Description: No one can live without love . . . By day, brooding, lonely Sergio works as a trash collector in the streets of Lisbon. By night, Sergio embarks on an increasingly intense odyssey of random, anonymous sexual encounters. Quickly, Sergio becomes fixated on a hot, young stranger and begins to retreat further and further into his dark dream life, blurring the lines between fantasy and reality, love and obsession. In Portuguese with English Subtitles
Fantastic Fantasma I gotta say this film is a checklist of everything a good film needs. The sight of a garbage man rummaging about his local dump clutching a bunny by the ears, drinking dump water and generally behaving in a manner that would disturb most common folk. Actually, in spite of his good looks, you would cross the other side of the road when you see this guy coming your way. I think this film is a gay "Taxi Driver". That's the best way to put it.
Satire or Commentary? You decide It's hard to know what to make of "O Fantasma" (The Phantom) based on casual viewing. Is it a satirization of how sexually debased society has become and the devaluation of sex to the point where it's disposable? Or is it merely an excuse to masquerade soft porn as an "art film"? The film follows the exploits of Sergio, the protagonist of the film. A garbage collector in Lisbon the film follows his life, mostly his nocturnal activities, alternately working his garbage route and his sexual liaisons with both men and women. Largely devoid of dialog, O Fantasma follows Sergio's slide into sexual depravities and perversions until he is largely divorced from daytime and any semblance of what passes for normal activities and sexual appetites. Sergio's life spins out of control when he becomes obsessed with a young man who becomes the object of his obsession. Obsession turns to compulsion as Sergio begins to stalk the object of his obsession, finally climaxing in a profoundly disturbing ending.
By turns disturbed and disturbing "O Fantasma" is a profoundly unsettling movie on an order of "The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover," the equally disturbing Peter Greenaway film from 1989. While it is NOT a movie I would care to watch again I am sure it does have some appeal with some cineastes.
What happened at the last 15 mins I agree with most of the reviews here that the movie is just so bad. The director had the wrong idea of an art film, methophors and strange incoherrent ending is not the only thing you need to make an art film. I was pretty intrigued by the lead's obssession with the Hunky Swimmer but it just did not end the movie satisfactorily ... Can anyone explain like when did he have the rubber suite, whats with the garbage dump ending, it is just too pointless !!! I felt cheated of 90 mins of my life.
Even kink can be boring If you crave a gay-themed film full of brooding obsession, gloomy (and very well done) night photography, the occasional graphic sex scene, and METAPHORS so obvious even a high school film class could catch them, then this just might be your cup of tea. Howewver, if you are looking for a film that sustains its running time and subject, then you are out of luck.
To be fair, Portugese director João Pedro Rodrigues has made some daring choices here. Dialogue is minimal--this might as well be a silent film with sound effects. He's working one of the great themes--the boundary between dream and reality and the dangers of ignoring that boundary. There is the further theme of sexual oppression triggering further oppressions. And yes, there is more than a little boundage mixed in. (This is no 50s MGM musical.) It looks good--night photography, lots of backlight and black surfaces, either dull or glittering. Sergio (played by Ricardo Meneses, a garbageman in Lisbon, drifts further and further into his obsession with a hunky young swimmer (and Sergio is pretty hunky himself). While not obsessing, he drifts from one random sexual encounter to another. Finally, he goes off the beam completely (I won't go into all the details in case you decide to see it).
The problem is the same that so many self-consciously arty films, from Greed to The Unbearable Lightness of Being, share--their metaphors are too obvious (here, among others, it's human and animal behavior--Sergio's best relationship is with his dog and he lapses into canine behavoir periodically) and they are just too long. O Fantasma would make a pretty good 40 minutes festival film--at 90 minutes, it just drags, particularly the ending with Sergio wandering interminably in a landfill in a rubber bondage suit. (Come to think of it, kind of an echo of the equally tedious final sequence of Greed.) I admit it--I really haven't the patience for films that scream out how ARTFUL they are and have little or nothing except style, attitude, and angst. Style and attitude--think Fred Astaire--can be a winning combination. Unfortunately, in spite of lashings of kink and plenty of existential hysteria, this is not a winning film. Basically, it's a bore.
powerful and uncompromising Portuguese director Joao Pedro Rodriguez has created a film of austere beauty and sinewy power, dark and brooding like its striking protagonist. Ricardo Meneses, as the sensual, very sexual Sergio, gives a truly astonishing performance - especially considering his youth and inexperience, the nature of the material, and that this was his first and, I'm sorry to say, only film. Sergio is a lithe, muscular young garbage collector working the graveyard shift in Lisbon, but all we see of the city are its fringes. He roams forsaken moonscapes (the dumping grounds), jungle-like parks, forsaken roads. Sergio's compulsions and the force of his lust are reflected in these primitive terrains, and manifested in the increasing aberrance of his sexual behavior. The action takes place almost entirely indoors, or outside in darkness and shadow. There is, symbolically, only one moment of sunlight in the entire film when a magnificent Sergio stands, his lean body beautifully and boldly bare, on the roof of his pensione.
Ricardo Meneses, who was born to play this extraordinary part, is sensuous, narcissistic, exhibitionistic, and profoundly sexy. Mr. Rodriguez draws us into Sergio's life like voyeurs as the camera follows him, drinking in his flawless feline form as he showers, swims, admires and touches himself, prowls his habitat, has sex (with his girlfriend, his lover, his boss, a policeman, tricks), and stalks a handsome swimmer with whom he becomes obsessed. It is this last ephemeral human connection - one awkward gesture towards a world with sun - that dooms the boy. Sergio quietly asks his paramour for help and is coldly rebuffed. He becomes ever more animalistic, spiraling unremittingly downward. The tragedy which ensues is startling and seductive, like Sergio himself.
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