Duffer

A first feature by two expatriate Canadians, this tells the mock-ingenuous tale of a passably attractive lad who spends most of his life submitting to a homosexual sadist but occasionally scurries to a golden-hearted whore for relief. Duffer's account of himself in a voice-over narration starts out ultra-subversive ('I didn't much enjoy the things that Louis-Jack did to me, but they seemed to give him pleasure, and there really isn't much of that around') and gets more and more Joycean. The plot gets rather lost in musings on fantasy versus reality, but the imagery remains funny and, when needed, tough; the mood is predominantly wistful, well caught by Galt MacDermot's simple piano score.