It
is rather odd that a (German) distributor can have in its programme woman-centred
films like Fistful
of Flies and Slaves
to the Underground and, at the same time, this chauvinistic
piece with added paedeophilia. This is perhaps because Everything
I Like is cinematically less usual than the average linear stuff
of cinema. However, regular readers of Queer View are strongly
advised to give this film a miss if they don't want their whole evening
spoilt.Such an unmitigated reactionary portrayal of women is not something you see every day. In Thomás, lost in himself but supposedly sympathetic, we are given a character who has obviously often beaten his ex-wife, but is not contradicted when he says that living with him can't have been all that bad. He is beyond help with his street abuse and his pubescent son describes his daddy's new girlfriend as a "pretty cunt". To mollify any piqued members of the audience the father tells his son to behave. Reason: there is nothing more beautiful than the naked flesh of a woman. The scene ends with the son protesting that, "You see, there's no other way of expressing it".
This penchant for chauvinism is seemingly justified when the women think exactly the same way, even if two writer men have put the words in the mouths of the female characters. Ann particularly likes fulfilling her rape fantasies with her lover both in private and in public, as though it was always obvious that women are actually begging for it even if they scream "No!" She also frets about her mother, the "insane feminist".
The film is interspersed with extracts from interviews with the Slovak writer Rudolf Sloboda, who says, amongst other things, that he dislikes prostitutes because he has to pay them and cannot conquer them. Enriched by this deep and entirely new insight, we can nevertheless just about glimpse the frustration of a punter who has not yet come to terms with the fact that it was his money that was important, not him as a person at all.
The so-called "paedeophilia" is not really a theme of this film. After Thomás' son Andrej (Jakub Ursíny) has been forced for the umpteenth time to remove his T-shirt or trowsers, the skeptical audience becomes sadly all too aware for whom this film was really made as well. The reasons for these recurring scenes become more and more trivial, even including the old spilt-his-food routine. His father teaches him to waltz against his wishes, by standing him (the son) on his (the father's) own feet and holding him by his backside. And if that wasn't enough, Jakub Ursíny, by far the best-looking actor (this can hardly be coincidental) with blond hair and blue eyes, has to wear a clothes peg as an earring for this special occasion. Shortly after, in his underpants, he stands in front of Ann, who falls in line with the director's fantasies and asks the boy if he puts his to the left or to the right. At least this film shows that heterosexuality and abuse by males of male children are not at all mutually exclusive.
It is quite depressing to find such dangerous trash making its way into the cinemas in some countries.
