Buddy Boy tells the tale of Francis, a stuttering, timid guy who's saddled (for all intensive purposes) with the responsibility of living with, and taking care of his super-religious but feeble, alcoholic step-mother. The reality seems to be that he's willing to do so. In fact, Francis and his mother are steeped in religion. Francis carries her on his back to and from church regularly and the Pastor visits their dingy, hole of an apartment every once and a while. He's bent on fostering Francis' beliefs in the church, or more specifically, asking him to attend Confessional more often (which the pastor seems to get a rush from).
One day, Francis comes home to find his step-mother lying unconscious in the kitchen with an empty bottle of glass cleaner clutched in her hand; somehow, later, (thanks to a high tolerance I'm sure) she wakes up. They go to church to repent. At one point, Francis is taking out the trash (no, not his step-mother) where he drops the arm-full of garbage down some stairs and manages to discover a knot that falls from a wooden wall behind the apartment building. He peeks out the knothole and sees that it looks directly into the apartment building across the street, more precisely, into the seventh-floor apartment of Gloria (Emmanuelle Seigner, also from The Ninth Gate). He notices the lights going on & off as she moves through her apartment, where she ends up in her bedroom. He a little intrigued to say the least. The next night, he returns to the knothole to find her having a party of some sorts, and after everyone leaves, she, again, moves to her bedroom. This time she appears blue and dispirited, despite the lively get-together. A third visit to the knothole produces the vision of Gloria feeling her breasts, followed by a bit of self-gratification. Francis is intrigued, but he's much too weighed down by life in general to think of these visions as anything but a passing novelty. Then one night as he's returning from work, he sees a woman getting mugged down the street from his building and he shouts out; the attacker runs away and he approaches the woman to see if she is o.k. and finds it's the woman from the apartment. Gloria seems to see something in Francis after they make their introductions, so much so that she proceeds to make several attempts to get together for coffee or dinner.
But nothing is ever what it appears, especially when it comes to complete strangers. Neither has a full idea of the others' lives in total, and the rest of the film in dedicated to letting each of them discover this, or to let their imaginations run wild... one of the two... or both.
Buddy Boy certainly doesn't run from the issues it starts. Be it how Francis deals with the growing burden of his bible-thumping, vulgar step-mother who smokes crack and drinks like a fish, only to play the 'sanctimonious card' when Francis strays from the flock, as it were. Religion is the main issue the movie deals with. The "how can a loving God allow such suffering" argument plays out to a point where Francis screams in his step-mother's face a multitude of blasphemies such as that "God can go fuck Himself" and that he hates everything to do with the church. His step-mother begins to pray. The other main issue is, (well I don't really know if it is this exactly), trust in another person. His relationship with Gloria becomes fraught with mistrust, lies, forgiveness, jealousy, obsession, and a multitude of other factors. On the part of both Francis and Gloria. Things get more complicated with the relationship and at home, but that will be something you'll have to see for yourselves. There's plenty more. In the end though, the twisting main plot and the surrounding story-lines (some of which don't completely pay off) combine for a somewhat disjointed experience. I like it, but even as 'real' as the feel is at times, I couldn't quite sink into the movie and consider it afterward. I kept going in & out of it. For all I know, it was meant to be that way.
