Beijando na Boca

This film was absolutely awful, I even feel uncomfortable calling it a film. Its the typical "mumblecore" movie, with zero plot and a bunch of aimless whiny twenty somethings stumbling around trying to "figure stuff out". I have tried to give mumblecore a chance, but lets be honest its just horrible.

I am not out of sync with cinema, I appreciate Dogme95 films, Idioterne is one of my all time favorite films. So I do not mind if a film is cheaply made so long as there is some (ANY) substance.

Everything in this film is horrid, the acting, the writing (or was it all improvised?), the direction, but MOST of all, above everything else, the camera work was just plain and simple nonsense. The camera was never anywhere logical, there was no consistency. I got to admit being a guy I had heard there was nudity in this film so I thought to myself well even if its horrible at least there's nudity (yea I know, I'm a jerk). Well thanks to the uber crappy camera-work you never really get to see anything, and the things you do see, TRUST ME - YOU DO NOT WANT TO SEE. This film made me want to vomit on numerous levels.

The dialogue made me want to vomit, the camera-work made me want to vomit, but mostly the idea that this film was praised by some legit critics, well now that more than anything makes me want to vomit.

I spend a lot of time with the films of young filmmakers. Sometimes I'm completely blown away, because of all the ordinary values and risk that youth carries. A life with film needs this, it really does.

But its an investment that along the way brings a whole lot of disappointment. This is one such.

You may take my view with qualification because one value I hold dear is the "long form," the ability to not just present a world but have something happens therein that matters. It isn't enough to merely display, you have to engage, transform, penetrate.

These kids have some promising intuitions about this: there are within the story two guys: one is a photographer and the other apparently a sound editor. Also, the film alternates between interviews — ostensibly for the sound guy's project — and an ordinary watching of a certain young woman. We learn a few things about her, and along the way see a couple things not often seen in films. So there is structural folding in the thing.

And the performances are natural. But that's not saying much because these characters are only half-people. We learn through DVD extras that this is who they actually are. There's some sex and nudity here. Commentors note that this also is natural. It didn't seem so to me, instead as artificially posed as usual. Yes, I presume that sex we see is "real," at least once. And the camera seems to be casual and lingers on odd trash as much as on bodies, something that mirrors the offhand Gen Y sense of awareness.

But there's nothing done with this at all. One wonders why it was made at all, other than the four involved were bored.

Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.

No, I don't like it.

The summary makes reference to the main character's (Ellen) insertion of the word "like" in just about every sentence! It's a common,annoying California verbal tic that once you hear it, you can't stop hearing it! And she's got it bad! "So he's, like, "I don't know," and I'm, like, "Why not?" so they like, got up and left, and we, like, got up and left, too..." Pretty much every time she speaks..

No one involved with the movie noticed this? Totally unwatchable! Also, what's with the guy jerking off in the shower? What was the reason to subject us to that? My guess is the guy was horny and, this being such an amateur attempt at movie making, said, "Let's use it - it's edgy!"

I'll be frank: remember I sought this out because it was a) Joe Swanberg's first movie, and b) it seemed like it was, in part, a soft-core porno. No, it's not that. It has practically hardcore scenes with the director himself. Unfortunately I remember some of those scenes more than the scenes of drama, which involve the revolving lives of college aged people in love (and some of this looks like people in dorms).

It's so naturalistic that it is trying for something different entirely, almost breaking the mold of both pornography films (the usual rough quality is at least given here a more direct shot-list, I think, than what is usually done by directors), and not unlike the other (must quote) "mumblecore" movies there is no firm script so the dialog and talk between actors and what is kind of breaking the fourth wall about relationships is extreme and intimate and extremely intimate all at once.

When I mean extreme is that we get intimate with these actors to where that line is blurred between what is perhaps, arguably, exploiting the young actors who agreed to be in this (female and male, I mean this involves the cutting of public hair on camera), on top of the emotional extremes displayed. What this all amounts to is... maybe not a whole lot. But I was mesmerized watching this - it doesn't function as a typical porno despite the rampant nudity, and it doesn't function as your typical three-act structure dramatic narrative.

It's experimental and in your face and primal and even philosophical and it doesn't give a good damn what you think of it. That's refreshing for a first movie. I just wish I could muster enough energy to watch it again.

What a time we live in when someone like this Joe Swan-whatever the hell is considered a good filmmaker...or even a filmmaker at all! Where are the new crop of filmmakers with brains AND talent??? We need them bad, and to hell with mumblecore!

This movie is about nothing, just as the characters in the film stand for nothing. It's this horrible, so-called Gen Y, that is full of bored idiots, some of which declare themselves filmmakers with out bothering to learn anything about the craft before shooting. Well, Orson Welles was a filmmaker. John Huston was a filmmaker. Fellini was a filmmaker. Dreyer was a filmmaker, etc. Current films like these show just how stupid young, so-called "filmmakers" can be when they believe going out with no script, no direction, no thought, no legit "camerawork" (everything shot horribly on DV), no craft of editing, no nothing, stands for "rebellious" or "advanced" film-making. Nope, it's called ignorance and laziness or just pure masturbation of cinema (and there actually is an in-your-face "jack-off shot," so be ready).

Look at the early films of any accomplished "indie" filmmaker: Linklatter, Morris, Allen, Lynch, Hartley, Jarmusch, Jost, Lee, or Herzog...none made anything as tedious and aimless as this, yet Swan-whatever the hell, is still going to SXSW every year and hailed as some kind of gutsy, new talent. It's crap! I can't imagine anyone liking this, and everything else this so-called filmmaker has done (all seen by me) is just as bad (the newer stuff clearly made to appeal to a more mainstream audience, one of the sitcom calling). Steer clear, unless you're a friend or family member of those involved...on second thought, if you're a family member or friend you'd probably be embarrassed to see a family member or friend in such compromising situations...

Utter garbage. This isn't art. This is the ultimate opposite of it.