Fögi Is a Bastard

Mandragora meets Switzerland. Amazing detail. Beautifully shot. Extremely complex sequences. Beautiful dialogues. Mesemrising moments. Truthful, yet incredibly depressing. That's what I'd add in a nutshell if you want to dig into this film's nightmares.

Beni's nightmare, that's it. We, who have seen this film, agree that it's a difficult and painful way to go to the end.

Despite its very Swiss environment, it's a film that would fit any time slot since the sixties. Strong and bitter. Sweet and hopeless. Definitely not an American film. Good actors, good script and a good director... all these factors make of F... one of those rare modern films that have it all.

Clearly, French input is all over this movie, and that's always a plus.

The music is another point to look for. Original music not to be found anywhere; a couple of Lou Reed's good songs and a heartbreaking end with Patti Smith's "Wings". Forget about the gay themed thing, this is a film to make you think, seriously!

I doubt anyone would endure just walking out as the credits roll.

This gay-friendly Swiss French film about a drugged-out punk singer who has an obsessive, dysfunctional affair with a 15-year-old boy groupie pushes the edge of the permissible and the believable and does not go anywhere but downhill, though it isn't without a certain sweetness. Deserves a tiny but special spot in the roster of drug and music films somewhere is a remote branch off from Velvet Goldmine and Sid and Nancy. More than that, it is courageous and tasteful in its straightforward and sexy treatment of man-boy love, and one can well understand that some viewers find it very special. Both of the principals are attractive, and Fögi may be a bastard, but he has a lot of charm as well.

Judging by the few IMDb votes this film has, and the fact that it's seven years old, it appears that this one escaped the consciousness of even the gay audience, which is a shame, because it's actually very good. Its emotional detail is just about note for note on target. I'd put it in the same class with "Edge of Seventeen," a deceptively simple movie with the same kind of quiet, intelligent emotional resonance. (I'm looking forward to see if I can get some of Gisler's other movies, which looks like it may be a task.)

The film starts, "Sunset Boulevard"-style, with a tragedy, but luckily the film proper is fully fleshed-out -- it doesn't feel like an afterthought; it's more like the framing device used is a nice little stylistic device. It doesn't need to be there, but it doesn't detract, either. I felt while watching it that the film would make a very good book -- and it was based on one, apparently. But because this is a film, and a fairly small-budget one at that, it focuses primarily on the intimate, and that's what makes it such a consistent pleasure. The intimacy is quite startling; the first sex, for instance, with Beni's spit dangling from his lip to Fogi's skin, exploring Fogi's body with his lips and nose. It's incredibly erotic. But better than that, there's a rare tenderness that's very admirable. And I don't just mean their kisses (though that is part of it), I mean the generosity the filmmaker gives to the characters, the way he indulges in the druggy ecstasy of the first lust/love but also doesn't shy away from their tendency toward self-hatred.

Their relationship is very much a role-playing game: it's the rock star fantasy, and Beni, in his tight shirt, is a male groupie -- Fogi's special boy. His infatuation with Fogi makes sense if we get in his head, but the film doesn't make us feel it, especially; we don't feel the "rebellion" that Beni sees in Fogi (and Fogi's music isn't very memorable, or outrageously "rock"). As the relationship deepens, the role-playing becomes more sexual in nature, but the undercurrent of damaging emotions remain. Beni becomes a slave boy to his studly master, and the emotional degradation we begin to witness (Beni clinging, in his underwear, to Fogi's legs as he kicks him out) brought to mind Frank Norris' writing -- Beni barking like a puppy dog for sexual play, but also with a degree of self-loathing. (It recalls the rush of contradictory emotions in the scene in "Blue Velvet" where Isabella Rossellini begs Kyle MacLachlan to hit her.) It would seem that, when we see this formerly innocent fanboy now nuzzling his face in Fogi's crotch after having been humiliated by him (Fogi pours milk on him when he refuses to move), the Beni character has taken an unbelievable turn, but the transitions -- both of the film and of Beni's character -- feel smooth. (And the emotional specificity of the sexual games ring incredibly true.)

I think, by the time the end comes around, a certain sense of sadness permeates the film that is quite fine. The ending works according to the delusional aspect of the relationship -- at first Beni's recollections seem almost ridiculous, but it's very much in tune with what we've just seen. Heartbreaking, because kids do think like this. 9/10

From the other comments {as of 2001 when I first wrote about this film here} you might think "Fogi is a Bastard" is a total loser film; but I think those others missed the boat on this one. It remains the #1 film I'd like to own on video, one that actually breaks new ground in examining a hot, if dysfunctional, gay love affair. For me, it was the best film at OUTFEST 1999; and even though as a film it probably is not a masterpiece, as a gay film it is so amazing and mind blowing that it has replaced "Law of Desire" (by Almodòvar), as my all-time favorite gay film. Vincent Branchet plays Beni, a schoolboy in 1974 Switzerland, who develops a crush on Fogi the notoriously gay lead singer/guitarist of a local punk band, "The Minks". They form a relationship which starts out as innocent puppy dog attraction with wonderful sex, and which devolves to heavy sado-masochism as Fogi descends into heroin addiction and starts hiring out Beni as a call-boy and treating the willing and cooperative Beni as his dog (too bad the more apropos title, "My Life as a Dog" was already taken). It sounds unpromising, I know. Yet the film is such an unsparingly realistic portrayal; the actors so outstanding (Branchet is both the most attractive young actor and one of the best actors period that I've seen in several years; and Frederic Andrau, who plays Fogi is no slouch, himself) that it all works. The film is beautifully shot in a realistic, gritty style with a very mobile camera which defies description (a scene where the characters have dropped LSD and the whirling camera is used as a metaphor for their internal state is simply stunning.) It is exciting and innovative film making, and the director Marcel Gisler is one to watch for. This is a film I would go back to see over and over if it were ever to get a release here.

I finally got to see this film again on DVD in March, 2012; and the film has lost none of its power to shock and amaze. Twelve years have passed since I saw it, and still no other filmmaker has managed to make a gay themed dramatic film which so ardently and truthfully managed to capture the unvarnished essence of the sex, drugs and Gothic Rock gay culture of the '70s. This film might have been set in Switzerland; but it could have been set anywhere that gay people congregated in that pre-AIDS, post-Stones era. This film remains a milestone of the gay cinema and deserves its place in the canon.

I was so surprised to see this movie. How is it possible that a film like this is so unknown! The story brought me back to the time when I was 15 years old. I recognized so many things, feelings. Feelings of loving someone I admired, feelings that were confusing, sometimes despair, sometimes top of happiness. This films brings a lot of feelings to the surface and I am so happy that a director is possible to do this. The story is not commend, has great surprising moments. And the actors are awesome good. You understand I do not agree at all with the first review on this movie. But maybe he didn't live in 1973. This movie gives a insight if that time. A time I was 14/15 and a time that it was not bad that I liked a guy ten years older then myself. SEE THIS MOVIE! Love to you all Bert