Beautiful boys wrestle naked on fresh, green grass. An Italian countryside exudes the premise of adventure. A sun-drenched body is painted with lipstick and sexual longing. Sharpening the experimental techniques he employed in his début feature Scars, James Herbert has created a masterpiece of romantic impressionist film-making. His use of meditative pacing, jarring juxtaposition, and piercingly intimate scenarios produces a vulnerability in the viewer which ripens him or her for an intensely sensual relationship, not only with the characters in the film, but with its formal elements as well.The central characters are Carter and Andy, two young and beautiful American boys summering in Italy. They spend their time biking between their apartment in the city and a painting studio in the country, all the while romancing a range of lovely Italian girls. Herbert uses unconventional characterization to make Carter and Andy into exotic muses, whose sensuality quietly saturates every scene they inhabit. Dialogue is sparse and less a narrative device than a formal element, used to create moments of verbal intimacy which accent the characters’ omnipresent nakedness. Gorgeous colour cinematography, extreme changes in focal length, superb editing and sound design combine to create a profoundly sensual journey. (Shari Frilot – Sundance Festival Catalogue)
