Producer: Stina Gardell Directors: Kristina Lindstrom and Kristian Petri Screenplay: Kristina Lindstrom and Kristian Petri Cast: Björn Andrésen, Robine Román, Annike Andrésen, Jessica Vennberg, Ann Lagerström, Miriam Sarabol, Silva Filmer, Margareta Krantz, Max Seki, Masatoshi Sakai, Hajme Sawatari and Riyoko Ikeda Distributor: Juno Films
Grade: B-
Luchino Visconti’s film of Thomas Mann’s “Death in Venice” is rightly regarded as one of the most visually beautiful films of the seventies, and the director conducted a long search for the perfect actor to play Tadzio, the extraordinarily attractive youth who becomes an obsession for the 1912 novella’s protagonist Gustav von Aschenbach during his stay at a Venetian hotel, inducing him to remain in the city even as plague runs rampant there. It was Visconti who dubbed Björn Andrésen, whom he discovered during an open casting call in Sweden, the most beautiful boy in the world, and he did in fact prove a striking onscreen presence. But what happened to him after making the film was hardly beautiful, as this documentary by Kristina Lindstrom and Kristian Petri shows.
The directors introduce him as he is at the time of filming, in his sixties—thin, with a sallow face, long hair and a thick, unkempt beard. The deplorable state of his apartment puts him in danger of eviction, and it’s only the intervention of his girlfriend Jessica Vennberg that returns it to a condition presentable enough to pass inspection. He smokes almost continuously.
The film then proceeds not in chronological sequence, but shifting between past and present to offer an impressionistic portrait of a damaged life. We learn that Andrésen’s mother, a free spirit with artistic ambitions, disappeared when he was a young boy and was later found dead, apparently a suicide; she never revealed the identity of his father. He and his sister, or half-sister, passed to the care of his grandmother, a women intent on seeing one of her charges, at least, become a celebrity.
It was she who pushed Björn into acting; he had landed a small role in one previous film prior to auditioning for Visconti. Footage of that session is included, showing a nervous Andrésen taking off his shirt and posing at the director’s insistence; Visconti says that after having seen innumerable other boys, he knew instantly that Björn was the one, although he thought him, at fifteen, a bit too tall.
Substantial behind-the-scenes clips of the making of “Death in Venice” demonstrate that Visconti treated the boy as a pictorial pawn, orchestrating his movements within the frame to achieve the desired effect of a captivating, almost otherworldly beauty. Archival footage of the film’s royal premiere in London and its raucous showing at Cannes follows, including press conferences where the gay Visconti described Andrésen as the world’s most beautiful boy but joked that, now approaching sixteen, he was perhaps losing his looks.
After the film’s release, however, only small roles in minor pictures followed. But Andrésen found celebrity in an unlikely place, however—Japan, where, as archival footage shows, he drew adoring crowds, did commercials and recorded pop songs. His androgynous appearance also served as a model for anime artists. He later spent time in Paris, where he became a kind of trophy date for wealthy gays—a somewhat sniggering observation that has a scent of homophobia about it, just as the treatment of Visconti does.
Meanwhile his personal life deteriorated along with his film prospects. He married and had a daughter, Robine, but the marriage collapsed after a tragedy: his infant son died while in bed with him, and though the cause was given as SIDS, he clearly still carries guilt over the event, since he was drunk and careless when it happened. Yet he has soldiered on: the film includes footage with Jessica, though their relationship has rocky patches even when they visit Japan together, as well as behind-the-scenes clips of his recent appearance in Ari Aster’s follow-up to his breakthrough hit “Hereditary,” 2019’s “Midsommar.”
In addition all the archival material and recent footage of Andrésen shot by cinematographer Erik Vallsten (including a return he makes to Venice), “The Most Beautiful Boy in the World” offers snippets of interviews with his daughter and half-sister, some old family friends and acquaintances, and even some Japanese admirers who met him during his initial trip there and recall the reception he received. All of this material has been edited together capably by Hanna Lejonquvist and Dino Jonsater, though one might criticize the film’s structure as disjointed, and enhanced by Anna Von Hausswolff and Filip Leyman’s score.
The result is a film about a man whose life has been blighted by tragedy, but has survived, though with obvious psychological wounds. In that respect it’s fascinating, even uplifting as a portrait of resilience, although one wonders whether it might not have delved more deeply. It is also, however, a case study of the way that children can be used—or abused—by the entertainment industry, especially in terms of their sexuality. And in that regard it fits a pattern that’s become increasingly evident over the years, in film and television but also in sports.
And while the film is engrossing, it’s also disquieting, in that it’s a tale of the results of child exploitation that itself can seem exploitative of the man the child has become. The sense of queasiness one might feel is not unlike that which many viewers reacted to “Death in Venice” with back in 1971, a full half-century ago.