The Real Bel Ami
Mandragora, 1997, Dir. Wiktor Grodecki
This must be a favourite of Catholic priests and the Pope Nazi Pedobear who currently sits in the Vatican. It's the story of a 15-year-old small town boy who runs away from home and gets trapped in a world of prostitution with older men, drug addiction, crime and disease. It makes Christiane F and My Own Private Idaho look like Disney productions. Some of the scenes, involving children below the age of 11, are so uncomfortable that I'm sure the version I watched doesn't survive intact in many countries. It's long - two hours - and unrelenting in its depiction of how boys are tricked into selling their bodies and losing their souls. It's graphic, it's grim and there's less hope available than in a Cormac McCarthy novel. It captures Prague's underbelly in all its gray misery and Communist residues, without a single shred of sympathy towards its gay community.