows adolescent desire as something totally consuming.  We've all been there.  Waiting by the phone that never rings.  Seeing the object of our affections everywhere.  Love as an obsessive, destructive force. 

But I got tired trying to work out what was happening, and when it came down to it I just didn’t care enough to bother.  Please don’t waste your money when there are so many better films out there.