50/48

[telepathically] Eugene Allerton: I’m not weird

Narrative

In 1950s Mexico City, a forty-year-old American lives a lonely life in a small American community. But the arrival of a young student prompts the man to finally make a meaningful connection with someone. Daniel Craig finally convinced Luca Guadagnino to play Drew Starkey after watching Guadagnino’s audition tapes and telling him “That’s his boyfriend” after seeing Starkey..

I’m not weirdWilliam Lee: I knowEugene Allerton: I’m disembodied

Lee… Introducing Orpheus (1950). It’s one of the most boring and pretentious films I’ve seen in years.

Daniel Craig plays the antihero

Except for the soundtrack, which tries to bring this otherwise contrived and dated story of an old gay man going through a depressing search for meaning in his life to life. The extremely slow pace, the pseudo-intellectual dialogues, the caricatured depiction of gay men in the 1950s, the film seems to want to show how lost gays were in those years. Drug addict, sexually impotent, he floats in an unreal world, desperate to find an anchor.

It is sad and pathetic

The film can be seen as a trash version of Luchino Visconti’s famous masterpiece “Death in Venice”. It could be called Death in Mexico. After the highly acclaimed Call Me By Your Name, the director seems to be on the verge of creating a new production that is worth it.