NI

NIGEL ANDREWS - 4 stars

Greek Pete proves what we had long suspected. Life imitates Mike Leigh films, at least in Britain. So do many aspiring filmmakers when trying to look with wit and forlorn truthfulness at the reality of Britain. Andrew Haigh’s tale of a year in the life of a London rent boy is a debut docu-drama, deadpan and winning. “Greek Pete” (Peter Pittaros) and his pals are enacted by real rent boys or, as they call themselves, “escorts”.

In some candid scenes they prove their professional prowess, right there on camera, with clients or porn-video participants. (Keep Aunt Edna well away from the cinema.) What rivets the attention, though, is not the hardcore action but the sense of inaction, of a tragicomical, low-rent stasis bordering on crisis. Pete and his drug-dependent rent-boy lover Kai (played with a poignant bird-like frailty by Lewis Wallis) argue about their domestic togetherness: Kai wants more of it, Pete less. Pete rambles to the camera about his grandma’s disappointing reaction to his career choice: “I thought she’d be more supportive.” Sex has turned into breadwinning drudgery. Late on, barely believably (but anything is possible in this Lewis Carroll world), Pete is named international “Escort of the Year” at a glitzy Los Angeles ceremony.

Flashing his tank-topped muscles, oozing second-generation Mediterranean “charm”, smugly proud of his controlled drug abuse, Pete is a traffic accident masquerading as a human being. We sympathise with him, at times, if only because Pete so eloquently and resourcefully sympathises with himself.

Posted by Michael Gillespie, Thu 20 Aug 2009 -

Male escort Pete has landed in London and aims to earn enough riches to retire, but juggling work with his new boyfriend (fellow hustler Kai) is proving difficult. An improvised docu-drama tracing the real lives of the capital’s rent boys, debutante director Haigh never hides their problems (some have been assaulted, started too young, do drugs and have no contact with their families), but he also wants to highlight their camaraderie, likeability and professionalism. Pete works hard and alludes to Muhammad Ali’s "best dustman in the world" dictum when expressing his desire to be named International Escort of the Year. The vérité aesthetic is gritty and unglamorous, but also humane and occasionally transcendent (take the beautifully realised Christmas party sequence, or Pete’s intimate on-screen anecdotes). Forget judgmental finger-wagging or voyeuristic adulation: Haigh wants his audience to draw their own conclusions, but regardless of your opinions on the sex industry, you’d be a bastard not to cheer Pete on to victory

Review: Greek Pete

An alternately warm and shocking drama-documentary. 4 stars.

Should you just chance upon this film, you'd think it was a full documentary, not one of those weird drama-doc hybrids. The handheld camera, vérité stylings and seductive naturalism point that way, and it's only writer/director Andrew Haigh's liner notes that tell you that this is a fiction propelled by real-life stories.

All the actors here are real rent boys and the muscly, Ronnie Kray-lookalike Greek Pete (Peter Pittaros) is the film's centrepiece and seems the most stable of the gaggle of impossibly fresh-faced London gigolos here. All talk candidly of what are presumably true stories of their time turning tricks for cash, and all tell sad stories with a resigned 'life is shit' pragmatism that gives the film a desperate pathos.

The film never condemns or glamorises these people. Some of them claim to do it for a love of sex, some to survive, and for Pete (who describes himself as “always horny, with nearly nine inches of uncut cock”), it's purely about the money. But the lasting memory you get of these people/characters is that they're not men, but boys.

Pete comes across as a likeable chap and you hope that, for him, everything works out, because with most of the others, it's hard to avoid seeing a bleak future where drugs and death are just round the corner.

A big hit at this year’s London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, this is an intimate, no-holds-barred documentary about a group of London gay escorts, led by charismatic Pete. This film should be required viewing for anyone considering a career as a male prostitute – which, judging by the growing number of ads in the back pages of certain gay mags, is now seen as an acceptable career path for young gay men. Sometimes funny but more often sad, what emerges is the emptiness of these boys’ lives, their dependence on drugs and alcohol and their inability to form loving, lasting relationships.

Pete’s cheery take on all this is that it doesn’t matter what your career is – you should try to be the best at whatever you do. So naturally he’s thrilled to bits when he’s flown over to LA to pick up the Escort of the Year award. It’s hard not be won over by his cheeky charm and concern for the welfare of those around him. Whether he’ll still be as chipper in a few years’ time remains to be seen.

London rent boy plays it straight in Greek Pete

Andrew Haigh mockumentary about a London rent boy plays it absolutely straight.

I only twigged at the end that buff, ambitious, cliché-spouting Pete (“At the end of the day you’re a product!”) is not quite what he seems.

Pete Pittaros, a real-life male escort, answered an ad placed by the film-maker, and the narrative they dreamed up together involves tenderly doomed romance, a chemical Christmas and even an anticlimactic trip to LA.

It’s a black comedy, full of great lines (Pete to client, off camera: “You lonely, sad, sad, pathetic person!”) and it deserves to be a mainstream hit.

What a shame that it’s often unnecessarily graphic. Thanks to all that throbbing gristle, it probably won’t be coming to a cinema near you.