Fögi Is a Bastard

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

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.

Yes, Beni gets a target on, mostly, portrayal. Yes, Fogi is not bad either. Yes, we have some realistic scenes, especially the man-slave frustration ones, that means realistic like sentiments ringing true. Yes.

Yet, apart from the early scene when and where Beni discovers the heady spin an orgasm offers, which is rarely if at all represented on screen, the film is not memorable, and all those reviewers who profess the film's high value will be caught with the capital crime of idealizing, which is actually another name if you think about it, of frustrated citizenship. Well, no one escapes this predicament unfortunately, but wouldn't it be better to give a try directing these forces to better appreciations? For I cannot but think that judging by the majority of the reviewers' reactions this is one more case of frustrated gay citizenship meets failed artistic endeavor and masquerading both as the film's and the viewers' achieved meeting. Why?

Fogi is not a fag.

Fogi is not a frog.

Fogi is just a fog. -

With what frequency can you ask yourself the question of what do you know? Not frequently.

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.

The road to perdition is well-travelled and well-documented in movie history. This particular `Road Movie' is set mostly in Switzerland in the mid-1970's, a conceit I see as the one lie in a very truthful film. This could be set anywhere at anytime but if a director is going to film a period piece, then he'd better watch for the anachronisms; they can be his undoing! Watching one more character destroy himself on drugs and booze might have been cliche, however, the two young actors, Frédéric Andrau (Fögi) and Vincent Branchet (Beni), save us from this fate. Both are utterly convincing; I believed everything about them and I believed Beni's love for Fögi in all it's misguided, self-destructive force. The ending, inevitable and tragic, is saved from banality by Beni's `lesson learned', which is as original as it is poignant.