Critic Reviews

Writer-director Bertrand Mandico’s The Wild Boys is a heady, sexually charged take on “Lord of the Flies” — an exciting sail on the waters of gender fluidity that energetically skewers any notion of the binary.

A conspicuous example of political cinema made into art, The Wild Boys has more ideas in its 110 minute runtime than most filmmakers have in their entire oeuvres; jumping gleefully into the murky waters of gender politics and taking great delight in the overflowing bounty of cinephilic pleasures and vulgar perversities that spurt onto the screen.

This is one of the more truly strange visions from narrative cinema in the past few years, one that dares and succeeds as much as it fails. To call it bizarre would be an understatement.

Mandico has made a wildly strange debut, striking enough to make you sit up and pay attention.

It’s hard to untangle the film’s many bizarre indulgences, which at times seem intended to titillate as much as disturb, and yet somehow do neither. It’s all a bit too ludicrous to be sensuous or unsettling, or ultimately all that insightful.