Tobias is a young 16-ish year old introverted young man who loves skateboarding and is eager for love. His mother doesn’t have time for him, so she sends him to spend the summer with his out-of-town grandparents. His grandfather is a glassmaker who teaches his grandson the basics of the profession; his grandmother has dementia, but she gives the boy the little affection his parents fail to provide. When granny's health takes for worse, he goes off for few days to his father's place but he is also busy with his new family and has been equally absent. The summer days seem to drag on forever; there’s nothing to do in the countryside, so Tobias hangs around here and there, skateboarding and doing nothing. As Mom becomes harder and harder to reach on the phone, Tobias comes across two men who pique his interest: Aron, a handsome, easygoing house painter, and Jonas, a standoffish but handsome and rude stranger, who works as a male sex worker and waits for his clients at a bus stop and Tobias meets him at a public bathroom. Tobias hits off well with Aron and lies of his age hoping to find love/sex but Aron knows better. He wants to help and he likes the boy but he wont cross the physical limit. When it turns out that the mother never went away for work and has just been avoiding Tobias and when granny passes away, Tobias spirals down in the world of male prostitution. Tobias feels he doesn’t deserve anything other than suffering, which he also inflicts upon himself. He uses sex as a means to feel pain in addition to also self-harm. The film ends in hope that Tobias is getting proper treatment and will get love from grandfather.
Even though we are never told what is Tobias' past, I think the story here is about loneliness and lack of love. It is a film that builds up slowly trying to show the loneliness among young people and their inability to verbalise feelings, especially in more countryside areas, I suppose. It’s a film about second chances in life, about the importance of feeling loved and, most important of all, an urgent plea to not leave our adolescents alone with their demons. The lead actor performs brilliantly on the screen. He is literally in every scene and you feel his anguish, despair and loneliness. While some plot elements are trite, especially in the final act, the film gives visual expression to the teenager’s interior life. The film thrives in its extended silences, when it's just a boy, his skateboard and desolate rural spaces where good-looking men might occasionally pop in. His hurt and self-destructive behaviour is explored sensitively and without testing the audience’s sympathy. This is not an easy film to watch, not just the self-harm but Tobias's descent into prostitution. Tobias finds some friendship and hope with Aron but he also gets rejected there. What was not clear to me was whether it was the boy's sexual orientation that was the cause of all the grief and turmoil or something else? Regardless, the film is an absorbing chronicle of a turbulent adolescence, very depressing and sad, and a meltdown in slow motion where the anger and rebellious in focused inward. (7/10)
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