A Hard Day's Night (1964)

Senin, 30 April 2007

A Hard Day's Night (1964)

A Hard Day's Night (Richard Lester, 1964)

Perhaps the most curious thing about A Hard Day's Night is how the film, supposedly a low-budget quickie production that sought to cash in a few bucks from the blossoming Beatle-mania, turned into quite an enjoyably surprising little masterpiece. While it's immensely possible that the makers, or the very young members of the popular Brit band, intended to create a piece of art, there's no denying that the end product, while undeniably slight, is a wonderful wonderful piece of entertainment.

It's a result of wit, of divinely inspired timing, and an adequate understanding of what's hip and funny. The title itself resulted from a mere afterthought of the band's young-ish drummer Ringo Starr; the studio bigwigs liked it and used it as the title; and the rest of the Beatles composed a song with Ringo's little phrase as an inspiration. The song is then used to start the film with a proper and addictive beat --- a boisterous wild chase by the band's fans (mostly composed of ravenous females) to the train. We're introduced to the four (John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Starr) who with Paul's imp-ish grandfather (Wilfrid Brambell) occupy one of the train's rooms. The band's tour managers (Norman Rossington & John Junkin), a duo problemizing over John's eccentricities and their height differences, join the group in their misadventures preceding a television broadcast of one of their live concerts.

Each of the four Beatles are given enough screentime to develop unique cinematic personalities. Overall, they're all portrayed as youthful, innocently rebellious, and irresistibly magnetic. Individually, they also shine --- Ringo, in his soul-searching and trouble-rousing walk through town, John with his irritating yet also lovely witty antics, Paul with his incessant warnings about his granddad's mischievous ways, and George's affable personality. The film's success mostly belong to the foursome's charm and their incredible rapport with each other, and the film's other more professional actors.

The screenplay, written by fellow Liverpool-er Alun Owen, is loaded with jokes that are both timeless and dated (the recurring line about the grandfather being a clean man --- referring, of course, to actor Brambell's role as a dirty old man in a television series). The story's very slight; almost non-existent actually. It's just a series of scenes of rascally escapades, stringed together by samples from the Beatles' early ditties. A semblance of a real conflict appears belatedly when neglected Ringo suddenly gets enlightened by the wicked old man of his unappreciated membership in the group; yet quite refreshingly, instead of dwelling in these tired conflicts, the film just wafts through them. They're more like excuses to showcase the group's songs and to market their phenomenal popularity; those commercial goals I really don't have any problems with.

The biggest miracle however, is the direction by Richard Lester, a TV-director plucked out of nowhere (his later creds will include the sequels to Superman). It's fashionably fresh; you know it's disposable entertainment, yet it feels and looks more important than it really is. Filmed documentary-style, it provides a gushing immediacy to the roadside chases, and an emotional realism to the performances (especially in the end, wherein shots of fainting screaming fans add delightful personality and effect to the concert). The scenes (that are not chases or performances) are executed with that same documentary-style that keeps the comedic dialogues natural and un-rehearsed.

Normally, films like A Hard Day's Night would hardly get noticed, especially by much more serious critics. However, upon its release in the United States, it gained critical and well, box-office respect. It's a trifle against the much more pertinent cinematic fare that was released during that time. And that's exactly it, with it's modest goals and investments, it did a lot more. With its protagonists with invented cinematic personalities (or not, since they portray these personalities with admirable ease to the point of non-acting), its director with that miraculous sudden outburst of talent and inspiration, its divinely patterned stroke of luck, the film just managed to do what it was made for, and much more.

Sex and Lucia (2001)

Sabtu, 28 April 2007

Sex and Lucia (2001)

Sex and Lucia (Julio Medem, 2001)
Spanish Title: Lucía y el sexo

Julio Medem's Sex and Lucia is such a confounding film, quite frustratingly so. Characters appear, disappear and reappear. Settings evoke an air of unearthiness and mysticism. Sex is almost too erotic, just a few steps above being too sinful. It lures, and teases. The moment you get a feeling that you already have a good grasp of its overflowing narrative, it forces you to let go by throwing a few more tricks to your inconvenience. Despite that, it's still a good film --- incredibly sexy, unbearably magnetic, and quite surprisingly, very coherent.

