Color Me Bad

I saw this picture at the 'Roze filmdagen' in Amsterdam ("pink movie-days") From the three dutch shorts this one was clearly the best. Though nothing much really happens in the movie, and nothing is made very explicit, the movie keeps it's tension up in a great way, and the images sometimes are pure poetry.

The acting, especially of Abdullah el Baoudi who plays the main character Karim, is intense and superb. Baoudi makes the unusual combination of macho martial arts fighter with homosexual feelings seem perfectly natural. (as it probably is) The impossibility of giving in to these feelings in the society he is in is of great actuality, and it's a good thing the makers didn't give in to the seduction of making a more rose-colored ending.