After having shot during the summer holiday Casta Diva with my friends and students, I promised them: 'Next year we will make the opposite of Casta Diva. In the new film you will wear evening dresses and you will have lots of dialogue.'
The film had an incredible suvcces at the Venice festival. It was screened just before Fellini's E la Nave va. Linda Polan acted in both films!
It was awarded in Utrecht and I got the Vittorio de Sica prize, which was handed to me by Monica Vitti.
They asked me why it was called 'a sad musical', and I always answered that it was sad because we had not enough money to make a 'happy musical'.
Llike with my first film thz audience was at times confused.
I can't explain it. Naughty Boys is one of my five favorite films all time. It tells us so much about the gay community, even though it doesn't tell us that much: this gem made by Eric de Kuyper is boring sometimes, because many times during the film, we only see the interior of the house where the action takes place, without anything happening or without any voices.
Yes, Naughty Boys is a test to see if you are the chosen one to see the beauty hidden under the beast, with the beauty as the enjoyable musical songs and tap dancing performances and the beast as the empty, colorless house.
Maybe the house shouldn't be compared with the beast, because the house is made with ingenious cleverness. sometimes, the walls are made of silk, so you can see what's happening outside. there are many things about the house that are original, so the house couldn't be the beast and has to be the beauty. Then, should the action be the beast? I say it is.
The acting performances are bad, really, really bad. But the director knows this, and he plays with the awful acting of his cast (with lots of references to movies as Sunset Boulevard and Busby Berkeley musicals).
The moments with music are divine. it couldn't be made any better. maybe it would be better to state there is no beast here, only beauty, and that would be the perfect review of this movie: Naughty Boys is about beauty.
(courtesy by IMdB)