At some point during this meandering trek from point A to point B, you will wonder 1) did we actually get to a point B at all 2) is there a point to any of this 3) would I hang out with ANY of these characters for a hour much less three days --duh, NO and 4) does this filmmaker really know ANY gay guys in real life at all or does he just surmises that all gay folk are as joyless and vapid as his characters?
VERY derivative of Friedken and Crowly's BOYS IN THE BAND some twenty years its predecessor, and even back then, there was harsh critisism that the story and treatment focused to much on the unhappy and tormented gay, but at least those boys might have been tortured souls in one way or another, but at least they also had humor and were able to to wring out some joy amidst the garbage and the flowers, and there were indeed some lovely flowers. Unfortunately, in this voyeuristic
peek to see what it's like for those queer guys, there's not a flower to be found. If you are watching just for any homoerotic elements...don't hold your breath....even a bit of Bulge and Ass would have at least brought some human quality to the proceedings.
And the above critisism can be blamed squarely on Edgar Bravo's lack of any sort of focus on what we wants to say. The actors seem to do well enough, but at time I sound myself yelling at the screen, "Hey director...give your wooden soldiers some damn DIRCTION! Other than have them give each other "knowing glances" and tension that seems to be just under the surface for which there is no clear explanation. There are only short bursts of anything that resembles authentic.
Then there are the technical horrors. IMDB Tech Specs say this was shot in 35mm, well that might be true, but what is available on the streaming channels where you can see this definitely is not from an original 35mm negative; what we have to look at is most definitely scanned from a 16mm positive release print, with all the dirt and scratch lines clearely visible from the first frame to the last. So along with all the distracting artifacts of a scratched 16mm print with the ridiculously high contrast and practically non-existent grayscale with no detail and the inherent soft focus from whatever 16mm print and how many generations away from the O-Neg THAT was, you had to endure those multiple scratch lines and groups of lines constantly weaving and dance across the screen like a Norman McLaren handpainted film. There's enough dirt to tell me the print wasn't even cleaned before the transfer.
Then there's the sound equally which, without exaggeration, almost unbearable as listening to fingernails scratching across a blackboard. Every "s" is distorted and super sibilant; the Foley effects for some reason are mix much louder than the dialogue so water splashing, doors closing, paper crackling -- they are all startling and distracting in the same way objects being thrown at you in a 3D movie are disconcerting.
I don't know if this were a normal, decent transfer from a pristine 35mm negative and the sound were a normal sounding decent track, would it have made the overall impression better? Probably not; what the filmmaker wants to let us in on the lives of these individuals is pretty uninteresting and quite frankly, they just don't ring true.
