O Fantasma

After I saw this movie here in Lisbon, I walked down the street (actually, this street appears in the movie), from the theater to the subway. It was nighttime. "QUENCH YOUR THIRST!" was scribbled in black graffiti in one of the walls of the station. This is a masterpiece.

I've seen this film twice--once at the cinema and about a year later, on DVD. I too wondered if something had been cut from the film--there is an abrupt transition about three-quarters of the way through that is jarring. As a psychologist, I see this as a work of art that functions, like a dream, to take the viewer into the inner self of the protagonist as well into one's own inner self. While a dream can change scenes abruptly and without logical transitions, the logical mind is still at work as we watch a film, and an illogical or unexplained transtion can actually be distracting, as I found it to be in this film. One further question--or criticism about the editing or story line--the film opens with its climactic scene at the very beginning, involving Sergio, the protagonist, and the object of his obsessive desire. It is extremely erotic and disturbing and putting it right at the beginning--it is never returned to--leaves one with a sense of incompleteness at the end of the film. That said, I found the film to be extraordinarily truthful psychologically, just as our deepest fantasies are truthful--its explicitness was entirely appropriate and not pornographic. The essence of pornography is denial of feeling, but the film is saturated with feeling. The extraordinary beauty of the lead actor will evoke in the viewer either empathy or desire or both--and one admires his willingness to play his role with all stops out and with utter dedication.

Definitely worth seeing.

There is a missing piece of continuity, which the director's commentary ignores by claiming that the last third of the film is fantasy. It would be a spoiler to say what it is, but I found the transition dishonest. Worse, one learns from the commentary that every young male auditioning for the lead part had to do the solo masturbatory shower scene; hundreds did so until finding Ricardo, who was perfect. I am sure there was much enjoyment for the director to watch the auditions, but the horror comes at the sexual exploitation of Ricardo, made clear in the commentary. The director declined to use the actor again, because his body was "used up", leaving Ricardo to move back to live and farm with his mother. The director treats Ricardo as his character Sergio treats his sexual objects, controlling, and then abandoning them. I grieve for Ricardo.

O FANTASMA is not a movie for the casual audience. This dark and seamy vision of sexual confusion is almost unremittingly harrowing, but director Joao Pedro Rodriques drives his vision of a young lad (who lives on the periphery of society and longs to be wanted and loved, even in the 'forbidden world' of same sex attraction) from reality to surreality.

Metaphors abound: the hero works in garbage disposal on the night shift - a stance that sums up his world's view of his persona. Apparently the actor Ricardo Meneses was selected for the lead simply on the basis of his presence and his animal appeal.

This is a rich performance of a boy with an approach/avoidance to his sexuality and Meneses is unafraid to bear it all in his portrayal of passion on the edge. The drive for sexual gratification is dark, sensuous, and bordering on dangerous. His eventual transformation as a 'comic book-like' predator seems natural in the way both director and actor drive this story to its inevitable ending.

The film is VERY dark photographically and while this technique matches the message (this is a story about life in the night), it is difficult at times to visualize the action. The noisy musical scoring becomes almost unbearable at times. But despite these reservations O FANTASMA suggests the debut of a remarkable directorial talent and certainly gives heed to a major screen presence in Ricardo Meneses! Not for everyone, but for those with an eye for something original then try this little film. In Portuguese with subtitles

What no one seems to find in the film is the gradual regression of the hero to a canine level. We begin with his attachment to his dog as the only keen affection in his life -- they kiss, fondle, etc. Like the dog, Sergio tends to judge and eventually express his erotic energy through smell (e.g. the scene where he licks the shower wall), and at the end he is wandering the heaps of refuse poking and smelling at random, as the dog does.

His sexual hunger is probably to be passively possessed, but his culture and friends may demand a more active role. Yet he never finds satisfaction in such a role -- he rebuffs the fellow who's going down on him in the toilet -- and one imagines that what he really wants from the hunky motorcycle driver is to be assaulted and possessed by him. His loneliness and social anomie, as well as his undefined erotic drives, send him down a spiral of dehumanizing impulses until he seems to have forsaken any recognizably human responses.

It's an interesting and original film fantasy (I agree with the comment that "eye candy", perhaps the editor's addition,indicates a pornographic intent) but too simply developed to challenge your imagination.