Patrice Chéreau's first film is not a pleasant viewing experience, but an excellent portrait of male desire, dominance, and confusion, sometimes arousing in its explicit depiction of homoerotic activity, sometimes a horror film of dark and sordid spaces. It was also a turning point in the career of Jean-Hugues Anglade, who became a star with the suggestion of a quiet personality and a clean handsomeness as coverups of the stormy passions of a common man, in curious roles that illustrated, as this one does, the condition of the French young men during the 1980s... and possibly of many men in the rest of the world. Anglade was in his 30s when he made "L'homme blessé", but he projects the innocence and fragility of a teenager, wrapped up in his own addiction to violence, unrequited love and his death wish. Vittorio Mezzogiorno is the addictive complement to him, as the hustler accustomed to the lack of affection and the fight for survival. If you are looking for something happy, this is not the film for you. Believe the title, that is its content.
Review of The Wounded Man
