Paolo here. I've never made a secret that ever since watching that Lars von Trier film, it's been my goal to see TIFF movies that are pretty gross (I say last year's was Aronofsky's Black Swan but most would say Bruce LaBruce's LA Zombie). If the three films I saw today were combined, there would be more abject and nudity to rival all else. Oh, and these movies have some bad parenting too.

Apparently John 'Johnny Rotten' Lydon is making cameos now, appearing in and producing a movie called Sons of Norway. His younger self has a big presence and influence in the evolving characters, as young Nikolai watches the legendary rocker on television, the latter pretending to know about what 'punk' or what anything means. Nikolai is surrounded by people who have their own definitions of the musical movement, like his Communist/Dadist inspired father or a leather jacketed young man who fancies himself as a band's singer, recruiting Nikolai on lead guitars.

What I do like about it is how Nikolai's exposure to punk weaves in and out of a tragedy that befalls his mystically gifted mother instead of the latter causing the former. Most movies portray youths participating in antisocial behaviour as either a product of a bad generation or a family, and he is both. His mother couldn't have stopped him from listening to this kind of music and supports him, actually. His father also can't be bothered to be a good parent after being distraught, letting his son tend to the house. The movie is jus as easily about their father-son relationship, the former occasionally speechatizing his way to defend his son.

Why is this movie 'gross?' The answer... plus two more films after the jump.