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Duffer
A bizarre study of obsession focusing on a teenage boy who is torn between the charms of a fleshly female prostitute and the sadism of an older man.
Director: Joseph Despins and William Dumaresq
Overview
Shot in South West London in 1971, Duffer is an intense and bizarre study of obsession that is by turns beautiful and disturbing. It tells the story of a teenage boy (Duffer) who is caught between the womanly charms of a kindly prostitute called Your Gracie and the sadistic attentions of an older man named Louis-Jack. And then Duffer gets pregnant ... Both whimsical and disturbing, with a quirky sense of the grotesque, Duffer is a film that defies easy comparison (perhaps Eraserhead comes close). The director and writer were two ex-pat Canadians in London, and the score is by Galt MacDermot, the Grammy award-winning composer of Hair. The trio would reunite to make their London-set musical, The Moon Over the Alley.
This title is also available on DVD / Blu-ray in the BFI’s Flipside collection.
Contains strong language and one scene of sexual violence
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