With his last short film completed French theater/actor turned filmmaker Antony Hickling brings his wonderful surreal triptych to the screen. In the nearest thing there is to a plot in this bizarre kaleidoscope of images and art, it is essentially the story of a young gay boy, from his birth to his teenage years, in which he experiments with his sexuality and his own boundaries, to the day he finally meets his father.From the powerful opening scene in Part 1, when Maria a middle-aged overweight prostitute is visited by an ‘Angel’ to announce that she will have a child but he will experience and suffering before dying of AIDS, Hickling manages infuse some real humor, albeit grotesque, into this outlandish scenario. In fact throughout the whole movie with its obsession with religious imagery and some, often obscure, references to both art and film with its quasi-serious tone, there is much to make one smile.
In the 2nd part, with its masochistic approach to JC’s (Maria’s son) sexuality, Hickling’s tale takes on a brutal turn as he focuses on a underbelly of society that is both exploitive and homophobic.
The final part : The Last Supper, where father meets son at last, is the most compelling especially visually even though its riot of fantasies can be more than a little confusing at times. He mixes dance with performance pieces and song even as part of his multi-media approach.
