Seeing Heaven

I found Seeing Heaven hypnotic in the way only bad cinema can be. Bad dialogue, poorly spoken, supernatural elements underlaid with bad psychology and a plot that doesn't even have the courage of it's own absurdity. It's artistic pretensions and mock profundity don't add depth and its literary allusions are over explicated and its moral message diluted by an air of incredulity. The trouble is this film doesn't have the courage of it's own absurdity.

That said Alexander Brocq as Paul his very watchable - he doesn't have the beauty attributed him by every other character in the film but he does have a screen presence and an air of rent boy innocence. Some of the other characters are genuinely attractive or menacing as required and the supernatural scenes are genuinely disturbing. But ultimately I was left deeply unsatisfied.

This film shows why being artsy just for the sake of it is not good, especially at the expense of plot clarity and good dialog. Half of the time I had to struggle to understand what the character is trying to say because they are too busy trying to be poetic when a simple line would have done the job of describing what he tries to say. Ditto with the repeated visual nightmare the main character keeps seeing. It's the same thing over and over again which is annoying.

The worst part of the film is that the pairing of the main character (Paul) with another character who has no chemistry with him (Griffin). Paul seems to have better chemistry with Zhivago and Baxter and moreover, those two seem to care more about him. Paul's romance with Griffin came out of nowhere as well.

For some reason, I was quickly turned off by the lack of budget and artsy pretentious soft erotica even though it doesn't always bother me. But I convinced myself to give this a fair shot because the original premise sounded intriguing. I should have known better but I went for it and watched the whole thing. Wow, what a bad movie.

The main thing that really bothered me, as pointed out by other reviewers is how some scenes and pieces of dialogue were repeated all throughout as if trying to make them sound more profound to the viewer but it just felt tiresome as things progressed.

The acting is by far the worst aspect of this production and that's saying something since we can totally see just how low budget this is yet, a lack of money never bothers me as long as creativity is present and rewards the watcher.

But in this very bad flick, the more time passes the worst the acting gets and the more the story goes south. Every scene becomes excruciating after a certain point and I had to work hard to keep watching. Even the sex scenes were boring, not that I would have wanted more explicit sexuality but I kept seeing just how uncomfortable the actors looked and it made me shudder.

The lead actor Alexander Bracq as Paul is probably the worst actor in the bunch. In the movie every character keeps referring to him as beautiful beyond words, including himself and although the actor is cute enough, he is no supreme Adonis in my humble opinion. This repeated statement made things quite laughable as things progressed and it kept pulling me out of the story in disbelief. As far as looks are concerned, a little humility goes a long way in my book.

The ending is just as atrocious as I expected and even though there are some nice moments here and there throughout, this film was stuck between wanting to be a soft porn with no explicit sex and a "regular" story with no foundation. So nothing really worked and I was relieved when it concluded.

I have seldom seen a movie so bizarre and weird but I usually like anything that doesn't conform and tries to be original but in this case, the story is just too monotonous and redundant to become anything but a huge letdown, not that I expected much anyway by the time the credits rolled.

I felt bad giving this only 1 star so I gave it 2, mostly for the courage it took to try something different but without a proper sense of pacing and a lack of originality the film didn't stand a chance. Too bad cause I wanted to like it but that just didn't happen.

I don't recommend it either unless you are prepared to really work at trying to enjoy yourself. I did on my end and it got me nowhere but maybe you'll have more luck on that front.

This was a film that deserved more than one viewing as this film was quite intellectual, definitely soul-searching and soul-search-able, was quite the thought provoker, AND the actors were quite cute to boot. Speaking of actors, the actor playing the main character was definitely someone that Jonathan Frid, he played Barnabas Collins in an old television series, would have been quite proud to see to join the Brotherhood of Vampires; the actor as the main character was that serious, that cold, that vulnerable, AND yet still very human. This will definitely be one film that I will add to my permanent collection, and one that I look forward to watching again. Compared to the other "gay" films I have seen to date, this one stands out. Why? Simple: it brought you in with its puzzles, with human interactions from a very gay-oriented perspective, and you had to stay to the very end to see how this movie ended.

~~"The story is ludicrous." Of course she was referring to the porn film playing in 'The Big Lebowski'. Hell, if you are English, you are SIMPLY not aloud to be a terrible actor. Not even in a movie like this one. The lead has an expression throughout the film that is so blank, one can only think of a piece of paper. Poor kid. Maybe the director was telling them on the set to 'do nothing', or 'play it down'. Either way, he comes off emotionless. No one has any training in this film, evidenced by the way they garble most of the dialog. BUT, all being said - I watched this with a girlfriend - at least tried to... we could only get through 45 minutes...for gay men I am sure the faces were pleasing to look at. I am hoping someone out there liked it. I still have to say bravo for Netflix putting this on streaming. I experienced something normally I wouldn't have watched, and it is always good to see all sides of the equation. Still, don't watch for plot, execution, acting, mise-en-scene, or really anything I guess, unless you are gay and you like a certain type of guy (I guess), that looks a certain way. There has to be better gay movies out there. I'll let my girlfriend decide (ha ha ha)..BUT at least they did it. They shot it, edited it, and completed it. For that, I give the team who made this film some credit.