Er Moretto Von Liebe leben

The exploitation of young men as prostitutes in the district around the Roman coliseum is the focus of Simon Bischoffs documentary and fiction piece that spares no closeup view of male anatomy This latter trait reveals just as much about the tenor of this film as it does about the body Several years earlier Bischoff met the main 17yearold protagonist here Er Moretto when he was just a 13yearold runaway The intervening years show how he changed into a streetwise vendor of sex and Bischoff also details how the 17yearold is picked up by a middleaged man to be his companion Fiction segments do not fare as well as the documentary aspects of this work which in the end seems at least ambiguous if not questionable in its intent