Probably the best druggy clubby trippy film about gay sex in an Austrian abattoir ever made. I'll give it that!
OK so this is a new film maker and the young actor Simon Fruhwirth is great and certainly one to watch (his only other credit is in the superb psychological detective TV series Vienna Blood, which the BBC Radio Times says is not diverse enough with not enough women in main roles - so it must be good then,. great storytelling instead of preachy woke lectures as most BBC drama).
But the film? Well, it is arty and experimental, made to appeal to that set with the gay themes too. However, it is oddly coy and conservative - no full frontals here, just lots of screen faces contorted in ecstasy. Now that is very boring, either way you look at it. The backstory and set-up would be great for a detective thriller with a few murders to be honest - at least it would add action.
I feel the American actor is added to boost US marketing appeal - and I find it hard to accept this kid would become infatuated with such a person online.
It is rather adolescent in tone, like a film school project maybe BUT it is mercifully short. Does not go anyway really though.
Other films do the druggy trippy thing better like TRAINSPOTTING or 24 PARTY PEOPLE or the recent IN THE EARTH which shares its love of flashing lights and trippy colours. Other films do mental illness and issues with anxiety/gay awakening better (see Belgian film CLOSE by Lukas Dhont).
Or watch the wonderful German film GREAT FREEDOM (2022) based on a true story and an autobiography, which is about how paragraph 175 of the German code dating from 1970s and not removed until 1994, where imprisoned gay men were not released from camps after WWII but reimprisoned by the Allies/US regime in prisons to serve out their sentences for being gay. That is a truly great groundbreaking film, and not coy or shy either.
Anyway I want to give this 3 stars for the bravery and nerve to make it, but it really is a weak film with no story, so 2 stars.