Glucedee It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

Bluebell Alcock Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

Rexanne It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

Jenni Devyn Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

raymond-106 It's not a biblical epic as the title might suggest but a sadistic drama of rape and revenge.Daniel (Tom Long) is rehearsing some complicated dance moves under the direction of his choreographer Isobel (Greta Scacchi). It's a violent and sexy routine as he leaps air borne swinging through the air at the end of a rope. Isobel is not 100 per cent pleased as she feels he lacks the required deep inner feeling for the role..With the rehearsal over, Daniel's partner wants a cigarette so Daniel dashes off to buy her a packet. He doesn't come back. Days and days pass, but still no Daniel. A private investigator is engaged to search for him.I suppose the revelation is that he was kidnapped by three women heavily cloaked in monks' robes but further details are sadly missing. They pin him down to the floor of a disused warehouse, each wrist shackled to the floor, each ankle shackled in the same way so when stripped of his clothes he looks like a large letter X. The black cloaked women hover about his naked body like crows over a human carcase raping him orally and anally as he screams to be released. "He stinks" says one "wash him" And then we see the erotic bathing of his face and body. This is really strong stuff for public viewing. But there is more to come. His hands are released on the promise he will masturbate himself so that the lascivious women can watch with glee the changing expressions on his face.After 12 days they are done with him and he is dumped blind-folded in a dusty field. Humiliated and disgusted he finds his way back to his partner. After the intensity of the earlier scenes. the film here begins to sag. Daniel clamps up and nobody else presses him for information about his recent absence.The rest of the film is pretty much a lone search by Daniel to find the perpetrators of his ordeal. I found the scene at the police interview quite unconvincing. And where do you start when looking for a girl with a tattoo on her breast or a redhead with a glorious head of hair. And how do you know it's really the one you're after. No matter. He stalks and rapes them. In a way he's getting his own back.Eventually he meets up with the policeman who has been searching for him. He seems to heed the policeman's advice "You've been starting at the end. You should start at the beginning". Rather odd advice if you ask me. But it does give you something to figure out as the film ends. As a matter of fact there are a lot of unanswered questions. All the same I'm glad I watched this Australian film. It's very different, though some might find it offensive.

Claudio Carvalho While walking to buy cigarettes, the professional dancer Daniel (Tom Long) is abducted and forced to have kinky sex along many days by three hooded women. When he is released, the director of his company Isabel (Greta Scacchi) has already replaced him in the play and his girlfriend gives a cold reception to him. The disturbed and humiliated Daniel leaves the dance company and travels obsessed to seek out the abductors. Daniel has sex with many women that he suspects that might be the kidnappers. "The Book of Revelation" is a weird movie with a promising beginning that loses the initial power and becomes a sort of too long erotic soap- opera or soft-porn chic. The production is classy, the cover of the DVD is awesome but the characters are not well-developed and the trauma of Daniel seems to be excessive since most of the men would fantasize with the dream-situation that he was submitted – to become sexual object of three sexy women. The melodramatic development with the illness of Isabel does not add any value to the plot; the open conclusion is very disappointing and there are no explanations for the motive of the women or the title. It is very clear that the screenplay about a man's feelings was written by a woman. It was good to see the still beautiful Greta Scacchi again and her make-up in the end is impressive. There is a saying in Portuguese that could be translated to English as follows: "If the rape is inevitable, relax and come." Daniel should have done this and spared me of watching almost two hours of a pointless story. My vote is four. Title (Brazil): "O Livro das Revelações" ("The Book of Revelations")

