SHEM [2004] - The British film SHEM, Hebrew for Name, stars handsome newcomer Ash Newman as lost boy Daniel who has discarded his very sense of name & heritage but, as the film begins, is on the search of rediscovering it; the significance in the title which director Caroline Roboh explores in her own personal narrative.
The hedonistic and wildly sexual young Londoner also happens to be a self-absorbed, arrogant and unhappy individual who we first meet in Paris where beds & feeds off an older woman as well as her son, taking advantage of his living arrangements.
Soon enough, Daniel is summoned back to London. His old, dying grandmother sets him on a mission, a convoluted one, may I add. Thereafter Daniel travels is on a wild goose chase, in search of his late grandfather’s grave with very little information other than his name.
Daniel’s objective is not easily accomplished and the search takes him on a train ride through Vienna, Prague, Budapest, Belgrade and Sofia where Daniel encounters many kind strangers and unusual characters that help shape his character.
As Daniel has no real identity, as both a secular Jew who is very disinterested in his own religion or heritage or as a detached individual who has very little motivation other than engaging in sexual contact with anyone he encounters, he begins to take on numerous spontaneous identities to suit his anonymity: Alfred, David, Alex, he is not inclined to open up but spends most of his time having sex with a variety of men and women, more often than not putting himself into dangerous situations, while trying to live his momentary zest for life’s kinks to the hilt.
In his road to (self) discovery, Daniel’s introspection develops through many revelations that shape his character and allows him onto a road to redemption and Newman does a fine job in carrying the weight. This travelogue-as-drama is noticeably controlled by the self-assured if uneven hands of its artistic writer-director Roboh who allows us to explore a world literally ruled by gypsies, tramps and thieves. Inasmuch that one can sense that the film is a product of a film scholar, one that can be discovered only at international film festivals and art houses.
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