D'Agostino (2012)

Hmmm. So here’s the gist. “Allan” (Keith Roenke) is living in the USA with his older girlfriend “Sylvia” (Torie Tyson) but after six years they are really just going through the motions. Then he gets an unexpected call telling him that his grandmother has gone and left him an house on Santorini. Off he duly goes to assess his inheritance and it’s all rather beautiful. Then one night he hears some scratching and upon investigation he discovers a naked man half starved and unable to speak. Now what would you do at this juncture? Doctor? Police? Ambulance? Nope, “Allan” decides to wash this rather grubby fellow and treat him like a dog. Feed him from a bowl, chain him up with a collar, indeed the word ‘inhumane’ just leaps to mind - especially when there are some very thinly veiled sexual connotations incorporated into this rather savage indictment of a dominating character. Wait, though! It gets better. It transpires that, after a quick search on Greek Google, that this lad - whom he’s christened “D’Ago” was being used for organ donating; fell off his ship in the Aegean Sea and was pretty much abandoned by his creators. Yep, he’s a clone! What now ensues took what little credibility that was left and drowned it. There are so many ridiculous scenarios, not least when “D’Ago” escapes and goes meandering across the island, stark naked, and then returns to his dog-collar providing master. Is the purpose here that the disgruntled, and frankly supremely arrogant “Allan” is supposed to be looking after this captive and starting to learn about himself? Is he supposed to count what blessings he had with his girlfriend or is he really just an irredeemable and odious character whose definition of kindly behaviour is to treat his new friend as if he were an animal. I must admit, though, that pretty tasteless as this was I did find it curiously compelling. I felt sure that something was going to happen - and it did! Thing is, what we get for a denouement is just as unsatisfying as most of the rest of this rather shallow assessment of humanity, sexuality and preposterousness. It is fitting that it’s set in Greece where the ancient pantheon was riddled with gods and heroes whose mothers, sisters and goats were all the same creature and upon which quite possibly auteur Jorge Ameer (who frequently and persistently knocks on the door to say hello) used as his basis for the screenplay, but in any case this film makes little if any sense and is a long old watch to leave us with such an unfulfilling sense of ambiguity.