Philby-3 This is not your typical Australian movie, despite its government funding. It could have come from a European art-house director and its location in Melbourne seems incidental (I think the original book by Rupert Thomson was set in Amsterdam). It is also not a movie for the nervous – at times it is very tense indeed and the cutting and soundtrack seem designed to keep the audience on edge. As Daniel the male dancer abducted and sexually abused by three hooded women, Tom Long gives an intense, if slightly monolithic, performance. Daniel's lines give him little scope for expressing his feelings, it is only in dance that he can do that, and the rest of the time he acts rather than thinks. On the other hand his physical appearance dominates the film – we are seeing essentially his view of things.The abuse scenes were not as bad as I had feared, and were relatively short. They were pornographic, I think, only to people like the hooded women. And here's the problem. A handsome heterosexual man captured by three young women and forced to have sex with them? No wonder the cops laugh when Daniel tries to tell them what happened. What is it about Daniel that moves them to do this? He was not chosen at random. He's a fit accomplished young male dancer, someone of physical beauty and grace. Why do these women need to humiliate and degrade him? No doubt the director Ana Kokkinos wants us to ask this question but we are not provided with many clues towards an answer. All we are told by the hooded ones is that "it is for our pleasure". Well, if they are sadists, I suppose it makes sense but I don't think it tells us anything about relationships between men and women generally.Even so, the whole thing is pretty well done, and we do get a very clear picture of the devastating impact abuse of this nature can have on a person. The revelation, I suppose, is Daniel's loss of both innocence and self-regard. Ana Kokkinos proved in "Head On" that she can mix atmosphere and action though this film is quieter overall. Tom Long gets good support from Greta Scacchi, never better, as his dancing mistress, and Colin Friels gives a quiet and convincing portrait of an understanding policeman ( a very rare beast). As Daniel's girlfriend, Anna Torv's performance is curiously flat – her character is underwritten and her impassive good looks convey little but emptiness. Deborah Mailman also puts in a good performance in a small role as the girl who helps Daniel recover from his ordeal. But the portentous (or is it pretentious) atmosphere dissolves to a banal ending, almost on the same level as a "Twisted Tale" (a Channel 9 TV series of mordant but slight stories) – the motivation for a routine assault is explained.The screening I saw was sparsely attended and I don't think this film will do well, which is a pity. Ana Kokkinos is a talented filmmaker and it would be interesting to see what she could do with more mainstream material. Art-house Street can be a bit of a cul-de-sac.

Jay Thompson 'The Book of Revelation' is an adaptation of Rupert Thomson's 1997 novel about a male dancer who experiences sexual abuse at the hands of three women. The film is directed by Ana Kokkinos, who returns to a key motif of her earlier 'Head On': the wounded male body in a society where men are meant to be un-breakable. Tom Long plays Daniel, the male dancer who experiences the aforementioned attack at the hands of women. The women (all concealed by hoods and masks) hold him prisoner in a rundown building where they subject him to various forms of sexual degradation. After being released by the unseen rapists, Daniel can't admit to what's happened. After all, who'd believe him? A man being abducted and forced to satisfy the sexual demands of three women? So he leaves his girlfriend, quits his dancing career ... and goes in search of the mysterious attackers. Why? To seek revenge? For more torture?The film alternates between excerpts of Daniel trying (or not trying) to come to grips with his experience and flashbacks to the said attacks. This creates a dense, nightmarish atmosphere that still unsettles me almost an hour after this film finished. Also, some haunting use is made of various Melbourne locations (though as a Melbournite, I couldn't help but want to cry out at certain points: "That's the cafe at Melbourne Uni! Why's he walking down that fateful lane when there are so many milk bars on Flinders Street?")The abuse itself is rendered ambiguous. Are they 'real' acts of sexual degradation? Or fantasies of domination and submission? Psychoanalytic film theorists will have a field day with the references to infancy, the womb, the maternal, castration ... Nevertheless, I had to wonder: How would the audience respond if the women weren't wearing such highly stylised garb (and shot in equally stylised surrounds, at one point in slow-mo?) The attack scenes do accurately suggest Daniel's loss of male power and privilege, but (thanks to the manner in which they have been filmed) wouldn't look out of place in your average male-oriented porno. Nothing innovative or politically subversive there, or in the objectification of women that (we are led to believe) is one of Daniel's responses to his degradation. And there's the acting. Greta Scaachi and Deborah Mailman are excellent as women trying to understand Daniel's silent pain, but Tom Long doesn't hit the right note. He seems just too removed from the world around him, even before the attacks. One may argue in his defence that he is trying to represent one model of masculinity - strong and sturdy, tough and unfeeling. Perhaps so. But it's also difficult to empathise with his character, or feel any emotional connection for him whatsoever. But I'm rushing ahead of myself here ... Perhaps (not unlike Daniel) there are many questions and anxieties about 'The Book of Revelation' that I have yet to articulate or come to grips with. The film may not be a completely honest (or subversive) study of sexual violence or gender roles. But it does raise some interesting - and often quite disturbing - questions about these issues. And for that alone, Ana Kokkinos should be commended.