Italy · 2003
1h 45m
Director Marco Filiberti
Starring Marco Filiberti, Urbano Barberini, Alessandra Acciai, Rosalinda Celentano
Genre Drama
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South of France: Riki Kandinski and his elder brother Fredrico, come back to their family castle for their father's funeral. Fredrico knows nothing about his younger brother, but he notices that he is making big money and living in luxury all for a few days work a week. By pure chance, Fredrico gets his hands on a gay porn magazine and sees his brother in it.
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The film's witlessness keeps any satirical potential submerged well below soap opera levels. Filiberti's self-casting exacerbates this already shoddy melodrama: Frequent come-hither stares beaming from his patently sub-marquee mug provide one too many non-ironic "Zoolander" moments.
The New York Times by Dave Kehr
He's (Marco Filiberti) his own best audience, and Adored is best left to his own enjoyment.
Slipping from fantasy to soap opera without any authorial control, pic's best hope is to be recognized as some kind of cult movie of badness.
New York Daily News by Elizabeth Weitzman
A vanity project so preposterous it deserves to become an instant camp hit.
New York Post by Jonathan Foreman
Not only is Adored amateurish and mawkish even by the standards of American "gaysploitation" cinema, it's weirdly shy about showing nudity and sex.
It can make for entertainingly silly viewing, but it should come as no surprise that the film's plea for tolerance and unexpectedly tragic ending -- an unfortunate throwback to the Dark Ages of gays in films -- rings equally hollow.
Los Angeles Times by Kevin Thomas
This skillfully made Italian heart-tugger was a success on home ground. Its star, Marco Filiberti, in an audacious writing and directing debut, has lots on his mind and much in his heart, and as a filmmaker displays a Douglas Sirkian flair for finding substance in melodrama.
Adored stands at the crossroads where Telemundo and beefcake magazines collide, but for strangers to that intersection, the film's camp value is exceeded only by its tedium.
The Hollywood Reporter by Sheri Linden
Tries to be too many things, none very convincingly: plea for tolerance, docu-style character study, old-fashioned weepie.