The Most Beautiful Boy in the World review – powerful look at the cost of fame

Asking complex questions about the relationship between authenticity and exploitation, the debate around the subject of child actors is one that comes up time and time again. Fifty years ago, it was a conversation that started to circulate around a 15-year-old Swedish boy named Björn Andrésen, whose “beautiful face” sealed his fate after he was cast as an object of obsession in director Luchino Visconti’s 1971 film adaptation of Death in Venice.

In Kristina Lindström and Kristian Petri’s documentary The Most Beautiful Boy In The World, Andrésen appears to us again – though he is largely unrecognisable. With long grey hair and a wiry beard to match, plumes of delicate smoke wistfully wafting around him, he's a far cry from the pruned and angelic presence in Visconti’s film. Andrésen’s life is also inconceivable from his fame: he is seen facing eviction and now lives a rather private and secluded life. This heartfelt documentary presents an opportunity for the actor to reminisce on a turbulent youth lived in the spotlight. Most importantly, he's able to do so in his own words.

Reclaiming his teenage years in this unconventional way, a voiceover commentating archival footage makes up a majority of the documentary’s basis. Thrown into the glitz, glamour and grotesqueness of fame overnight, there is a real sadness attached to this vision of the child star. Footage of his screen test with Visconti, the moment the director found his portrait of beauty and Andrésen’s life was forever altered, shows a poorly handled audition process where a young man is paraded for his facial structure and golden hair.

Elsewhere, intimate archive footage proves less sterile. Grainy and saturated clips from Andrésen's granny’s Super 8 camera shows the inherent playfulness of a young teen boy as adults work around him on set. Even here, though, Andrésen suggests that the guidance of his guardians was misplaced. The carefree footage is contrasted by an articulation of lost youth, as inconsolable binaries underscore Lindström and Petri’s documentary and Andrésen life: popularity and loneliness, fame and isolation.

Realising the label “the most beautiful boy in the world” label was always going to be a damaging title, no matter the intent of its application, it's moving to see Andrésen refusing to shy away from the camera here. Having spent decades reminiscing, his account is both thorough and protective, giving The Most Beautiful Boy in the World a necessary candour that elevates this documentary as a remarkable portrait of memory and grieving a lost youth.

The Most Beautiful Boy in The World demonstrates that while time may heal, some things stay with us forever. As he continues to reflect on the fact that as a young man he became an object of fascination at the circus of countless film festivals, Andrésen’s story takes on a rather ageless quality. The continued fallout of Hollywood’s young stars reveals that there are still lessons to learn from this decades-old tragedy.

The Most Beautiful Boy in the World is now showing in cinemas and on various streaming platforms.