Francis develops a voyeuristic obsession with the beautiful woman living in the building across the street. A strategic peephole provides him with fantasy for intimate connection. This fleeting experience of pleasure is reduced to guilty masturbation, which sucks his life force both because he is committing a sin against his Catholic belief and because his orgasm is a gasp of desperation for the consummation he desires but lacks the stuff to achieve with a real person. In contrast to his life, the woman across the street lives a gregarious, connected life with friends and lovers.

Francis meets his neighbor Gloria (Emmanuelle Seigner) by saving her from a mugger. She shows interest and attraction for him, but he is initially too locked up to accept it. Little by little, and ever so subtly, Francis reaches out to the new opportunity for connection. We watch in awe of the powerful acting as he begins to thaw out of his masochistic, nearly catatonic state to accept that he can be desired, loved, and even admired. There is dark tragedy all around Francis, but a light seems to be glimmering within him.

Francis is puzzled to find out that Gloria is a vegan. Her passionate delivery of memorized quotes of vegan philosophy is a strange and funny counter-point to his mother’s Catholicism. In a modernized, politically correct form, Gloria’s veganism mirrors the same dogmatism that has crippled Francis all of his life. Nonetheless, Francis feels like a man for the first time. He is as intrigued by getting to know Gloria as she is intrigued by his shyness and isolation. Even though the two are lovers, he continues to watch her through his peephole. He is shocked to find that Gloria isn’t quite the person she pretends to be.

As the mystery of what Francis sees unfolds, we are drawn deeper into the contrast between appearances and reality. Nothing is as it seems. Francis’s mother’s bizarre friendship with a plumber culminates in a startling discovery that leads to a brutal murder and revelations of buried violence. The pictures Francis develops at a fast photo processing outlet reveal yet another tragedy. Even the secrets that Francis thinks he’s uncovered through his voyeurism are called to question. After all, the long years of emotional and psychological abuse may have permanently destroyed his mind. Is Francis going crazy (thus his visions deluded), or is he the only normal person (thus his visions true), or is he an insane savant (observant, but unreliable)? What really happened is not clarified and we are left to our own haunting conclusions.

Buddy Boy meanders between moments of startling human frailty, desperation, and a faint burning flame of hope, but it gets lost in the increasingly bizarre abstract mystery. At the beginning, we are moved by Francis’s blinding sense of worthlessness and guilt as he is unable to break away from the agony of self-imposed isolation. By all accounts, this promises to be the story of emotional, spiritual, and sexual emergence. We were touched to see a grown man reach inside and release the long muted voice of frustration and disapproval. We were amazed to see a grown man conquer his shame, guilt, and shyness and surrender to his first sexual experience. Aidan Gillen was remarkable in expressing these miraculous transformations.

Unfortunately, Buddy Boy is unable to stay the course of a personal transformation story, and it looses ground when it turns to exploring the dark side of the human psyche. The movie suddenly plunges into confusion and repulsion and betrays the opportunity of using Francis’s growing clarity and confidence to systematically challenge and break down the delusions in others. This may be the artistic and world vision of the creators of this film, but it turned the film from hauntingly beautiful to ugly and ultimately unbelievable. Rather then remaining true to the nature of the characters and their journeys, the film degraded for effect.

Perhaps the greatest strength of this strangely gripping film is its exposure of the pitfalls of dogmatic obsession. Catholicism and veganism (at least when practiced at their extreme) are ridiculed. The soul of the true believer proves tortured by hypocritical obsession. At the source of their true belief, the mother and Gloria seem guilty of the most abominable aberrations.

Through many powerful moments, this visually evocative film promises a story about personal redemption, either through triumph or tragedy, but only succeeds in becoming a mix of interesting ideas with little coherence or lasting power.