Complete Strangers

A couple of unkind reviewers claim this film is bad. I'm not really a review type guy but had to just for the sake of the film's quality. As an avid LGBT film fan, I've seen all the higher and lower end movies out there, from TLA originals to Here Tv, and so on... this one, despite its flaws, seems on the higher end. Complete Strangers is a really good thriller, with romantic vibes, that quickly turns dark. Without going too deep into the movie, I found the film to be very easy to watch and entertaining. The writing was good, the acting was fantastic, especially Matthew Crawley as Hugo, a new talent to watch. What really impressed me though, and this is not something common in lower-budget movies, was the sound quality as well as the image. Ronnie Minder's soundtrack is mind-blowing. The reason I give 9 stars and not 10 is because I felt Pau Masó should pick directing over acting, as it felt like there was too much on his plate. I personally really like him as an actor too, but movies are hard work, and one can't simply do everything. You gotta pick one! Other than that, amazing! Highly recommend!

Pau Maso aka the leading, writer & director cannot act...that was painful, emotionless and just plain boring. The film should have been way shorter and also more thought out...It had potential but it was somehow lost. Some of the scenes were just a huge NO, _no chesmitry _boring sex _none acting

On the other hand Matthew Crawley was ok.

LGBT films have become very varied over time, just like any other genre of film. Romantic, frivolous, men and women coming out, however hard or easy, and thrillers with some having echoes of the great days of Film Noir. ' Complete Strangers ' seems to me to fall into the extreme Noir category and I imagined Barbara Stanwyck in this one with of course certain changes in the script. It could have worked but for me it didn't. The dialogue for a start needed a definite rewrite, and the acting from all of the cast well below average. Basically without giving away too many spoilers it revolves around a youngish man living in luxury in Budapest and like all good/bad characters out of Film Noir he has a past which he cannot recall. He walks through the beautiful streets and the less beautiful, but emptily rich apartments with a lost soul look on his face. Young and youngish men try to help him, but when he looks into mirrors or has dreams he sees himself as a sort of Jekyll and Hyde. He has terrible dreams and the viewer sees quite clearly that there must be a revelation. And of course there is in a moody forest/mountain setting and I will say no more about the plot. Personally I found it tiresome and long and I feel Pau Maso, the director should have chosen someone else for the lead role of the moody young man. Directors should in my opinion stick with directing and I can only think of Rainer Werner Fassbinder who succeeded in doing both. And the film is too long, lingering on certain scenes where it should have moved on. I mentioned the dialogue, which was inferior enough, and most of the cast delivered it as if they were on Valium. At times it is very moralistic about pornography, but the morality of that was undercut by painfully unerotic films. It certainly made homosexual acts to be decidedly unappealing and there is a moral in that if you can find it. The irony of all this is that it is filmed in Hungary, which is a very ' moral ' country, and this made me feel more disturbed than the twists and turns of the plot. I give it a 3 for the Negulesco concentration on fine shots of Budapest and mountainous forest scenes.

I have seen almost all movies made for the gay audience, from low budget to the well-produced better quality movies. If a movie has a good script and a message to convey, a lower budget can be overcome. For this movie, it appears to have been fairly well-made. The trailer looked appealing enough and we gave it a change. For the first half of the movie we can several moments where we had to suspend disbelief and just go along with the journey. Surprisingly enough, despite the flaws, we were entertained. And the second half of the movie even surprised us, making us glad we stayed with it to the end. Will it win any awards? Unlikely. But was it suspenseful and worth a watch? Absolutely. Just turn of the thinking or logical part of your mind for a bit and enjoy a thrilling ride.

This could have been so great but the acting was very poor and because of this the writing, which wasn't the best, could have been so much more if the lines had been delivered better. The directing to be fair was good but this was overshadowed by the poor performances. It was sensual in places but even this was lost by the bad acting. I so wanted this to be more, it had so much potential to be a good thriller, or at the very least a good drama, but it was squandered by the bad casting. The annoying thing is that the main antagonist could have been so powerful and menacing but again the lacklustre writing let him down.