Todd Hayes' feature film debut is a challenging, fascinating and sometimes haunting film that centers around themes of sex, violence, and depravity in relationship to the social norms. The film is split into three intercut stories: "Hero", "Horror" and "Homo". Each of these three unique stories are all done in a very different ways. Hero is told in a faux documentary style about a young boy who kills his father, and then as his mother explains "drifts away to heaven". "Horror" is entirely in black in white and uses a lot of very aggresive camera angles to tell the story of a scientist who discovers a way to create the human sex drive in serum form. Lastly, Homo is a prison drama, which consists of a very dimly lit color scheme about the sexual relationship that develops between two male prisoners. Homo aesthetically reminded me a lot of some of Kenneth Anger's work, which I can only imagine was Haynes intention. The films are all very different but share this overarching theme mentioned above. There are some scenes that really impressed me, like how Haynes visually layers the Adultery scene which takes place in 'Hero', or the spitting scene in 'Homo' which really reminded me of Anger's 'Fireworks'. Watching this film, it was very clear that Haynes was a young filmmaker that had a lot to say and could do so very artfully. Not surprised this won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, although a film like this would have no chance of winning Sundance in this day in age. A fascinating first time feature by Todd Hayes. 8.75/10
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AuthorLove of all things cinema brought me here. Archives
June 2023
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