This one falls into that darker corner of gay cinema. There was real potential buried in here, but the execution feels so flat that at points it plays out more like a filmed stage play than an actual movie. It's a dark psychological drama built around a street hustler confessing to a brutal, confusing murder of his own lover. Black and white flashback sequences do a solid job laying out the details of what happened, but the real focus stays on the dialogue and the writing itself. Right at the start, a young hustler has already killed his male lover Claude. Three days go by before he calls the police to turn himself in for the murder. But instead of just reporting it somewhere ordinary, he actually summons the police and the local press directly into a judge's private chambers. Yves has keys to the place, which tracks given what he does for a living, but having the press waiting right outside makes the whole scene look like some elaborate blackmail scheme against the judge. The ...
A young guy named Kim relocates to an island city to move in with his uncle. There's apparently some backstory behind why, but honestly it barely matters. Once there, he meets a chef named Tao Sor. The next day when he runs into him again, something feels different, and Tao Sor doesn't even recognize him. It turns out this mysterious chef is dealing with some condition that wipes his memory clean every single morning, meaning someone has to constantly remind him who he is. Kim starts developing feelings for him and pitches an idea to the hotel where Tao Sor works, offering to bring in tourists for cooking experiences with the chef as a way to boost their business. They go for it. Even though Tao Sor forgets everything each morning, he's also a talented painter, and he keeps having these recurring visions of Kim that he paints out, which makes him start believing there's some deeper connection between them. Toward the end we find out Tao Sor isn't actually related to the family he's been living with. Apparently this family lost their real son years ago, and when the older brother found a young amnesiac Tao Sor washed up on the beach, they decided to pass him off as their missing son, even working with a doctor to make sure his memory never comes back. The romance between Kim and Tao Sor never really goes anywhere meaningful. Eventually Kim just heads back home. On top of all that, close to half the show is dedicated to a girls' love subplot that I genuinely couldn't care less about.
This show is basically nothing but problems, with nothing redeeming to point to. Kim, our supposed lead, does things that make him so hard to root for, you just can't end up liking him as a character. He's rude and unpleasant most of the time. And he's not alone in that. Tao Sor's brother is another massive red flag, practically kidnapping a kid and forcing him to become his brother, plus there's the whole doctor situation, all because the doctor's got a crush on the older brother. Given how emotionally fragile Tao Sor is throughout, I expected a slow burn kind of romance. Instead things escalate way too fast, only for Tao Sor to immediately forget it all happened. He never actually gets the chance to look back on their time together and confirm his own feelings are real. Kim's basically taking advantage of his amnesia to force this relationship into existence. Then there's that whole girls' love storyline, which honestly could be deleted entirely and the show wouldn't lose a thing. It doesn't even wrap up properly either, since Kim apparently figures out who Tao Sor's real mother is but never actually introduces them. This is easily one of the worst BL shows to come out this year. (0.5/10)
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