I don't know why the rating for this is so low -- well, that's not true, I do know: it's arty, it's got no dialogue (we have radio weather forecasts in lieu of that), it's in grainy pink, and it doesn't have a story. But it is a successful glimpse into a gay dream, and a successful passing on of that experience -- and the title character, a wonderfully objectified youth, is the perfect gay ideal: pouty lips, messy brown hair, dark features, a fantastic and well-exploited rear, and a sculpted body. And he's unclothed for most of it, a Caravaggio boy.
The film is a good example of ingenuity on the director's part -- it's a small-scale melodrama not unlike those of Guy Maddin, if Maddin was more lushly sensual and less manically comic. It's not a porno, but it is extreme gayness, and the mere essence of that is enough for some people to get it up. But regardless, it is very erotic; a number of scenes (stripping the boy's undies off, sucking his own fingers, slowly humping the ground in nature) push the right buttons. There are some inventive scenes, like the boy getting a beejay from a leather man swimming in a milky liquid (and then after that a urinal-fetish scene). I haven't seen "Un chant d'amour," so I don't know the degree to which this is influenced by Genet, but it does have its parallels to the Genet-inspired third of "Poison." 9/10
