This interesting and haunting documentary about Bjorn Andresen, the child star of Visconti's Death In Venice, seems to bring full circle the long-standing arguments about how the then-proclaimed 'most beautiful boy in the world' was also exploited, by showing a brutally open exploration of Bjorn Andresen today that shows a fragile and disconnected figure, trapped in and by that big early success. It is shot through with sense of darkness, foreboding and that singular Swedish melancholy, as the documentary covers the hysteria around Death In Venice, Andersen's subsequent manufactured pop career in Japan and an ill-fated film project in Paris, but also as the film progresses it unravels the scarring tragedies that have shaped the man's adult life. Some scenes are immensely raw, from confronting the police evidence over what happened to his mother and the recounting the death of his son, and whilst the material cries out for the film to take a clear position, especially about Visconti and the treatment of the young actor which feels underdeveloped (although the uncomfortable screen-test footage speaks for itself) it never quite gets there as it makes a blunt link between his childhood experiences in the film industry and the rest of his life. One striking sequence sees Andresen playing a reel-to-reel audio recording of himself at seventeen playing the piano, a clear talent hidden by the overwhelming image that defined him. Placing the now-elderly Andresen in film locations is beyond nostalgic, the juxtapositions not just reflecting on early innocence lost but also the sadness of life that preceded and followed it.
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