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.
00:08:40 They make you feel weird in the beginning.
00:10:08 And I decided I wanted to be a writer.
00:18:19 And you could breathe again.
00:20:52 And the cherry trees are always in bloom.
00:24:03 Finally, I found him on the Internet.
00:24:58 We went separate ways in the subway. And then I moved away to Malmo.
00:25:56 His endless happiness seen through blurred vision.
00:27:16 But that was just a natural part of me.
00:28:29 The femininity became sort of my rage.
00:36:59 Beautiful, fancy cakes with cherries and whipped cream.
00:38:00 "I'm going to count to three. If you're not running, I'll bash your heads in."
00:41:29 He has cut his long hair.
00:43:04 That's how I see life.
00:44:29 In the book it is described as meeting another body.
00:46:27 The violence became a path into me.
00:56:35 I'm not dead yet.
00:57:36 But that's the way I was born to be.
00:59:28 I'm tired of sitting in this damn bathtub.
01:01:05 I feel that you sometimes hope that I'll be more...
01:02:24 and the transvestite, and the asshole.
01:05:20 I want to make it clear that I don't know who I am, and that's fine.