This is the latest from John Greyson who, with Zero Patience, was hailed as the next big queer cineaste. He did TV work with Queer as Folk in 2000, and Proteus is his come-back film. It's based on real-life events, but it’s also a sensuous costume drama that crosses realism with fantasy, and transcends records and imagination. It’s 1725, and the black South African Claas, living in a Dutch-ruled area, loses his cow to white colonists. While attempting to get the cow back, he is wrongly charged with theft and is imprisoned at the Robben Island Prison, sentenced to manual labor. There he meets a homosexual Dutch man, Rijkhaart, who is teased by the other prisoners because of sexuality. They form a relationship. Their physical and spiritual connection is detected by a botanist, Virgil, who looks after the prison botanical garden. This film presents us with the various differences and powers that forbid the sweet fruit of homosexual love. Claas is a bilingual and relatively intelligent heterosexual man, whereas Rijkhaart is a simple sailor who only speaks Dutch. Virgil is a married but closeted gay man who cannot hide his desire for Claas. Instrumental in trapping the two so that their “sin” is found out, Virgil is the symbol of the double-sided nature of colonization: letting the two indulge their relationship on one hand, only to punish them for it later. Fans of Derek Jarman films will love this film. Set on an isolated island, the wild nature and the sun-bronzed male bodies will remind them of Sebastian, and the details that highlight the different power symbols (like the prison guards in Nazi uniforms, typewriters, and radios), will recall Edward the Second. (KIM Ji-hoon)