Björn Again
THE MOST BEAUTIFUL BOY IN THE WORLD Death In Venice’s teen star re-emerges.
In 1970 director Luchino Visconti held auditions throughout Europe for a boy to play a key role in his lush adaptation of Thomas Mann’s Death In Venice, and found him in shy Swedish 15-year-old newcomer Björn Andrésen. Playing ‘the most beautiful boy in the world’ made Andrésen an international star, but also became a nucleus for emotional anguish and a decades-long healing process.
Co-directors Kristina Lindström and Kristian Petri decided to make an intimate documentary portrait of him after Petri worked with Andrésen on other projects and Lindström realised that the actor had a fascinating family life and had also lived through abject objectification. The duo began to earn his trust and filmed him over a five-year period, unearthing parental failure, mental health issues and uncomfortable footage of Andrésen’s exploitative audition.
“His life is so incredible and rich and strong – strong stories since he was newly born,” says Lindström via Zoom from Stockholm. “We didn’t know about all this material, of course. It was discovered during this process. When we heard the things that Visconti said, it was like a treasure to see it before your own eyes.”
It’s not only Visconti’s nowquestionable treatment of his young star that is a revelation, but the fact that Andrésen was – and still is – emotionally and mentally fragile thanks to a complicated childhood, including an aunt who would tape telephone conversations, and the death of a key family member shrouded in mystery. The result is a film that explores trauma, the responsibility of filmmakers to safeguard their cast and society’s damaging preoccupation with youth and beauty. “It’s like we start with Björn, and then we move to different chambers and rooms in the big, big house that is his life, with different doors opening.”
Some of those doors prove extremely painful but also cathartic for Andrésen, now living almost reclusively and with hoarding issues. Lindström and Petri were aware they were treading a fine line between exploration and exploitation themselves in making the doc. “Continuously, you’re in a process where you have to stop and ask yourself,” admits Lindström. “Even now, when the film is released, we think about it. We’ve shown the film to him during the process, and we had his closest family see it, and every week, still now, we chat with him about things.”
The film also raises the question of whether we should look at Death In Venice differently when we understand the toll it took on a child actor. “It was what the film did with him, and how he was picked up afterwards… I can even see it in the film now,” says Lindström. “But you have to see everything in its context, and with your eyes wide open.” JC
ETA | 30 JULY / THE MOST BEAUTIFUL BOY IN THE WORLD OPENS NEXT MONTH.