Two young men, one black, one white, are driving to a cabin in the woods among boar cries - wild fires are raging in the area. This environmentally alarming atmosphere will be the essence of this movie; a lovely canvas for killing of an ego and also - the perfect reason for it. Naturally, we will be killing the white man's ego who, with his neurotic behavior while immersed in the good mother nature, looses the viewer's sympathy already during these first frames. Next, the guys get into a playful fight for no good reason, but from the looks they exchange while their bodies rub, we understand that the colored person is also gay. Aside from deepening the political cliche in which the movie will be set, this scene is a sign for the cumbersome way it will be communicating its ideas.
Already at the house, the guys are informed that they will be sharing it with another guest - Nadja - so, for some unknown reason, they hide in their room till the next morning, while a wild sex scene takes place next door. Actually, I know why - this way we add yet another unsympathetic trait to the image of the cowardly white heterosexual male, and namely homophobia, seen in his unwillingness to share a bedroom with the gay man. Also, the situation presents an opportunity to create a mystery atmosphere around the next cliche character to be introduced - that of the fatal free spirited woman - and make her desired even before she's seen. The next morning she herself appears in the garden, dressed in a fiery red dress (yet another thing that's afire, how profound), hangs the sheets from the previous evening in the breeze and the cowardly white homophobe is already drooling.
The third positively depicted character against whom we will be judging the cowardly white drooling homophobe is the man who spends the night with the hippie - a bisexual lifeguard. The two men, of course, confront each other for the alpha role in the group and although the lifeguard defends his application with a cheesy sex story at the edge of vulgarity, the social sanction once again decides against the cowardly white drooling homophobe. And here, we've already gathered three characters who don't bring to the situation any contradictions of their own, but only serve as a blank - and exemplary - decor for the destruction of the protagonist's toxic ego. Women, bisexuals, and gays are having fun in a spirit of goodwill and free love, only heterosexual men stand grumpily aside pretending they are something more.
Without any grounds, of course. The cowardly white drooling homophobe - whose name, Leon, is spot on for someone who sees themselves as superior to other living beings - is just a mediocre writer. If not for another reason, but because his writing mirrors his toxic life views. In his novel's draft we read about a foul-smelling baby who ruins a love moment and thus understand that he's also a misogynist who values only the pleasant sides of his relations with women. His attempts to guess the baby's sex by the color of its blanket shows him as full of sexist prejudices too. And so on and so forth. Every scene that follows only adds further dark shades to his image till in the end you almost suffocate from the dirt - exactly like the wild fires gradually extinguish all the oxygen from the forest...
What should happen, so that all Leons in the world finally realize the enormity of the threat ablazing the sky before our very eyes, while they only worry about their stupid egos, penises, and great deeds? - asks the director heatedly like a little pioneer before his comrades and for his uninspired answer the jury at the Berlinale festival, a forum more politically biased even than the Oscars, gives him the Silver Bear. The year is 2023.
Already at the house, the guys are informed that they will be sharing it with another guest - Nadja - so, for some unknown reason, they hide in their room till the next morning, while a wild sex scene takes place next door. Actually, I know why - this way we add yet another unsympathetic trait to the image of the cowardly white heterosexual male, and namely homophobia, seen in his unwillingness to share a bedroom with the gay man. Also, the situation presents an opportunity to create a mystery atmosphere around the next cliche character to be introduced - that of the fatal free spirited woman - and make her desired even before she's seen. The next morning she herself appears in the garden, dressed in a fiery red dress (yet another thing that's afire, how profound), hangs the sheets from the previous evening in the breeze and the cowardly white homophobe is already drooling.
The third positively depicted character against whom we will be judging the cowardly white drooling homophobe is the man who spends the night with the hippie - a bisexual lifeguard. The two men, of course, confront each other for the alpha role in the group and although the lifeguard defends his application with a cheesy sex story at the edge of vulgarity, the social sanction once again decides against the cowardly white drooling homophobe. And here, we've already gathered three characters who don't bring to the situation any contradictions of their own, but only serve as a blank - and exemplary - decor for the destruction of the protagonist's toxic ego. Women, bisexuals, and gays are having fun in a spirit of goodwill and free love, only heterosexual men stand grumpily aside pretending they are something more.
Without any grounds, of course. The cowardly white drooling homophobe - whose name, Leon, is spot on for someone who sees themselves as superior to other living beings - is just a mediocre writer. If not for another reason, but because his writing mirrors his toxic life views. In his novel's draft we read about a foul-smelling baby who ruins a love moment and thus understand that he's also a misogynist who values only the pleasant sides of his relations with women. His attempts to guess the baby's sex by the color of its blanket shows him as full of sexist prejudices too. And so on and so forth. Every scene that follows only adds further dark shades to his image till in the end you almost suffocate from the dirt - exactly like the wild fires gradually extinguish all the oxygen from the forest...
What should happen, so that all Leons in the world finally realize the enormity of the threat ablazing the sky before our very eyes, while they only worry about their stupid egos, penises, and great deeds? - asks the director heatedly like a little pioneer before his comrades and for his uninspired answer the jury at the Berlinale festival, a forum more politically biased even than the Oscars, gives him the Silver Bear. The year is 2023.