Given the fact that it has overall a high score here, the reviews are often very bad. Like so much in life this makes no sense. The two young lead actors are good, and the sexuality that develops between them is convincing in its realism, and its poetic beauty. A young Finn comes ' home ' to Finland to spend his holiday with his father and in the summer house they partly live in there is a young Syrian refugee helping with refurbishments. At first I found this contrived but then all films are to a certain extent, but my reaction changed when the sexual and emotional tension develops through a long evening discussion about difference and identity. This long development led quite naturally into a passion that reminded me of ' Les Amants ' and had the same quality of surprising revelation in sex so rarely seen on the screen. To those who read this remember sexuality and desire are both equal, heterosexually and homosexually. This film transcends the often ghetto feeling of gay lives as depicted in the cinema, even among the best films and I watched it with the sort of reverence due to a film that is made up mostly of silence and the nature of a beautiful Northern country. But the copy I had was full of subtitles that were not that faithful ( a lot of the film is spoken in English between the lovers and the father ) as the young Syrian speaks English along with both the son and the lover. I am late in reviewing this and I have no reason why as I have seen it twice, and I repeat it is a slow ( in the best way ) experience filled with melancholy, the transitory nature of people who cannot truly unite for a future together and above all a poetry of place and sound only seen in the greatest of cinematic experiences. A film to be seen much more than once for all viewers , hetero, bi and homosexual.
Review of A Moment in the Reeds
