Testosterone
(2005) (**)
review by Jon
Waterman
While on military leave, Petros heads to the small island
where he spent part of his youth in order to pick up the car
left by his grandfather. He wants to quickly get it and go
so he can hop on the boat and head off to a nice hedonistic
town with the hopes of scoring with scores of hot young women.
Well, the car doesn’t quite work and he gets stranded
on the island longer than he wants. What he discovers however,
is that he’s the only man on the island and the women
want to fulfill his lustful fantasies. Petros finds himself
in way over his head. Can he find a way to leave the island?
Will he even want to?
The answer to that second question is yes, and a big reason
as to why this movie really fails. I can understand how having
absolutely every woman on the island try to get you in bed
would be a major problem and would make anyone want to get
away. There are a lot of uggos in the world, and Petros seems
like a “no fatties” kind of guy, too. But even
in the beginning, he’s trying to escape. That I don’t
understand. His whole purpose is to get the car and leave to
a place where he can have sex with hot girls. Here, he’s
stuck with his relatives and happens to have sex with hot girls,
but he’s still trying desperately to get away. It’s
not like he’s savoring it or thinking about staying there
to hop between the women he’s already had and knows he
can get again. Instead, he’s doing everything within
his power to leave right from the get go.
The film gets a little repetitive, since virtually the whole
movie is seeing different women try to fill their insatiable
desires. It doesn’t take long to realize that every conversation
and encounter is going to turn out the same way. I do like
that as time goes on the situations become more and more surreal.
At one point there’s even a scene involving a mermaid.
It eventually regresses to the level of a John Waters situation,
but with much better cinematography. I wish the movie would
have found this rhythm and tone much earlier. I also wish the
ending wasn’t so horrible.
I saw this with a pretty full crowd; probably half of them
spoke the film’s native language of Greek. They were
laughing pretty hard, but I thought the jokes were either basic,
predictable, or not actually a joke. Maybe something got lost
in the translation. Maybe a lot did. So, if you’re fluent
in Greek, then this could be a good movie for you. However,
for the rest of us, what looks to be a strong promising premise
just doesn’t quite have the stamina or the moves to leave
us satisfied.
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