O Fantasma

O FANTASMA is not a movie for the casual audience. This dark and seamy vision of sexual confusion is almost unremittingly harrowing, but director Joao Pedro Rodriques drives his vision of a young lad (who lives on the periphery of society and longs to be wanted and loved, even in the 'forbidden world' of same sex attraction) from reality to surreality.

Metaphors abound: the hero works in garbage disposal on the night shift - a stance that sums up his world's view of his persona. Apparently the actor Ricardo Meneses was selected for the lead simply on the basis of his presence and his animal appeal.

This is a rich performance of a boy with an approach/avoidance to his sexuality and Meneses is unafraid to bear it all in his portrayal of passion on the edge. The drive for sexual gratification is dark, sensuous, and bordering on dangerous. His eventual transformation as a 'comic book-like' predator seems natural in the way both director and actor drive this story to its inevitable ending.

The film is VERY dark photographically and while this technique matches the message (this is a story about life in the night), it is difficult at times to visualize the action. The noisy musical scoring becomes almost unbearable at times. But despite these reservations O FANTASMA suggests the debut of a remarkable directorial talent and certainly gives heed to a major screen presence in Ricardo Meneses! Not for everyone, but for those with an eye for something original then try this little film. In Portuguese with subtitles

I've seen this film twice--once at the cinema and about a year later, on DVD. I too wondered if something had been cut from the film--there is an abrupt transition about three-quarters of the way through that is jarring. As a psychologist, I see this as a work of art that functions, like a dream, to take the viewer into the inner self of the protagonist as well into one's own inner self. While a dream can change scenes abruptly and without logical transitions, the logical mind is still at work as we watch a film, and an illogical or unexplained transtion can actually be distracting, as I found it to be in this film. One further question--or criticism about the editing or story line--the film opens with its climactic scene at the very beginning, involving Sergio, the protagonist, and the object of his obsessive desire. It is extremely erotic and disturbing and putting it right at the beginning--it is never returned to--leaves one with a sense of incompleteness at the end of the film. That said, I found the film to be extraordinarily truthful psychologically, just as our deepest fantasies are truthful--its explicitness was entirely appropriate and not pornographic. The essence of pornography is denial of feeling, but the film is saturated with feeling. The extraordinary beauty of the lead actor will evoke in the viewer either empathy or desire or both--and one admires his willingness to play his role with all stops out and with utter dedication.

Definitely worth seeing.

Unlike the other reviewer of this movie, I thought it was a stunner. Yes, it's odd, and yes, it's shot in a lot of darkness, but I think it works. It's like a parable -- simplified, cut to the bone. We know little about the protagonist, or why he does why he does; we're just told the story, in all its bizarrerie. He seems more like a dog than a human (as his growling etc shows), but there's no pop-psychology here, no explanations, just the story of his movement into ever darker depths of bestial behaviour. It's not light, but it is extremely sexy -- the scene where he puts on a pair of old motorcycle gloves, salvaged from the garbage he collects by day, and starts to caress himself sends a shiver down the spine. Other scenes are more brutally direct, but the movie's lack of coyness makes it as refreshing as it is disquieting. I found it riveting.

This is a somewhat interesting idea - if it really went anywhere. I enjoyed the first act as the young man becomes obsessed and I hoped the film would go further and to more mature places. The film just feels like a very long excuse to watch the gorgeous young man who plays the lead with no clothes on - and he's nude constantly for those who are interested in that.There's nothing wrong with making a hot film but honestly, this goes nowhere and manages only to raise a few interesting questions and then do zero with them.

I can't help but feel it's a protracted excuse to see this 18 year old beauty in his all his narcissistic glory. The filmmakers seem confused in their own descriptions of the action on the commentary track and seem to think that "Shocking Images" equals a strong film. Nah, not by a long shot. It's hardly the hard-hitting exploration of intense obsession it tries to be and succeeds only in being a pictorial of a this guy.

One need only to see the "special features menu" where it lists "eye candy" and each scene of the young man in his glory is featured for added pleasure. Come on now gentlemen... who are the filmmakers and anyone who seriously watched this film kidding? I'm all for a serious, dark explorations of taboo but this is not it.

`O Fantasma' is definitely a disturbing movie. After seeing it, surely you will leave the movie theater thoughtful, impressed and full of pessimism. A movie that makes you think about loneliness in the big urban areas. A story that may be happening outside your house, while you live a comfortable life inside. It is a lonely world that belongs to the night, to the shadows, making part of the underground of the big cities. Once belonging to this world, it seems that its habitants are deteriorated into indigent human beings, who lose their names, homes and origins.

The movie tells the story of Sergio who works at night as a garbage collector on a big city. He lives alone with his dog - and that introduces you into a universe where man and animal live under merged boundary conditions. Sergio is a lonely guy. Homosexual, he keeps himself away from a female job colleague who is always flirting with him. He has no lover, family or friends. But he seems to be always in the company of an enormous desire, which will conflict with his own loneliness.

Loneliness and desire summarise Sergio's reality and push him into a primitive world, where man becomes animal. The protagonist tries to consume his strong sexual desire through anonymous, casual and wild sex. Thus, it is on the dark corners, public toilets and other filthy places where Sergio tries to satisfy his sexual impulse. But the promiscuity of those moments does not appear to satisfy him, since his desire leads him to the figure of an attractive swimmer guy. A guy who lives in one of the districts that Sergio runs into his night shifts, during his journey of work and garbage. That hard and solitary reality makes desire becomes obsession. Apparently, a single motivation only exists: search the young guy, peeping, observing him from distance and getting touch with an opposite environment.

But Sergio seems to be conducted to an unavoidable end: a curious reversal process of the Human evolution. From human being, he seems to revert through a trail that takes him to some animal condition. As if loneliness and desire would lead to the most primitive stage of mankind. The anti-evolution process transforms him in an irrational creature: he eats, drinks, urinates and evacuates as an animal. It is when Sergio abandons his man's part and, protected by black latex clothes, ruptures with the present and starts roaming on an urban world like an animal guided by his instincts only.

A frightening scenario, result from a contemporaneous reality - at same time empty, isolated and cruel. And that victimized Sergio.