‘Will-o’-the-Wisp’ Review: João Pedro Rodrigues’ Hot, Hilarious Queer Firefighter Fantasia
Guy Lodge Film CriticWhile the police force faces a massive task of image rehabilitation on screen, these are unexpectedly rich times at the movies for anyone with a firefighter fetish.
After an unsurprisingly long wait for one film featuring a team of strapping laddermen in sensual dance formations, two have come along at once.
Taking the queer emergency service of “Titane” to a lighter, sweeter, more playful and more pornographic place, João Pedro Rodrigues’ delicious one-off “Will-o’-the-Wisp” lives up to the flighty, elusive promise of its title, teasing its viewers in more ways than one: with a titillating parade of bare male bodies in balletic motion, and with hints of thematic import beyond that leading erotic spectacle.
Climate-change anxiety, republican politics and colonialist history are all woven into this shoestring-budgeted lo-fi sci-fi musical romance, despite a scant 67-minute runtime that scarcely has room for half its fizzing, flung-about ideas.
