Claudio Carvalho While walking to buy cigarettes, the professional dancer Daniel (Tom Long) is abducted and forced to have kinky sex along many days by three hooded women. When he is released, the director of his company Isabel (Greta Scacchi) has already replaced him in the play and his girlfriend gives a cold reception to him. The disturbed and humiliated Daniel leaves the dance company and travels obsessed to seek out the abductors. Daniel has sex with many women that he suspects that might be the kidnappers. "The Book of Revelation" is a weird movie with a promising beginning that loses the initial power and becomes a sort of too long erotic soap- opera or soft-porn chic. The production is classy, the cover of the DVD is awesome but the characters are not well-developed and the trauma of Daniel seems to be excessive since most of the men would fantasize with the dream-situation that he was submitted – to become sexual object of three sexy women. The melodramatic development with the illness of Isabel does not add any value to the plot; the open conclusion is very disappointing and there are no explanations for the motive of the women or the title. It is very clear that the screenplay about a man's feelings was written by a woman. It was good to see the still beautiful Greta Scacchi again and her make-up in the end is impressive. There is a saying in Portuguese that could be translated to English as follows: "If the rape is inevitable, relax and come." Daniel should have done this and spared me of watching almost two hours of a pointless story. My vote is four. Title (Brazil): "O Livro das Revelações" ("The Book of Revelations")

abisio Book of Revelations starts very well. Daniel, an egomaniac dancer is kidnapped, abused and sexually raped by three masked women.After that, nothing else really happens. There is some hint of rediscovery but the movie gives nor explanation nor a real ending. Daniel reactions after the abuse are very basic. He quits dancing, has sex with every women around and finally starting a relation with very simple and common woman.I have seen a good share of art-house movies but this has something missing in it.The main leads are fine; but some characters does not seems to be completely defined.

fedor8 "A secret he would not share. An obsession he could not control. A mystery he dare not resolve." This is TBOR's "grand" tagline. The mystery and the secret aren't nearly as good as you'd hoped for. The movie's premise is just a big, empty promise that turns out to be a typical movie-poster lie.TBOR certainly works very well in the first 20-30 minutes, while the disappearance of the dancer is still a total mystery. Frankly, it should have stayed that way, because the "revelation" was a bit of a joke. Turns out Long was being raped and tortured by three young women. Is that it?, I thought. No mysterious cult, no aliens, no demons, no underground organization, no travelers from the past - just 3 horny women looking for perverted fun. How disappointing. I'd have preferred any of the just-mentioned clichés to this. However, even this puff-of-smoke "big secret" could have sufficed as a basis for a solid mystery/thriller. Alas, it isn't one. The filmmakers opted to turn this into a psychological drama. YAWN.Most of the movie is Long shooting in the dark as he tries to find his female captors. The worst part is that he fails. Even worse than that, WE the viewers never find out anything more than he does. The film ends with cop Friels telling Long to "start from the beginning". What a scam; it's the sort of cop-out ending (with a cop, no less) that almost anyone can come up with. To cop out during the writing process is the easiest solution. The hard option is to actually rack your brains, trying to come up with a unique or interesting twist, or at least a story with a beginning, middle and end. This is definitively an example of very lazy writing. And how does one mask lazy writing? One calls it a "psychological, meditative drama with a message". It's always easy to fool the sheep; after all, the likes of Picasso and Bunuel have been doing it for years. Create nothing and then rationalize it with empty semantics and other well-improvised nonsense. Art in its very nature offers a great opportunity for charlatans to exist in it. It takes a clear and unpretentious head to weed out the crap.Of course a woman would direct and co-write a movie about women who rape a man. It's a role-reversal thing-a-ma-jig sorta deal, like, don't you know? Very deep, like, socially relevant, like, message, that is meant to, like, make us think a bit about the role of women in society and stuff, like, guyeee. The whole victim thing put upside down on its blonde head, like, wow! So deep and stuff. Feminist power!Tom Long is pretty good in the lead role, though. He vaguely resembles the young Malcolm McDowell. There are several actresses from the terrible TV drama series "The Secret Life Of Us" (the hospital nurse and the aborigine girl), which the director was also involved in, plus Nina Liu who starred in a 90s teen Aussie series. This Liu is very attractive and should have been given a bigger role in the movie.Speaking of Liu, if one is to place suspicion on anyone, it's her. She had left Long, just as he was sent to pick up cigarettes. But what's the point in speculating? Clearly, the filmmakers themselves have no clue, i.e. haven't decided who the perpetrators are, so why bother. The end-credits state that one of the three robed women was played by none other than the actress who plays Long's girlfriend. But I'm sure this was merely the director saving money by using a person to play two roles. After all, there is no way that Long could fail to recognize his girlfriend's eyes, voice, breasts, or legs for entire 12 days; they'd been together for 3 years before his abduction.I didn't think that the pornographic nature of some of the scenes was necessary for the story. I believe this choice had more to do with the director's own sexual fantasies and living them out on the screen than anything else that she might come up as an excuse with - something undoubtedly very "deep". Charlatan.In fact, the TV series "The Secret Life Of Us" (no secrets there, though) which Kokkanis also worked on has a barely concealed strain of anti-male sentiment throughout it. This leads me to speculate that the female director particularly enjoyed filming the vibrator-rape scene. Did she drool while filming it? I have no idea what the title of the movie has to do with anything.Still, an Aussie drama without a left-wing political message. That doesn't happen very often these days...

real_hiflyer I have to agree with what many of the other reviewers concluded. A subject which could have been thought-provoking and shed light on a reversed double-standard, failed miserably.Rape being a crime of violence and forced abusive control, the scenes here were for the most part pathetic. It would have been a better idea to cover short glimpses of what was happening and let the audience imagine the deed. And the victim's laugh with the cops, when he aborted his police complaint, seemed as genuine as that of the cops. No awkwardness, no hesitance to merely join in. I don't know if this was bad acting and or bad directing but someone missed the point entirely. As for his half-a**ed supposed search for his attackers, pathetic. They should have skipped most of the sex scenes - another monumental failure in themselves, and had him meet Colin Friels when he first went to the police. The story could have then been drawn forth with good dialog and the occasional flashback - and saved by the superior acting and presence Colin Friels - the only reason I watched this movie - brings to any project he does.The only concrete revelation of this movie, is, it was crap.