Ladymol's Review

I just wanted this movie to finish.  Slow, aimless, grubby, it just went nowhere with occasional and very gratuitous exploitation of male nudity. There’s almost no speech (and it’s in Portuguese anyway) but what there is isn’t worth hearing.

Yes, there are some strong male on male scenes, but hey! I do need some plot.

Perhaps it was brave of the director to make a movie about sex and garbage. But I suspect that most people, like me, would find it utterly off-putting. If the boy sniffed, tasted or licked one more piece of other people’s trash, I was going to turn this off. As it was, I watched the last half hour on fast forward so was saved the actual living on the garbage dump.

Not worth seeing, despite the male nudity—buy some good porn instead.

Cerisaye's Review

This Portugese film is weird and quite disturbing.  It’s about loneliness, unrequited passion and sexual obsession.  What happens when desire is one-sided. 

Sergio (Ricardo Meneses) is a young refuse collector who works nightshift.  Almost all of the movie takes place in the dark hours.  Sergio lives on the margins and has no friends or normal life. He’s got a girlfriend, Fatima, but doesn’t have any real feelings for her. She’s screwing around with their married boss.  And so is Sergio, who likes to play games.

He lavishes love on a dog, Lorde. One night Sergio and Lorde find a cop tied up in a smashed car by the roadside.  Sergio masturbates him then leaves.  A scene typical of a movie with minimal dialogue and no explanation why Sergio behaves as he does.  You must make up your own story from the bare bones of what’s presented onscreen.  Yet when Sergio spends the rest of his evening sniffing and licking his hand I got quite forgiving.

Sergio goes from one casual sexual encounter to another, fierce couplings about appeasing hunger, nothing to do with love or emotion.  These include sessions where he’s dressed head-to-foot in latex.  A toilet blow job that’s the most graphic scene I’ve seen outside of porno.  Hard sex where he’s taken pressed against a railing.  And an incredible masturbation sequence with a shower hose wrapped so tight round his neck it leaves a visible weal.  This is a powerfully erotic film.

Meneses is amazing.  Lean and lithe, with an expressive face and screen presence.  He’s captivating.  Probably the reason for the reputation of the film.  I kept watching mesmerised by his intensity. 

When Sergio meets João, waterpolo player and biker, he becomes totally obsessed, stalking him at the pool, picking up his old Speedos from the rubbish to wear, and even breaking into his house and urinating in his bed, signalling his descent to an animalistic state.

João doesn’t know Sergio exists, so rebuffs him.  That’s when things get weird.  Sergio dons his black rubber to roam around the city, more insect than human, totally withdrawn into obsession.  He breaks into João’s house to abduct him, setting in motion an inevitable slide to disaster.  The protracted ending didn’t satisfy me at all.

I know Sergio hurts just looking at him.  He wants love but casual, anonymous sex is all he’s got.  No one wants to know him as a person not a quick f***, full of shame and anger.  But surely a cute guy like him could find someone if only he went looking in the right places?  His destructive fixation on the swimmer guy brings about his ruin because he doesn’t know what love is and allows animal lust to consume him.  Well, that’s an interpretation. 

We know nothing about Sergio’s background and have only actions to go by.  And yet, it held my attention despite these flaws.  A film about love & desire that’s properly explicit without making a fuss about it.  Pity the story is so underdeveloped I’m left scratching my head.   See for yourself.  Worth watching for its beautiful young star.