With Wild Tigers I Have Known, director Cam Archer is clearly gunning to make the next Tarnation (director Jonathan Caouette even makes a guest voice appearance) or Mysterious Skin. But where those films draw on a raw-bitten realism, Tigers relies on stagey sets and stilted dialogue to feed us empty notions of alienation and sexual confusion. The film follows a young teen, Logan, who has a crush on a beautiful older boy, Rodeo (pronounced, unfortunately, as "Rod-aye-oh"). Shortcutting authentic narrative development, Tigers trades in heavy-handed symbolism and paints characters with single, crass brushstrokes. We know that this will be a story about the dangers of unacceptable desires because a news clip about a wild mountain lion cuts to a cage-like shot of a chain-link fence. We know that Rodeo is a brooder because he always sits alone, his hooded sweatshirt pulled close around his face. And we know that Logan wants to be loved because he writes "I JUST WANT TO BE LOVED" in black magic marker on his naked body. But what we don't know is why we should care.