Product Description

No one can live without love . . . By day, brooding, lonely Sergio works as a trash collector in the streets of Lisbon. By night, Sergio embarks on an increasingly intense odyssey of random, anonymous sexual encounters. Quickly, Sergio becomes fixated on a hot, young stranger and begins to retreat further and further into his dark dream life, blurring the lines between fantasy and reality, love and obsession. In Portuguese with English Subtitles

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #72088 in DVD
• Brand: O FANTASMA (DVD MOVIE)
• Released on: 2003-11-04
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Color, Dolby, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: 5.00 pounds
• Running time: 90 minutes

Customer Reviews

A Bizarre Tale of Obsession and De Clerambault's Syndrome
In 2000, João Pedro Rodrigues directed and co-wrote a dark and unusual film entitled "O Fantasma" ("Phantom" in English). The film's protagonist is a young man named Sérgio (Ricardo Meneses), who works as a garbage collector in Lisbon, Portugal usually during the predawn hours. Sérgio lives alone and has very few friends (which are mostly his coworkers), but identifies with a dog named Lorde. He is also obsessed with having casual, gratuitous sex with anonymous men, which never seems to satisfy him. One morning, while collecting trash from a private home, Sérgio meets a very attractive and muscular man named João (André Barbosa) working on his motorcycle and is immediately attracted to him. Unfortunately, João, who lives with his mother (Maria Paola Porru), becomes the object of obsession for Sérgio, who begins to unrepentantly stalk him. This and several other actions by Sérgio are symptoms of a mental disorder known as De Clerambault's Syndrome, which causes Sérgio to enter an increasingly delusional, animalistic and predatory state of mind.

Filmed mostly at night, the cinematography in "O Fantasma" is usually dark, colorless and surreal. This adds to the feelings of inner darkness and loneliness that Sérgio experiences as his obsessions slowly destroy his ability to interact with others and transforms him into the anonymous, shadowy phantom wearing a tight, black, all-encompassing costume like a comic book antihero. Other memorable characters in the film include Sérgio's coworker Fátima (Beatriz Torcata), his boss Virgilio (Enrico Vieira), Mário (Joaquim Oliveira), Matos (Florindo Lourenço) and the two police officers (Jorge Almeida and João Rui Guerra da Mata, who also did the art direction and costume design in the film). Overall, I rate "O Fantasma" with 4 out of 5 stars. Clearly, the film isn't for everyone, but it was directed and acted well.

Truly Strange!!!
First, let me say I am giving this completely unorthodox film four stars because I can't stop thinking about it. I'm not really sure I liked it, but I will say it is pretty daring in its approach to what can loosely be called "storytelling." There is very little dialogue, so we don't learn much about the characters, particularly Sergio, the central character, by what they say. Their actions are the primary sources of information into their unusual psyches. Sergio, a very attractive but deeply disturbed young man, is in the midst of a psychological meltdown, but I don't think his bizarre behaviour fully explains what is going on deep in his soul. The minimalist approach of the filmmaker in depicting Sergio's descent seems intent on providing slightly less information than we need to know. Perhaps the idea of this approach is to leave viewers in the dark just enough to be haunted by the film's imagery long after it is over. Maybe this film is an indictment of promiscuous gay sex, but then again, maybe it's an endorsement. I say this because there is an insidiously sexy edge to this work that snuck up on me and wouldn't let go. It's both seductive and repulsive at the same time. A very interesting, but perhaps not altogether successful endeavor. Yet, I highly recommend it!

Sergio is the reason to buy this DVD
No matter how you look at, the reason to buy "O Fantasma" is the actor play sexy Sergio. Yes the story is a downer, if well photographed. Sergio's character seems to be slowly going insane,
from loner to crazy. But, you do not come across many actors in gay flicks who were born to play a role and are flat out sex personified. The star of "O Fantasma" fits the bill on both counts. Ironically, the director in his commentary talks about the star wanting to appear in his next movie, but he was not right for any of the parts and went back to his small village to live. What a shame, because he is the only real reason that this film was even released in the U.S.=== albeit a very good reason.