Lucia (Paz Vega) sojourns in a remote Mediterranean island after learning that her long-time boyfriend Lorenzo (Tristán Ulloa) has killed himself. The island is also the setting of Lorenzo's wildest one-night stand with Elena (Najwa Nimri) in the middle of the ocean, underneath a moon-lit sky. During Lucia's stay in the island, she meets several characters from Lorenzo's past, including Elena (who is taking care of the island's hotel) and scuba-diving Carlos (Daniel Freire), and encounters several metaphors from Lorenzo's own novels, including a mysterious hole in the middle of the island, a lighthouse, and other curious phenomenon.

The other half of the film, told through flashbacks that mix what is offered to be real and what is imagined, details Lucia's relationship with Lorenzo --- from the point wherein Lucia proposes her love to him inside a side-street cafe, to the time when their relationship crumbles with Lorenzo's breakdown over personal problems and the accompanying rigors of writing. The reality of Lorenzo's life gets mixed up with his art. Characters from his novel seem to be derived from the eventualities of real life; then these characters start to breathe a life of their own, their personalities and sensibilities intermixing with reality, until you wouldn't be able to discern which is taking over and which is subordinate.

Medem makes you believe that there are two aspects to his films --- of the real world and the world within Lorenzo's novel; of the periods before and after Lorenzo's suicide; of sex and Lucia. However, the entire film actually belongs within Lorenzo's novel-in-the-making. The contrivances, and the unrealistic plot mechanics (the dog accident and the entire scenario that revolved around it is surely something that doesn't belong in our conventional concept of a real world) are all too literary to evolve within the framework of real-life experiences; and I believe Medem is that talented a writer-director to know what fits in a film that details reality.

The entire film is nourished (as much as it also nourished by an abundance of naked flesh and sexy scenarios) by an explicit attraction to the mystical, whether it be during the moments that are implied as within-novel, or real. Medem drapes his day scenes with an abundance of sunlight (Lucia is also heard singing a song about the sun); while the night scenes are made distinct by the appearance of a very attractive moon (its presence lingers because of the name of Lorenzo's daughter, and other devices). The island itself is described as a natural anomaly; a lid in the middle of the sea with labyrinthine underground passages and its tides affecting the human mind. The entire film feels generally like a modern Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel, or at least externally reads like one, with its adherence to magic realism. Even the sex scenes have that literary imaginative character.

The biggest mistake in watching Sex and Lucia is to try making something logical about it or to perceive it as a film with a fractured narrative, because it shouldn't be logical nor is it a puzzle to be solved. The film is something to get engaged in (and its sexiness does help a lot in that bit) and to enjoy in all its unabashedly pulpy naked glory.

******
This post is my contribution to Culture Snob: The Misunderstood Blog-A-Thon.

Pan's Labyrinth (2006)

Rabu, 25 April 2007

Pan's Labyrinth (2006)

Pan's Labyrinth (Guillermo del Toro, 2006)
Spanish Title: El Laberinto del Fauno

In the much-lauded Pan's Labyrinth, writer-director Guillermo del Toro plunges us head-first into the fragile worldview of young Ofelia (Ivana Baquero). The film opens with a beautiful lullaby being overpowered by the sound of heavy painful breathing. We learn of the setting --- Spain in 1944 wherein the last remnants of the revolution are in the remote mountains. The first recognizable image we see is the protagonist Ofelia, her face and hands bloodied; it is quite apparent that the initial heavy breathing we heard came from her and that she is dying. It's a cruel portrait; the little girl is lovely in her youthful innocence (her eyes desperately clinging for a dimming sparkle of hope) yet in that precious age, has met an untimely violent death. It's enough a warning that this film is definitely not a fairy tale for it aches with such resounding and poignant realism, it's almost unbearable to watch further.

But of course I do, quite thankfully at that for the rest of the film is just wonderful. We learn of the fairy tale of a princess that escaped from her mythical kingdom, and upon reaching the surface, died as a mortal. Ofelia and her pregnant mother (Ariadna Gil) are on their way to a remote mill wherein the fascists under Capitan Vidal (Sergi Lopez) are fighting off the last few remaining rebels. The mill estate, surrounded by hectares of forests, contain several secrets including a labyrinth wherein Ofelia will meet an ancient faun who identifies her as the lost princess in the fairy tale.

