She Male Snails
2012 · 75 MIN · IMDB 5.6 · 198 VOTES · DIR. Ester Martin Bergsmark
Overview
Caught between two genders, the artist Eli Leven and Ester Martin Bergsmark touch and caress each other, while they bath together in clouds of steam. A persuasive voice-off describes the often hard and painful growing process, which led them to choose to be neither males nor females. But something else entirely. While memories of adolescences scarred by homophobia and discrimination are presented, the audience is also captivated by poetic evocations of bodies, of snowy woods, water, nature, and snails: the symbol of androgyny. This movie moves the audience profoundly. It is a hymn to sexual fluidity, which reveals the search for the true self, rendered through the use of contrasting, vivid, and often acid bright photography. Intended as a television portrait of the transgender artist Eli Leven, it is a psychedelic docu-fiction, a hybrid movie inspired by Derek Jarman's Sebastian.
Dialogue Timeline — 239 lines
A SAMPLE ACROSS THE RUNTIME — EVERY LINE IS SEARCHABLE
00:01:13 When I was a kid, I thought that snails changed shells.
00:04:29 I think I'm in love.
00:05:35 And embrace the fate that awaits me.
00:08:36 I started taking antidepressants.
00:10:01 A few weeks later, I saw some pictures of Saint Sebastian.
00:18:11 you would take out your emergency lipstick and paint your lips red.
00:20:39 Where I come from, you're never scared.
00:23:49 He'll save me from this two-gender world.
00:24:50 I wanted to get physically close to him and talk.
00:25:43 One of the jocks pees in the dust. It splashes onto his legs.
00:26:54 A girl with breasts and a cock.
00:28:06 And that's when I decided
00:36:40 Then we sense that the guys are following us.
00:37:40 One of them kicks me, another hits Eli in the head.
00:38:37 Our breath turns to mist.
00:42:03 It feels great, the steam dissolving away my edges. I'm floating.
00:43:40 But real beauty can give you an experience of...
00:45:35 They became kind of...faceless.
00:47:39 - The Boy Hag-Lady, or...? - Yes.
00:56:54 Funny how a breaking heart can make me start to say:
00:57:58 I've got such a lot of love to give.
01:00:03 of just being a failure.
01:01:22 that I probably was desperate to find a sister.
01:04:34 With my make-up smeared on my face and a headache.