There's no clean way to describe this truly wild teenage journey disguised as an uncomfortable erotic fever dream full of phallic imagery, but it's the kind of fantasia worth diving deep into.

| Sep 17, 2021

It plays out like a prettier, sexier Guy Maddin film. And its pan-sexual theme is not without a dash of humor. The beach fight/orgy scene complete with flying feathers and sand alone is worth the price of admission.

| Feb 13, 2021

A masterpiece about the bipolarism we live in. A hallucinogen film about the influence of the gender in our society. A must of the LGTBIQ+ contemporary films [Full Review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 5/5 | Oct 15, 2019

The Wild Boys is a fantastic, avant-garde and rebellious journey that blurs gender identity. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Jul 22, 2019

For those open this kind of cinematic queering (not only of his characters, but of film form itself), in The Wild Boys Mandico and Löwensohn more than live up to the promise of their previous short film collaborations.

| Mar 12, 2019

Mandico leaves nothing on the table here, and for that I must give him credit. It doesn't all work, but when it does, it's something to behold.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 14, 2019

Jean Cocteau meets David Lynch with a good dash of Colette in Bertrand Mandico's sensationally trippy 2018 release, Wild Boys.

| Jan 7, 2019

Though Mandico's debut feature may seem to be a clever and provocative tale about gender identity and eradicating toxic masculinity, it's pure gender essentialism.

| Dec 14, 2018

"The Wild Boys" is full of inventive and imaginative elements, which counterbalance the lack of plot.... Mandico focuses on creating a heady, dreamlike atmosphere that is both beautiful and disturbing.

| Nov 30, 2018

The Wild Boys is a supremely assured piece of craftsmanship... but for all the maturity of the command on display, there is little about it to suggest it was made by an artist who was trying to put adolescence behind him.

| Nov 16, 2018

Deliberately, alluringly unstable and destabilizing, 'The Wild Boys' is made even more turbulent by its superabundance of references and inspirations.

| Nov 16, 2018

There are pieces of this puzzle that beguile, and the whole endeavor is commendable for its audacity.

| Original Score: B- | Nov 15, 2018

It's all a bit too ludicrous to be sensuous or unsettling, or ultimately all that insightful.

| Nov 14, 2018

With his feature debut, Bertrand Mandico has created a work of art that's as full of angst as it is horny, a queer fever dream that's as much a nightmare as it is an erotic fantasy.

| Nov 1, 2018

Gorgeous, bizarre, and unique enough to merit checking out, The Wild Boys is one of the most refreshing debuts of 2018.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Oct 11, 2018

an exciting sail on the waters of gender fluidity that energetically skewers any notion of the binary.

| Aug 24, 2018

The film evolves and assumes entirely different modes of expression, unwilling to settle for anything less than utter bewilderment. The phantasmagoria is paramount, and it is defiantly on display for all willing to see.

| Original Score: B | Aug 24, 2018

A weird, erotic coming-of-age fantasy adventure that probes dark, dank regions of the human psyche without getting too uncomfortable to watch.

| Jul 25, 2018

Playful... but also perverse and densely imagistic...

| Jun 13, 2018

[Director Bertrand] Mandico offers something that goes far beyond the multi-referential pastiche, combining the classic adventure alongside with pieces of artistic works such as A Clockwork Orange... [Full review in Spanish]

| Jun 11, 2018