This restrained urban drama about a Berlin call boy and the woman who lives across the hall from him calls to mind Thoreau's assessment, "most men lead lives of quiet desperation." Theo lives quietly alone with two answering machines (one private, the other for taking messages from men responding to his ads). Handsome, clean, and seemingly intelligent, he has no real friends. We see him make only one phone call to his mother, to make excuses why he is unable to visit her. Across the hall is Marie, a depressed record store clerk who struggles to make a life with Paul, an unsuccessful writer who seems to be living on her dime. When Paul leaves Marie (something we learn happens with el Nino-like frequency), Marie goes into a deep funk. Theo, playing the Good Samaritan, becomes concerned and slowly coaxes her out of her depression and eventually out of her apartment (after forcing the lock with a wire coat hanger). Theo and Marie have seen each other at their worst and make no effort to keep secrets from each other. This degree of honesty and mutual acceptance seems to offer a glimmer of hope to the pair...and to anyone who wonders if real intimacy is possible. Although negative patterns re-emerge for both of them, the fact that each of them has grown a little in their own self-awareness keeps this quiet but taut film from being totally pessimistic. The film is also refreshingly free of cliches about hustlers and gay men in general.
There are no DVD extras, which is a shame. I would love to know more about the director and actors. Rather than grouse about the quality of the transfer to DVD, I'm going to give the filmmakers the benefit of the doubt and say that the graininess of the print is one way they sought to convey the grittiness of Theo and Marie's lives.