There's a gorgeous intertwining of imagination and reality here. Those two aspects of the film symbiotically thriving alongside each other; each giving the other depth, meaning and context. The easiest interpretation is to delegate Ofelia's fantastical adventures as exclusively within the realm of her imagination. Such adventures are merely defense mechanisms against an oppressive situation she has landed in. However, the child in me opts to probe further; suggesting that the fantasy and the reality do co-exist, at least, for the sake of the protagonist whose demise has been announced so very early on. True, the fantastic elements are defense mechanisms or instruments for survival against that particular situation for the young girl, but more than that, those elements have real linkages with the historic scenario --- that the faun, the fairies, and those other magical beings' slight existence in the world are reminders of this world's coming-of-age, of it's difficult path into achieving a complete worldliness and mundanity; and the pay-off is the loss of innocence, and of the ability to conjure the magical.

Del Toro consistently draws battles between the mundane and innocence. Notice that Ofelia's three tasks are always conflicted by earthly needs and virtues --- of keeping a dress clean for dinner, of her worries for her mother, of hunger, of blood relations. In Ofelia's mission to regain her status as a princess, there is a need for her to withdraw from the world, to sacrifice inch by inch a portion of what keeps her human. Rationality should have made the mission easy for Ofelia, being trapped in that mortal world ruled over by the Capitan, who personifies everything that is wrong in her world, and complicated further by her mother's difficult pregnancy and a forced knowledge on the eventualities of the rebellion. However, it is that undeniable humanity of Ofelia that makes those tasks difficult. Along with the rest of the world, Ofelia is also on that verge of growing up and of experiencing the pains and aches of the world unshielded. She's in her most volatile; which is the reason why her world-view is always undecided (escapist or resolute; fantastical or realist; aloof or connected).

By crafting a Capitan who's almost un-humanly vicious, he commits a comparable paternal affection to the shrewd faun, with its jerky gestures that suggest decades of immobility. Additionally, the monsters, from the eternally hungry giant toad to the severely savage pale monster, become reasonably tame to the arbitrariness of the Capitan, considering that in his appearance, he elicits an inherited posture of pride and debonairness. Quite interestingly, the Capitan shares a trait with one of children's literature's most popular villains, Captain Hook --- that affinity with the tick-tocking of a pocket watch which in both cases appear in close encounters with death. In a sense, the affinity between the two characters connote a similarity in their roles in both tales. Capitan Vidal is the personification of the world's strict mundaneness as against Ofelia's fanciful escapism; the same way as Captain Hook is an adult in Peter Pan's Never Never Land.

Of course, there are other allusions to other fairy tales (Alice in Wonderland, being one of the most obvious). It's actually quite a nice touch as del Toro eagerly tells his dark depressing tale set in a dark depressing time, yet subconsciously, grants us comfort by inviting our collective imaginations (as charged by those familiar tales) to delve deeper into the connections of those tales with our respective lives.

These same fairy tales have allowed Ofelia to gain a prolonged innocence that salvaged her from the violent affairs of her adult wards. Much like the melodies that lulled us to peaceful sleep, these remainders of that far-away childhood gives us comfort from the rigors of the day-to-day world we've grown up to live in. The stories, the lullabies, that earnest sparkle of hope, and that final withdrawal from a world descending into mundaneness, were the keys Ofelia needed to open the gate to that mythical kingdom.

Hamlet Goes Business (1987)

Senin, 23 April 2007

Hamlet Goes Business (1987)

Hamlet Goes Business (Aki Kaurismäki, 1987)
Finnish Title: Hamlet liikemaailmassa

Aki Kaurismäki's Hamlet Goes Business is a pretty much accurate re-telling of William Shakespeare's famous tragedy Hamlet. The characters are the same, most of the plot points are retained, yet quite interestingly, it's an entirely different creature. First and foremost, i is more of a comedy, the type of comedy that Kaurismäki famously makes --- droll, deadpan, at times comical, and always funny.

It is set in Finland, or more specifically corporate Finland (inside cement buildings and boardrooms), wherein the poisoning of the father of Hamlet (Pirkka-Pekka Petelius) has caused a stir in a corporation that owns sawmills and other plants within the area. Immature Hamlet inherits more than half of the corporation's stocks, while Klaus (Esko Salminen), who we first see switching a poisoned drink with another while torridly kissing Gertrud (Elina Salo) who is on her way to serve her husband his nightly drink, becomes board chairman and opts to sell the company's assets to buy a substantial share in the world's production of rubber ducks. Unenchanting Ofelia (Kati Outinen) spends most of her time deflecting Hamlet's sexual advances --- her Polonius (Esko Nikkari) and brother Lauri (Kari Väänänen) have their own separate plans for their respective futures.

