One of the things that tends to make non-English-speaking films more interesting than their Hollywood counterparts is the degree of imagination that filmmakers are free to exercise. Since there appears to be less pressure to conform to the marketing men's ideas of what should make a profitable movie, these films often have a degree of originality not found in conventional blockbusters. Sadly, in this case, Mr Ozon has chosen to use this freedom to make a tedious, generic, mindless story which the watcher suspects is just thinly disguised sexual fantasy played out in the form of a thriller.
The main issues I have with this film are:
1. The lack of imagination. There are no twists, no unexpected surprises, nothing that suggests that the writer put any thought into the story. Indeed the story seems only to be the means to an end - with the end being the boy's "sexual awakening" (being tied up and buggered by a hermit in a log cabin - seriously!).
2. The characters have absolutely no depth. The girl is just malicious and unpleasant (females = bad) and does next to nothing in the entire film, the boy is limp and aimless (poor confused boy - all he needed was a good raping!) and the hermit was a generic filthy villain who's purpose was just to, well, "awaken" the boy.
3. The subtext. Imagine the boy was a female character instead. Imagine, in this move, that she was raped by a nasty mountain man and discovered that it was what she wanted all along. Offensive? I'd say so!
Technically, the cinematography is fine, the sound is fine etc etc, but in the end the story is paper-thin, the characters are bland and poorly-written, and the message is questionable.
The main issues I have with this film are:
1. The lack of imagination. There are no twists, no unexpected surprises, nothing that suggests that the writer put any thought into the story. Indeed the story seems only to be the means to an end - with the end being the boy's "sexual awakening" (being tied up and buggered by a hermit in a log cabin - seriously!).
2. The characters have absolutely no depth. The girl is just malicious and unpleasant (females = bad) and does next to nothing in the entire film, the boy is limp and aimless (poor confused boy - all he needed was a good raping!) and the hermit was a generic filthy villain who's purpose was just to, well, "awaken" the boy.
3. The subtext. Imagine the boy was a female character instead. Imagine, in this move, that she was raped by a nasty mountain man and discovered that it was what she wanted all along. Offensive? I'd say so!
Technically, the cinematography is fine, the sound is fine etc etc, but in the end the story is paper-thin, the characters are bland and poorly-written, and the message is questionable.