Head On

In Trainspotting, Mark Renton sits on a rock and laments that "it's shite being Scottish." In Ana Kokkinos's Head On, one hears similar cloacal renunciations of national identity: "Of course we take it up the ass. All Greeks do." Here, though, the compensation isn't heroin but homosexual lust. Based on Christos Tsiolkas's novel Loaded, Head On depicts 24 hours in Ari's life: at home with his Greek family (brawling with his father, dancing to traditional music with his mother, reclaiming his vibrator from his sister) and navigating the darkened corners of Melbourne (snorting speed, sniffing amyl, picking up sailors).

Ari wants to break loose from the claustrophobia of both his Greek heritage and the closet. Problem is, he doesn't know how. As the film juxtaposes his own identity crisis with an immigrant-filled Melbourne where "everybody hates everybody else," we see him acting out on his frustrations by grappling in alley ways with repulsive men or clumsily and ineffectually trying to protect his sister from the advances of her Lebanese boyfriend. Like Trainspotting, Head On is a powerful rush of chaotic camera work and visceral images depicting a man's quest for selfhood in a world that's dragging him down from all sides. But here there's no resolution to "choose life" at the end.

-- Michael Miliard