Hamlet Goes Business has been described as a satire on corporate greed. The film, by converting one of Shakespeare's most notable plays that portrays humanity in its most complex into this flatly noir-ish if not overly simplistic tale, succeeds in using Shakespeare's narrative while disposing of any of its resounding themes and replacing them with Kaurismäki's irreverent observations of the blatant inhumanity in corporate affairs. Relationships are as black and white as the film's gorgeous cinematography. Relationships aren't invested with emotions or virtues like trust, confidence, or friendship. Instead, treachery and ill motives flow smoothly from these characters, very much like rubber ducks getting manufactures in clockwork fashion by huge machines.

Hamlet is, I believe, Shakespeare's most complicatedly human character. His existence in literature is through his tale of vengeance; yet that is complexed with his human traits --- his needs to assure himself of his father's murderer (despite that being revealed by his father's ghost), his uncertain romantic affections with Ophelia, his even more uncertain musings about his own existence and humanity's place in this world. Shakespeare has given him beautiful soliloquys to express his encompassing mistrust with humanity and himself. Yet, in the end, as fate and his own doings would've led him to a quickened turn of events (that famous climax that ends with a foreign prince's recognition of his life's honor), it is his character's fallible nature that makes him distinctly human, and deserving of the respect afforded to him.

Kaurismäki's Hamlet is anything but respectable. His uncertainty for his actions are hinged on the character's selfishness rather than a genuine recognition of human error. His affections for Ofelia is more predatory and sexual. He begs that Ofelia give up her virginity, and in an instance where he tries to comingle love with his lust, he is unable to confront Ofelia. He doesn't have comrades, only employees --- yet he has this illusion of being the center of everything. Shakespeare acknowledges Hamlet as a character deserving of his attention; yet Kaurismäki's Hamlet forces the attention to himself (him being the controlling shareholder of the corporation, him being the employer and the wealthy man, him being the only son of his widowed mother).

And that is also where Kaurismäki treads away from Shakespeare's narrative. Shakespeare ends his play with recognition for his beloved character. Kaurismäki turns Hamlet into quite the bastard, and concludes his borrowed story justly without overriding the new themes of his carefully crafted modification of Shakespeare's beloved classic.

******
This post is my contribution to Coffee, Coffee and More Coffee: The William Shakespeare Blog-A-Thon.

Decasia (2002)

Sabtu, 21 April 2007

Decasia (2002)

Decasia (Bill Morrison, 2002)

Decay, in its most technical sense, connotes deterioration. It is a chemical process that transforms a substance (molecularly) into something less brilliant, something practically different and substantially lesser than its former self. In Bill Morrison's mind, however, decay is something else. It is the connective force that weaves borrowed footages together. It is the narrative force that supplies both characters and logic to disconnected scenes. It is the unique aesthetic; it is the theme; it is the entire film.

Decasia is composed of snippets of footages from various films that have suffered from different levels of decay. It's quite fascinating how nebulous clouds of what seems to be a mix of vinegar, film, and other chemicals reveal decipherable images --- a geisha beside a window, two romantic lovers amidst a serene lake. At first glance, the feeling gathered is remorse. These identifiable beautiful images have been transformed, over time and human neglect, into monstrous formations.

The formations however become so familiar in the film, so mobile and life-like that the feeling of remorse transforms to absolute hypnotism. The revealed identifiable images have turned into the background, the formations are now the protagonists. Morrison identifies the film decay with life itself --- footages of bacteria, of insects, leaves, and other plants are comparable in motion and appearance with the formations. Moreover, Morrison suddenly conflicts us by telling us an equally nebulous story of life. A decaying footage of childbirth, of developmental progression, of human pain, joy and other emotions join the mix. Hollywood has also become a victim of decay; and equally lends its stories, its melodramatic anthems, its slapstick comedy into the bunch --- further completing the cycle of humanity.

The decay has become the embellishment in Morrison's tale. It becomes the enemy of humanity (there's a sequence wherein a boxer continually punches the formation of film decay; amazing visual wit, I thought). It is also the obliterator of human error, of our imperfections --- in one sequence, a man seduces a girl while the decaying formation partially censors the actions. It accompanies human tragedy (a sequence wherein a mother is revealed her dead son; looks like a scene from a well-produced Hollywood flick), and desperation (there is also a sequence wherein what seems to be men are rescued from a mine). It modifies; in a sequence that ordinarily is charming and pious (a group of kids marching in a nun-operated school), the decay and contrast discoloration affects the atmosphere to the point of reversing child-like innocence into horror and bad faith.

