Brooklyn Bizarre

By: colorfulkent

I don't so called gay films that don't show the male couplings doing any more than simple touches and kisses, but yet show the lead fucking the two girls so explicitly it seems unsimulated. It's unequal and insulting when the audience target seems to be gay men. Let the guys fuck like that or don't go to that degree with the hetero sex.

By: Amos Lassen

Eighteen-year-old Maurice lives over above Bizarre, a night club in Brooklyn. He got there because he was accosted by one of its owners when she found him homeless on the streets. Maurice had recently arrived in New York from France after escaping some dark and scary past that he will not talk about. In fact, Maurice does much talk at all which allows the other members of the household to think about him as a young silent stranger. To pay for his keep Kim and Betty who own the bar expect him to help out by cleaning the bar downstairs and also by keeping them sexually serviced. Maurice does not mind the cleaning but the sex only makes him question his own sexuality. Bizarre, the bar, is a venue for burlesque and it is stark contrast to the reality of life in the living quarters above. For Maurice who is at the brink of adulthood, this new life is overwhelming.

"Bizarre" is a different kind of a coming-of-age story: Maurice arrives in New York, after escaping some unknown past in France and is soon adopted by a couple of trendy Brooklynites who run the club below and take him into their lives and pamper him as if he was some kind of new toy. They introduce him to new experiences and people, in particular to Luka (Adrian James) with whom he forms a close, but ambiguous friendship.

French director Etienne Faure's film about a directionless and taciturn French teenager seems to be missing a plot and we see thus as the movie progresses. Even the behavior of the characters is unrecognizable. It seems that although Maurice has a back-story, he doesn't know what it is. We really never know why the bar owners. Any kind of logic is lost in this film. Then there is Luka who is really enamored of Maurice doesn't quite understand what the attraction that he has for him means. Luka becomes frustrated when Maurice when he sees him with Charlie (Charlie Himmelstein), a boxer friend from the gym where Maurice goes to box. Charlie is a sex fiend who's straight but concedes he'll do anything that moves.

The movie never did come together for me and I think that this is because it tries to be non-committal to a specific character, storyline or idea means it ends up being about nothing at all. It remains entirely indecisive about Maurice's own sexuality.

However, I found the movie to be somewhat intriguing despite its flaws. With a little clarity, it would not have been so "bizarre".