The setting, the music and the story weave together to create a slightly hypnotic film. There are only two characters to speak of, the police officer and the young man who trolls the park in search of connecting with others like him.
The officer arrests the young man fairly early in the story and takes him back to "headquarters," where, for the rest of the film, the young man tells his story about how he came to be who he is. This is sometimes done with flashbacks, most which seemed a bit awkward, obvious, forced or disturbing.
The film starts to bog down in the middle and both of the characters begin to wear down on the viewer. The police offers seems fascinated and revulsed by the young man and can only scream at him hysterically, rough him up, or stare at him with a mixture of brooding sexuality, curiosity, despair or some kind of hidden attraction. The young man, on the other hand, seems compelled to tell the police officer the story of his life, whether or not the police officer wants to hear it.
Then, only after the police officer forces the young man to dress up as a woman is he capable of allowing the young man to caress him. This all leads to some sort of hinted at sexual experience that does not seem to end well and the young man wanders off in the dawn, either tragically broken by the experience or soon to explore a new one, it's hard to tell.
The filmmaker tried to cover a lot of ground, and some of it can be appreciated. The main thing I took away from this is: why is it so difficult to allow same-sex people to love each other? When they are continually pushed to the edge of society, what do people think they'll do? They naturally seek each other out, desperate to make a human connection. And for that, they are unmercifully punished and arrested.
This is certainly one of the points the filmmaker wanted to make and he made it loud and clear. But I think he could have done so without resorting to what amounts to a bizarre BDSM/cross-dressing/tragic childhood memory device. But it may be that this experience is/was not so uncommon.
I really hope that now, more than 20 years after this film was made, gay people have more ease of meeting, connecting and establishing relationships. For the tortured young man in this movie and the deeply confused policeman, I don't think that ever happened; as such, one is left with a feeling of deep hopelessness after the end of the film. I will not be revisiting this, that is for sure.
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