Read this ONLY if you've seen the movie. My attempt at deconstructing it follows.
You won't find many movies as dark, ugly, and depressing as "Buddy Boy." This is a prime example of an excellent film that makes you feel very uncomfortable. That it was widely panned upon it's microscopic release only reinforces my belief that it was simply too strong for most reviewers.
Don't try to make this movie more complicated than it is. My take on it is that Francis is obviously a very sick, unhappy guy who tries frantically to make some sense out of a very twisted life that he feels trapped in. When he's home, he avoids interaction with his "mother" --- really his brother, who's been driven insane by the murder of his mother by his father (not 100% sure on this, but something really f***** up on that scale). He thinks he finds an island of sanity in a dream girl named Gloria, but as the movie progresses it's clear that Francis too is growing ever more delusional and psychotic. He projects the "hypocrisy" of the religion he's been force fed his whole life onto Gloria, an avowed vegan whom Francis hallucinates is really a sadistic cannibal. My take on the ending is that Gloria has never really existed and he may have hallucinated her, her apartment, and everything surrounding his beautiful "escape hatch." His TRUE defense mechanism has been total nihilism, and in the end, it's all he has. Nothingness.
My take on it anyway.... It is very similar to Polanski's The Tenant not only in the paranoid delusions of the protagonist put also in how Francis "watches" his own demise later in the film at Gloria's paganistic dinner party.
This film really engulfs you and sinks you into a nightmare world. Proceed at your own risk!
You won't find many movies as dark, ugly, and depressing as "Buddy Boy." This is a prime example of an excellent film that makes you feel very uncomfortable. That it was widely panned upon it's microscopic release only reinforces my belief that it was simply too strong for most reviewers.
Don't try to make this movie more complicated than it is. My take on it is that Francis is obviously a very sick, unhappy guy who tries frantically to make some sense out of a very twisted life that he feels trapped in. When he's home, he avoids interaction with his "mother" --- really his brother, who's been driven insane by the murder of his mother by his father (not 100% sure on this, but something really f***** up on that scale). He thinks he finds an island of sanity in a dream girl named Gloria, but as the movie progresses it's clear that Francis too is growing ever more delusional and psychotic. He projects the "hypocrisy" of the religion he's been force fed his whole life onto Gloria, an avowed vegan whom Francis hallucinates is really a sadistic cannibal. My take on the ending is that Gloria has never really existed and he may have hallucinated her, her apartment, and everything surrounding his beautiful "escape hatch." His TRUE defense mechanism has been total nihilism, and in the end, it's all he has. Nothingness.
My take on it anyway.... It is very similar to Polanski's The Tenant not only in the paranoid delusions of the protagonist put also in how Francis "watches" his own demise later in the film at Gloria's paganistic dinner party.
This film really engulfs you and sinks you into a nightmare world. Proceed at your own risk!