L'ange blond de Visconti - Björn Andrésen, de l'éphèbe à l'acteur

Intriguing story, good cinematography but the overall story felt incomplete at times.

Maybe it was the run time that didn't do it for me, 92 min felt too much for this kind of story and what the creators were trying to say, maybe it's the fact that I personally prefer documentaries with more of a "did he or did he not" feeling in their storytelling.

Maybe that's just me.

Never mind besides my review I really hope the protagonist of the documentary finds his inner peace eventually, he seams like a genuinely good guy.

This is a fascinating documentary, particularly for anyone who knows Luchino Visconti's Death in Venice and is therefore already acquainted with the haunting beauty of the young Bjorn Andresen, who played Tadzio. The Most Beautiful Boy in the World is sumptuously photographed and deftly edited to create a legend around Andresen's main claim to fame - and therein lies the problem. It gradually becomes apparent that the producer-directors of this doco are hellbent on the main narrative being that of a beautiful innocent corrupted and all but destroyed by his youthful brush with movie fame. While nobody ever explicitly speaks in terms of a Death in Venice curse, it's very much implied in the shots of an aged and frail Andresen gazing along the same beach where his younger, more carefree self frolicked while making the film; and in the all-to-clear parallels between the lost, lonely old Andresen and Dirk Bogarde's pathetic, crumbling Aschenbach. What's troubling is that the documentary makers are quite clearly determined not to allow too many facts to get in the way of their myth-making. The emphasis is all on instant fame and the pressures of being labelled "The Most Beautiful Boy in the World" leading to Andresen having a deeply troubled life. In fact, this is 90% of the film, with stern fingers pointed at Andresen's fame-obsessed grandmother and some sly, not-entirely-justified jabs at Visconti for their parts in exploiting the boy. There's much less examination of Andresen dealing with a mentally unstable mother, his mother's grisly death when he was still a child, his loss of his own child to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome or his struggles as a husband and father. All of these likely had a bigger impact on Andresen's life than briefly being a poster boy for youthful beauty, and they can't all be conveniently traced directly to his Death in Venice experience. The filmmakers also curiously omit any mention of Andresen actually having a fairly extensive film and TV career after Death in Venice, leaving the false impression that playing Tadzio not only led nowhere, but more or less destroyed him. Frankly, by the end of this weirdly deceitful exercise I formed the impression that Bjorn Andresen has been more egregiously wronged by The Most Beautiful Boy in the World than he ever was by Death in Venice.

Bjorn Andresson's mother committed suicide when he was very young. He was then cast in Visconti's film 'Death in Venice', as Tadzio, who was, in the eyes of the film's main protagonist, "the most beautiful boy in the world". Subsequently, he does not consider himself to have had a very happy life. We're all made, at least in part, by our experiences; Bjorn, perhaps, was not well-served by his. Because his story is so particular, and peculiar, there's some interest here; but at the same time, things happen to all of us. One doesn't have to blame Bjorn for how his life turned out to see that there aren't stright lines between its beginning and its end; and sadly, there are many people who are unhappy and depressed, even those whose lives have contained little of external note. Sometimes, it's more interesting to watch a documentary than a fiction inspired by the truth; here, I felt that a novelisation of Bjorn's life might bee interesting than a straighforward reporting.

A rare example of extreme proximity to the subject of this compelling documentary.,The moment that he tells about the death of his son is heartbreakingly honest. So much respect for this man that lost his mother, never knew his father, fell into the hands of an over ambitious and selfish grandma, was selected, owned, degraded and discarded by Visconti, couldn't grow up normally because of his instant fame and could never get rid of Tadzio ever again.

There isn't that much written about Bjorn Andresen and not many interviews that I've read but I formed the impression that after making Death in Venice ( a film I love and have watched many times) he became what they call these days "entitled" and assumed because he'd been lucky enough to land the role of Tadzio (which didn't call for much in the way of acting ability,) the rest of his career should have been one long success. This didn't happen though he has had a number of acting roles during his adult life, details of which were hardly mentioned. I got the impression this change to semi obscurity left him resentful. I've met him several times and this impression was borne out. This unflattering aspect of his character was never explored, in case sympathy was lost I suppose. Although for some reason the row with his much younger girlfriend on the phone did give a glimpse of it!

The film was also very unbalanced, a few seconds view only of the famous film and Venice itself, nothing at all of the beautiful Hotel des Bains where it was set and far far too much time spent on his time in Japan. Very little said about his marriage, which ended after (I originally understood) to be the "cot death" of his younger child but in fact according to him, occurred because he passed out on the child while sharing a bed with him through intoxication. There seemed a distance between himself and his grown up daughter too though they were friendly. In fact I wonder whether this emotional detachment is a feature of the Swedish character and a reason why they seem to find relationships difficult to maintain. So I remain unconvinced that the Death in Venice experience as it were paved the way to a later unsatisfactory life, via exploitation etc. It played its part by raising expectations, but any unsatisfactoriness in later life must be mainly attributed to the kind of person Bjorn is.

I was interested to see he has a sister, something I've never till now heard mentioned, and that his mother was much more present in their younger lives than I'd realised. Yes, an intrinsically flawed personality albeit of an intelligent and not untalented man. I don't think we can blame Death in Venice for that.