Alex Dimitriades is a god. Any review of this film must state that up front. Because this is a film with a substantial amount of brutal sex in it, and it would collapse completely without a main actor who produces so much heat.

Head On is a sexually explicit, but non-exploitative look at the life of a young gay ethnically Greek Australian guy - unable to talk to his community, feeling trapped by tradition and desperate for some sense of freedom. The only way he can get this freedom is through anonymous (and extremely regular) sex, frantic clubbing, life-threatening doses of recreational pharmaceuticals and by rebelling.

The film covers a twenty-four hour period in his life, following him through harrassment, a superhuman amount of sexual encounters, and his first contact with the possibility of love.

It is a credit to Dimitriades and Kokkinos (the director) that the character is believable and powerful and that the film never seeks an easy answer or loses sight of one conflict (racial) within another (sexual). Consistently intelligent, it also manages to be nihilistically engaging and erotically white-hot.

If it strikes a bum note, it is that it buckles under the pressure it sets itself. Dimitriades is like a prowling animal, but he can only prowl for so long without getting bored. The crises in his life can build to a head, but they can't do so consistently for 104 minutes - something has to give. So an audience is stuck with a difficult twenty minute period in the middle of the film where there seems to be no resolution in sight, no direction to follow, no structure for the unending drama to hang itself upon.

Thankfully the poor pacing in this section cannot overwhelm the integrity and passion of the movie, which must be considered a triumph, albeit a flawed one.



Recommended: Yes