The film's aesthetic and thematic suggestions are only enunciated by Michael Gordon's haunting score. In one interesting sequence wherein decaying footages of children playing in a theme park, Gordon's score emulates the glaring noise of locomotion. The effect is undeniable; with the invading visuals of decay and Gordon's suggestive music, the innocence of children playing is transformed into the stress, the clarity of danger of everyday commute, of man's day-to-day world.

Morrison's avant-garde techniques aren't as offputting as to claim Decasia as a difficult film to pursue. Morrison is actually very generous; he amplifies cohesion, he makes his work impersonal as to attract universal appeal. He has a story to tell, yet that story is not as strict as a declared narrative. It is open to various interpretations; even his themes are as open-ended as his narrative. There's a wild play of visual, aural, and thematic metaphors that invite you to take part in his cinematic game of redefining decay. Morrison's film is junk art, in its most innovative sense. It's quite brilliant.

Children of Men (2006)

Rabu, 18 April 2007

Children of Men (2006)

Children of Men (Alfonso Cuarón, 2006)

The thing that strikes me the most about Alfonso Cuarón's Children of Men is how familiar everything feels. It's clearly a dystopian future yet this one isn't one that is outside our lifetimes. 2027, and everything looks the same --- no flying cars, laser guns, or robots. Far more disturbing is how the problems of that dystopian near-future isn't nearly different from ours, only amplified; it feels like the problems of our present age were forced into a pressure cooker and everything else went awry.

England, according to propaganda, is the only nation that "soldiers on." Great cities have fallen to riots and plagues and London has become that last bastion of what life used to be. Swarms of immigrants from around the world would reside in England, hiding from the watchful eyes of England's immigration police. Those who get caught are placed in cages; there seems to be no tinge of embarrassment as to how these immigrants are treated. Their misfortune in life has deprived them of humanity thus no semblance of human rights are afforded to them --- violence and deprivation of freedom are exposed to the public without a care. The rest of the world feels more affected by the death of the youngest human being (accordingly described by Jasper (Michael Caine) as the world's youngest wanker) rather than the injustice that is right in front of their eyes. By a mere two decades and the accepted fact that humanity will cease to exist, the world has adopted a skewed ideology.

Unknown to the world is that there is one woman who is pregnant, Kee (Claire-Hope Ashitey). She jokingly describes herself as a virgin, and her child, as a bastard. Theo (Clive Owen), once an activist along with ex-wife Julian (Julianne Moore) but has lost all hope when their son died from a disease, becomes the unwilling "Joseph" to Kee's "Virgin Mary." Whisked away from his day-a-day life (only colored by frequent visits to friend Jasper, political cartoonist-turned-marijuana merchant; there seems to be no more room for cartoons or humor in Cuarón's dystopian future), Theo gets drawn into a mission to bring Kee to a ship called "Tomorrow," where the mythical group of scientists who are trying to remedy humanity's infertility reside.

Much has been said about how technically wondrous the film is, and it really is. There's so much details, so much information in every frame of the film. The streets of London are not merely littered with trash, garbage, and other junk, it's also filled with telling details --- of oriental tricycles (due to the sudden influx of immigrants), of graffiti, and other eye-catching eccentricities. Emmanuel Lubezki's cinematography is fittingly drab and color-less. There's no pretense of realism here; what we see is what Lubezki's camera captures --- including blood splattering into the camera's lens. There's also no pretense for beauty yet the result is hauntingly gorgeous. Cuarón and Lubezki's methodology during the entire feature, editing as little as they can with mostly long-takes which are perfectly executed, keeps you glued, keeps you flowing with the feature's own enunciations and depresses. They actually bring you from Theo's unsatisfying safety to a personal mission that will bring him close to danger with generous and compelling ease.

The film itself is something to behold. It grabs your attention by putting you in a scenario of hopelessness; and not only that, it is hopelessness that will soon erupt into violence and rebellion. It further grabs you by giving you this little spark of hope (of pregnant Kee, we see her in her glorious pregnancy among cows, who are commodified for their byproducts of their fertility, their milk); that hope we are forced to entrust to Theo. Is it a story of faith, or does it imply the futility of faith? That Kee, with that revelation, has turned into a commodity, and Theo's mission is a futile one, to entrust that unique commodity to a mere plan, a mere myth which is in itself a commodity of hope.

