Review of Sebastiane

Introduction

Sebastiane marks the directorial debut of Derek Jarman and is a notorious film, containing a great deal of male nudity and what the packaging describes as "graphic homoerotic content". Unsurprisingly, Sebastiane has never been a favourite with the BBFC, and according www.melonfarmers.co.uk (an anti-censorship website), the version presented on this DVD is not complete, so viewers of the DVD don`t get to see a scene showing a bloke with an erection, but viewers of Channel 4 did recently.

It`s nice to see that our ludicrous film censorship system is as inconsistent as ever!

Video

Sebastiane is presented in full-frame video, which is of variable quality. When assessing the visual quality of DVDs, it`s important to take the age and background of the film into account - this movie was made in 1976, and certainly isn`t a mainstream production and therefore isn`t likely to have originally had the same image quality as a Hollywood film.

The opening sequence is somewhat lacking in contract, but things improve and in general the interior and close-up scenes are reasonably detailed and free of grain. The exteriors however are often a different matter, with a slight grain, a slight fuzziness at times and a slight shimmer to the picture.

Visually, the film consists of numerous scenes of male nudity and homosexual activity, set in various locations - a bathhouse, a river, a pond, the desert etc.

Audio

The sound, like the video is a mixed bag, with some aspects of the audio perfectly acceptable, and others not so good.

The bad side of the soundtrack is evident straight away when you hear the music during the opening sequence - this has several long sustained notes that "warble" irritatingly, sounding like a bad old tape deck not playing at a constant speed. There is also a lack of dynamic range in the sound, with high frequency sounds very wishy washy - there`s one scene where the soldiers run into a river and the splashes sound very artificial as a result.

On the plus side, the dialogue is clear at all times, although with it all being in Latin, I had to rely on the subtitles to follow what was going on.

Features

The disc features "The Late Show: Face to Face - Derek Jarman" - a 40 minute BBC television program, part of the "Art and Craft of Movie Making" season, originally broadcast on 15 March 1993.

This program is a great deal better than the main feature.

Conclusion

When I read the synopsis of a film that I`ve been given to review and see the word "controversial" or "cult status" or worse both, it sets the alarm bells ringing, as in my dictionary of film words, controversial translates to crap, and make no mistake Sebastiane is no exception.

Homophobics would be well advised to steer well clear of this DVD - dialogue like "don`t you want to lose your virginity - or do you have piles?" won`t help you sit comfortably, nor will the sight of numerous naked men with their meat and two veg hanging free rolling around together. The opening sequence sets the tone of things to come, with a dance act of semi-naked men with penis-shaped props bringing their show to a literal climax all over another man`s face.

I really didn`t enjoy this film at all - the film itself is tedious rubbish with no substance to carry it between the various scenes of nudity which I didn`t enjoy either. I`m not gay, but if I was and wanted to watch naked men getting together, I`d buy some real porn that was actually worth watching, rather than this attempt by Jarman to stir up controversy by getting as much nudity and sex into 82 minutes as he could.

Sebastiane gets the dubious honour of scoring 0 for content from me and it will also be the first review disc that I don`t add to my collection.