This new movie from 24 year old Lithuanian openly gay writer/director Romas Zabarauskas is probably one of the most pretentious egotistical pieces of nonsense that we have had to sit through desperately trying to find at least one redeeming feature to justify why it was ever made in the first place. The fact that it was produced in Lithuania where negative attitudes against gay and lesbian men and women remain firmly entrenched is definitely a point in its favor, but with the release in 2015 of the excellent The Summer of Sangailė also from Lithuania, we now know what some filmmakers in that country are really capable off
The protagonist in the drama is named after the director (and played by Denisas Kolomyckis) but he is now a world-famous wealthy gay director who even gets recognized in the street by total straight strangers. One day he is disturbed at home by the sudden melodramatic arrival of his leading lady Indre (Irina Lavrinovic) who is dressed up to the nines as if she was on her way to a Ball. She has in fact come over to confess that she killed her mother because she had refused to cough up money for an expensive acting course.
Romas agrees to help her to escape the country on the proviso that he can make an experimental film of it all along the way. They are accompanied on the road trip by the hunky Carlos (Adrian Escobar) his allegedly Mexican boyfriend who strangely stumbles out his few lines of dialogue in English with a heavy Russian accent. It turns out that he is actually a hustler who Romas is paying to hang around, and his main contribution is just getting totally naked to try to distract us when they (and we ) have completely lost the plot.
The idea is to drive through Poland and then Europe to eventually secrete Indre and the bag of money she stole, in a deserted cabin on a remote mountainside in Portugal, but we know right from the very start that it is never going to end well for anyone, especially the audience.
Throughout the journey Indre and Romas ‘narrate’ their own theories about the meaning of life which is nothing less than as pure drivel and is all delivered in the most annoying manner.
The single most interesting aspect of the film actually happened before a single scene was shot when Zabarauskas an obsessed self-promoter offered to send naked photographs of himself to anyone who donated $50 to his Kickstarter Fund. That went viral, and in this case it certainly was a much better deal than the usual reward of a DVD of the movie.
According to Zabarauskas ‘You Can’t Escape Lithuania’ but after watching his movie you will appreciate that he has certainly given us all a good excuse to really want to try.
Labels: 2017, down right weird, drama, full frontal nudity, Lithuanian
