Fantastic Fest 2010

Rino loves women. He loves how they look and how they smell and how they feel. Or, at least he’s confident that he would love how they smell and feel if he ever got close enough to find out. Overweight, clumsy and socially awkward, he can never really work up the nerve to actually talk to any of them. None of the attractive ones anyway. And so he just loves how they look and imagines how they smell and feel. “Imagines” them right into one of the soiled tissues that lay scattered around his apartment.

A translator of technical manuals and graphic novelist who works from home, Rino’s days in real life are drab and boring and devoid of human contact. In his mind, though, Rino is a lothario of stunning sexual prowess. He draws comics imagining himself as a well-hung rhinoceros, literally saving the day with his super powered penis. His dreams are filled with buxom, beautiful women in tight shirts and short skirts striking a variety of provocative poses. And when you compare the drabness of his day to day life —in which his only friend is a man even lower on the social food chain than Rino is himself—to the richness of his imaginary worlds, is it any wonder that Rino masturbates so much that only the miracles of modern lubricants have prevented him from reducing himself down to a bloody stump?

And then Malin arrives. A gorgeous blond exchange student from Sweden, Malin is forced upon Rino as an unexpected house mate and she brings with her emotional fragility and binge drinking that suggests Rino’s social life may just have a chance of getting out of his head and into the real world.

We tried and failed to land the film for the 2009 edition of FF but in 2010 we would not be stopped and we are proud to bring Rino to US audiences for the first time. (Todd Brown, Twitchfilm)

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