Father and Son

Director: Alexander Sokurov
Year Released: 2003
Rating: 2.0

Well, after Russian Ark it seems as if our Russian comrade has gone back to where he left off: emotionally hollow but visually appealing and slightly hypnotic meditations on social interaction. The copious homoeroticism - I haven't seen this many men interested in each other since I last flipped through an Abercrombie & Fitch catalog - leads to touching and heavy breathing and whispers but no depth; Sokurov's obsessive penchant for composition over drama doesn't exactly aid any potential point he's trying to make about the relationships between fathers and their sons (according to the director, Russian families are a lot 'closer' than American families - they paw at each other teasingly while we give our Pops mugs on Father's Day and strain to talk about football).