Clevercell Very disappointing...

Intcatinfo A Masterpiece!

AnhartLinkin This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Siflutter It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Arcadio Bolanos Inspired by Bruce La Bruce's short stories, Tom Palmer's daring film ventures into a world of male prostitution, heavy drugs and depravation.In the first minute of "Sugar" 18-year-old Cliff, the protagonist, stares at a boy kissing his girlfriend. Cliff is there as a voyeur, as his presence irrupts the intimacy of a couple, but he is also there to acquire the necessary visual stimulation to masturbate afterwards. Regarded from the very beginning, the order of the phantasm mediates the relationship between the protagonist and his world.And what world is that? There is the nice house with the white picket fences which conforms reality and there is also the real, which Cliff encounters as he heads downtown and arrives in a place in which prostitution, she-males and drugs are the norm; why is that the 'real'? Because it exceeds and surpasses reality, but at the same time is excrementitiously derived from that reality. It is in this environment that he meets a handsome hustler named Butch.If, according to Lacan, the desire comes from the real as it cannot be fully articulated or tamed by language, then it's understandable that Cliff will bond with Butch through the phantasm. What are the implications? That he doesn't know anything about this male prostitute, and yet he is very attracted to him. Deep inside, Cliff trusts in the possibility of a successful relationship with Butch. But is it possible to maintain a healthy rapport with someone whose motivations remain unclear? Butch considers himself an actor, after all, he has to reenact the fantasies of his clients. He seems to specialize in seriously disturbed individuals that have banned themselves from normal pleasure and instead aim subconsciously for their particular phantasms (the abusive father, the strong macho, the hockey player, etc.). According to Freud not all libido can be transferred into the image, there are limits. The recognition of ourselves and our bodies, in which conscious knowledge is modeled, bears great limitations, because something eludes this primitive libidinal investment that shapes the image of the ideal ego; there is a portion of libido that cannot be transferred into the image, neither in the image of my body nor in the image of my partner, remaining instead invested at the level of one's own body in a non-specular way, avoiding the laws of representation. When Butch's clients rely entirely on this young man to relive their fantasies they fail at obtaining pleasure, because as Freud explains, they're trying to put all their libido in an image, in a specular representation of their past which obviously doesn't work in the present.Perhaps dominated by the real, the clandestine world of drugs and illegal activities, Butch has no option but to keep doing the things he knows how to do best. Cliff's mistake, however, is to enter into this ambit of the real, turning his back on a more familiar (and familial) reality. Cliff sleeps with his friend in the same bed, but they do not touch each other. They masturbate in front of each other, but they do not have sex. Cliff fills the void in his life, his lack of a loving partner, with the phantasm of something that's clearly not there. But what happens when Butch gets violent and crosses the line? Somehow, adopting the phantasm is easy, but when Cliff finds himself occupying the role of the 'object a', when he finds himself turning into Butch's phantasm, an already feeble relationship starts to unravel.

truejimmy Yeah, the spoilers are coming...Look, this movie actually had me buying it most of the way through. Butch came across as a sympathetic character and Cliff's naivety made it all the more painful when Butch turned on him. Still, that made sense - Butch doesn't understand a relationship based upon love and doesn't see why turning Cliff into another trick is that big of a deal. His self-destructive spiral afterwards was pretty damn well done, too.What KILLED it for me was after Butch died. Cliff's first boyfriend has just died and within hours of the funeral he aggressively hits on another man and gives him oral in a bathroom? Huh? Look, somebody may justify this by stating "Maybe you just don't get gay culture" or by pointing out that "Sugar" refers to all sorts of addictions and maybe Cliff's addiction is sex. But when you take your most sympathetic, deepest character (Butch) and kill him off and then have the next best character in the movie do something to so completely disrespect him, well, the movie loses points in my book.Even if they had just ended with Cliff in cafe making eye contact with the other guy, it would have been a better end than this. A movie can only be so nihilistic before it loses you, and "Sugar" lost me completely in the last five minutes.And did anybody notice he pretty much abandoned his sister downtown? Just saying.

carl-ralston There are certain "bad" movies that I can actually watch and enjoy for humor's sake if nothing else. This one, unfortunately, does not even rise to the level of a good bad movie. I should have been tipped off by the incredibly tacky stock theme music during the opening credits, but undaunted I began watching it anyway. I had to stop after about 20 minutes into it because this movie has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. The only good thing about it is that it gave me hope that anybody with a camera and a script has a chance of making a movie nowadays. Everything about this film was awful. It was boring, trite, and amateurish. The acting was about as bad as it gets and the screenplay, from what I saw, was pure drivel. If there is anyone who is even considering renting or buying this DVD I warn you that you will absolutely regret it. Don't even bother if you are going to watch it for possible sexual titillation: there is none. It is possibly the worst movie I have ever seen.

pickensjrbj I just saw this movie last night, and I loved it. I am not a renowned movie critic, or anything, but I really liked this flick. I thought that the story was pretty good. Gay teens that have been through similar situations will understand. I really enjoyed Brendan Fehr's performance as well as Andre Noble's. I was shocked to learn about Andre's death, and I am sorry to say that I didn't get to experience him as a performer. I have seen none of his movies prior to this film. I heard that this film was based on a number of short stories, and now I am eager to read them. I have had a little experience with the kind of life that was portrayed in this movie, the drugs, the street life for a young gay teen that has no other asset than his youth and his looks. I think that the movie was true to the pain that this kind of life causes. I don't think that I can say anything else, except that I really enjoyed Sugar.