Voyage

By: Amos Lassen

"Voyage"
Naked Pretty Young Men..... and More
Amos Lassen

Director Scud's "Voyage" is more f a collection of shorts than a full length film and these shorts are held together by a storyline about a depressed psychiatrist who ventures on a lone voyage from Hong Kong along the coast of South-East Asia to overcome the sad experiences he had made with former clients. Scud uses obscure and sometimes idiosyncratic symbolism and allusions, full nudity, saturated colors, explanatory texts in many of his films (this is his fifth) and he is obsessed with telling negative stories about love. Here he focuses on the themes of death, depression and the afterlife using stories that are being written by a psychiatrist (Ryo van Kooten) as he travels on his yacht with the intention of determining whether or not to take his own life.

The stories are about people whose lives have been cut short in some way (usually by suicide). In most cases there is an explanation of a cultural belief about the afterlife and often a spiritual manifestation of deceased is shown after death. The question that the film deals with is whether or not a belief in the afterlife makes a depressing life worth living.

This is not a happy film but if you have seen other Scud films, you know that he has never backed away from death. The idea that love and depression are related (here they are seen as equal) and that love solves exactly nothing in life is a conclusion he' has used in other films.

This is the first film Scud has shot entirely in English. Unfortunately, very few of the actors can do more than reciting lines in a language they do not speak.