With Cuarón's visual metaphors (and there are a lot of them), the film feels utterly religious more than it is political. But of course, in our world wherein political has been equated with religion, a film like Children of Men feels quite justified with its mixing of those two facets of human society. Fantastically, the film's most moving moments are when the soldiers, the immigrants, bow down to Theo and Kee (with the sound of the crying baby in the background) with utter reverence; it tells something of humanity --- that its existence, its survival, still implies religion --- of bowing down to a power superior to them (Kee who has something the rest of humanity doesn't have, fertility). It's quite a multi-faceted film and requires further viewings for fuller appreciation. My writings, unorganized and highly unedited, cannot give justice to Cuarón's complex masterpiece; and I'd love to take in some more from the film.

Shortbus (2006)

Minggu, 15 April 2007

Shortbus (2006)

Shortbus (John Cameron Mitchell, 2006)

There's no doubt about it, John Cameron Mitchell's sophomore feature, Shortbus is made with good intentions. Although the first ten minutes of the film consists of the most explicit, inventive and shockingly direct sex scenes ever committed in serious celluloid, there's not a tinge of exploitation or pornographic intention that can be felt. We get a sweeping view of New York City (made out of what seems to be a mixture of clay, cardboard and acrylic paint) as the camera flies from the Statue of Liberty to apartment after apartment. In one apartment, Sofia (Lee Sook-yin) and husband Rob (Raphael Barker) are enjoying every form of copulation invented. In another, James (Paul Dawson) a lonely gay man tries to perform self-fellatio while a voyeur (Peter Stickles) watches from an apartment window across the alley. In another apartment (not far from Ground Zero), dominatrix Severin (Lindsay Beamish) whips and sexually satisfies her client.

The aftermath of this celebration of sexual freedom betrays, in an ironically humorous manner, the pulsating energy of the montage. Severin's client ejaculates into a Pollock painting (a bit of visual wit as the drop of semen doesn't seem to make a noticeable dent on the artwork); the absurdity of the situation gives Severin an epiphany. After what seems to be great sex, Sofia kills the mood by discussing her patient's inability to reach female orgasm (which alludes to her life-long quest to experience an orgasm). James' boyfriend Jamie (PJ DeBoy) suddenly comes home, catching James post-ejaculation and embarrassed.

Their lives converge in an underground bar called "Shortbus." Like some sort of sexual Wonderland, Sofia, desperate for that first orgasm, explores the premises with Alice-like curiosity. There are different places for different kinks: a room that never seems to run out of orgies, a concert venue, rooms and hallways for socializing. More interesting are the different men, women, and everybody in between who fill the rooms and hall of the club. A former NYC-mayor, a model in search of his perfect husband, the drag queen host, a horde of lesbians, homosexuals, and plain amorous individuals --- the club is practically the sexual core of the city where lovemaking sees no boundaries and limitations.

Shortbus is like Mitchell's loving ode to New York City. It's a very hopeful film and despite its preoccupation with the needy calls of the flesh, there's something strangely philosophical, and political with each of its characters' quests. But whenever Mitchell's far-reaching attempt to draw out something deep and resonating surfaces, a thick and overt fake-ness permeates. Mitchell's neo-philosophisms and far-out yet sadly inert political awareness (one of the film's most visually witty scenes is when a trio of men suddenly start singing the American national anthem to each men's erogenous body parts --- truly, it should be seen to be believed) are either visually depicted or spoken in embarrassing strides of overwritten dialogue. There's such a weightiness in Mitchell's ambition to be carried over by a film that is about practically nothing. I don't see irreverence or a high-powered rebellious notion in Mitchell's filmmaking, at least none if compared to Pedro Almodovar's early works (which possess a greater deal of eroticism, with a lot less of the shock value).

Mitchell strives for a celebration of love, gay, straight, lesbian, or whatever, yet his viewpoint is clearly queer that the main thread of Sofia's search for her orgasm has none of the realism or the emotional investment that is placed in the other storyline about James and Jamie's failing relationship. It's lopsided and often (especially in the end) sinks in a quagmire of unintended self-importance and gravity. It's also my problem with Mitchell's first feature, the highly enjoyable Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001). That film drowned with an ending that felt the need to put the entire narrative in a perspective of importance, which just doesn't work. Similarly, Shortbus has something to say and desperately urges to say it (with all its courage and inventiveness) yet unfortunately, most of it gets lost in translation.