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In “Amphetamine”, Scud's most visually polished drama about a toxic and intoxicated love between a young Australian financial executive Daniel (Thomas Price) and a straight Hong Kong jack of all trades Kafka (Byron Pang), hope is the only thing permanently absent.

Amphetamine is screening at International Film Festival Rotterdam

The melancholic Kafka is caught between working three jobs to help provide for his sick mother and a not so functional relationship with his girlfriend, who is struggling to understand his broken psyche. When she decides to break off in broad daylight in a posh bar, the boy with the sword has already caught Daniel's eye. Just to make sure we'll understand this instant crush, Scud shows us Kafka's beauty from all sides. Right at the beginning of the film, we observe him giving swimming lessons and being pestered by an elderly man who tells him “he has a body like Michelangelo's”. Soon after,...

Scud's latest effort is a brash, self-indulgent, homosexually charged film - but then no one was expecting it to be anything else. As such, Amphetamine is forced to negotiate a number of tricky hurdles, both on and off screen, which it only occasionally manages to clear successfully. The story details the impassioned affair between openly gay banker, Daniel (Thomas Price) and the closeted, drug-addled lifeguard Kafka (Byron Pang). After spying him looking forlorn in a bar, Daniel offers Kafka a ride in his Ferrari, whisking him off to his luxurious apartment, where he attempts to woo him with his affluent lifestyle. Although we've previously seen Kafka getting paid to give hand jobs in the sauna, he has an ex-girlfriend and insists he is straight. Daniel is not put off however, and invites Kafka to move into his apartment, away from the bad influences of his ice-smoking older brother. But...