Living Off Love

The exploitation of young men as prostitutes in the district around the Roman coliseum is the focus of Simon Bischoff's documentary and fiction piece that spares no close-up 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 17-year-old protagonist here, "Er Moretto," when he was just a 13-year-old runaway. The intervening years show how he changed into a streetwise vendor of sex, and Bischoff also details how the 17-year-old is picked up by a middle-aged 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.

Directed by Simon Bischoff, Living Off Love leans on a strong ensemble — Alevino Di Silvio, Franco Mazzieri, Vinicio Diamanti — to carry a story that balances spectacle with character.

The film landed with audiences for its craft and performances, and remains one of the most talked-about drama titles of 1984.