A Moment in the Reeds

I truly don't understand the negative reviews i've read here. This was a spectacularly beautiful movie about a brief, but heartwarming encounter. Slow paced, that's true, but it wouldn't have worked any other way. The chemistry between these two boys elevated the whole to an even higher level. You rarely see this kind of genuine chemistry in gay interest films. So the movie had an open ending... Get over it. Nothing in life is ever wrapped up in a neat little bundle for you.

Given the fact that it has overall a high score here, the reviews are often very bad. Like so much in life this makes no sense. The two young lead actors are good, and the sexuality that develops between them is convincing in its realism, and its poetic beauty. A young Finn comes ' home ' to Finland to spend his holiday with his father and in the summer house they partly live in there is a young Syrian refugee helping with refurbishments. At first I found this contrived but then all films are to a certain extent, but my reaction changed when the sexual and emotional tension develops through a long evening discussion about difference and identity. This long development led quite naturally into a passion that reminded me of ' Les Amants ' and had the same quality of surprising revelation in sex so rarely seen on the screen. To those who read this remember sexuality and desire are both equal, heterosexually and homosexually. This film transcends the often ghetto feeling of gay lives as depicted in the cinema, even among the best films and I watched it with the sort of reverence due to a film that is made up mostly of silence and the nature of a beautiful Northern country. But the copy I had was full of subtitles that were not that faithful ( a lot of the film is spoken in English between the lovers and the father ) as the young Syrian speaks English along with both the son and the lover. I am late in reviewing this and I have no reason why as I have seen it twice, and I repeat it is a slow ( in the best way ) experience filled with melancholy, the transitory nature of people who cannot truly unite for a future together and above all a poetry of place and sound only seen in the greatest of cinematic experiences. A film to be seen much more than once for all viewers , hetero, bi and homosexual.

...captured like spiders' silk on film. Apart from the slow start, there is nothing negative about this production. I don't even see the four people in the film as acting; it's as if the camera is simply there. Not boring, no miscasting, beautifully shot and directed. So gentle, so tastefully done. So very different to the stuff Hollywood churns out these days. Stuff that is instantly forgettable. This one lingers like wisps of vapour from a long-ago summer.

I love everything about this movie. I rarely buy dvds these days, but this one is an exception.

This is a film about two young guys oppressed by the society, and their attempts to struggle free. It is an emotional journey to feel and be touched by it.

The truth is that this movie is part of a trend in gay European cinema of handsome refugees falling in love or lust with a local they've been hired to work with or for. This movie came out the same year as God's Own Country, which is raised by magnificent acting, editing and a story that went beyond the basics. Unfortunately, while this is not an awful movie, it pales in comparison. The actors do their job but the lead up to their first kiss is clumsy and everything after it is just badly paced and boring and you lose interest in the story, the characters. Instead of telling the story of gay refugees in Europe, it kind of fetishizes it in a weird way. It's not unwatchable but not as good as it should have been .