Bedtime Stories: Dear Father

Like the Polish director, Walerian Borowczyk, who dealt with controversial subject matter dealing with sexuality Noel Alejandro has made a series of gay erotica. Borowczyk in the main dealt with heterosexuality and Alejandro in the main with homosexuality. I think Alejandro has broken new ground by approaching issues such as profound depression, suffocation as sexual pleasure and gerontophilia. In ' Dear Father ' he takes on the latter by showing explicitly the attraction and repulsion of incest between father and son. Pierre Emo who has made other films with the same director is good as the son, and he manages to show complex emotions on his face that are rarely found in erotic material. Death and desire become one, and I was reminded of the writer Georges Bataille. As a director he is not as baroque or obsessed with fetishism as Borowczyk and this I feel is a good thing. His camera movements are simple and focussed and there is a refreshing directness on how he deals with so-called taboo issues. As he deals with homosexuality in this film his audience will not reach the general public, which due to prejudices is a shame. Incestuous desires and hatreds are real and a part of all our subconscious fears and longings. I applaud him for the excitement of sexuality, and also for what goes on beneath the surface of sexual pleasure.