Director: Darko Stante
Stars: Matej Zemljic, Timon Sturbej, Gasper Markun...
Genre: Drama
Country: Slovenia
Summary: After being sent to a youth detention centre, 18-year-old Andrej has to fight for his place within the group of inmates while getting closer to Zeljko, their informal leader, and struggling to keep his repressed secret in the dark.
I was so looking forward to this movie. Since I saw the pictures I thought how great it's going to be and visually speaking, it is - I think the production is good, scenes have a certain aesthetic to it, actors performed good and they were also handsome, but it's fair to say I did not like the movie at all. I was also very interested because this was a movie from Slovenia. I always look forward to seeing new movies from smaller countries in foreign languages or movies that are not so popular or more indie. I think it's always a bold move for a smaller country to produce a gay-themed movie. To be the first to make a statement like that is not easy.
So, why didn't I like this movie? For a couple of reasons. First of all, it's too depressive. It shows problematic youth behavior. Young people drinking, using drugs, fighting in gangs, bullying each other... By the time I got to the end of the movie, I was expecting for a certain point to be made. What's the point of showing all those negative things in life if you don't have an idea how to make it better or give hope to your viewers? Otherwise, it just makes people lose hope and get depressed in the long run after watching a couple of movies like this one. LGBT individuals are often discriminated against and as such they need some positive outlook on life because most of the time all they hear and all they see - it's all negative, like in this movie. So people start thinking "life is really horrible", but it's not. Life can also be beautiful. This movie is not a representation of life. It's a representation of institutions not doing their damn job.
In the movie we have guards responsible for keeping order in the detention centre, but you can actually see the guards being scared of the young guys because of their violent behaviour. If you can't put up with that kind of job, it's not for you. You should either own up to it or find a different one. Also, there's no sense of community in the centre. If only there was a real friendly person with whom the guys could form a friendly relationship, I think there would be less problems. The boys in the detention centre are sad because nobody gives a damn about them. They were just put there because nobody wanted them and they can sense that the people responsible for them are not genuinely interested, but are doing it just because it's their job.
And that is also probably not the real representation of all the institutions. Some are probably like that, but I honestly hope not all of them are like that? There must be some institutions that do their job well and correct people's behaviour because if not, then that's the real issue here. It's not about life at all. Life can be pretty good actually and not many movies promote that idea.
Also, I don't think the gay flirting thing between the guys in the gang is realistic. I just don't see it happening. Maybe there could be some secret affairs in the gang, but they sure won't be flirting in parties in front of all the other people. I'm close to the age of the guys in the movie so I know how the youth acts. So that was juts unrealistic. Of course, it was sad how Andrej doesn't see that Zeljko is using him and the ending with the poor animal was just horrible.
All in all, I am disappointed in this. It's hard for me to even describe this as a gay movie. It's a drama about detention centres and similar institutions failing to their job well, ignoring the young people who need help. The fact that there is a gay theme involved is actually secondary and could be easily replaced with anything else so long as the criticism stays on the institutions.
No comments:
Post a Comment