Mass Transit
This short is just barely listed in IMDB, with no reviews or ratings. It has no dialogue. The ‘story’ is simple: a young woman sits next to a guy at a bus stop and has a fantasy about having sex with him. On the surface, what we see is her masturbating and fantasising, in a strong R-rated vision.
The challenge for a watcher of any film is registering where you are. The curious thing about this is that it is erotic. Like ‘9 Songs’, that usually overwhelms any other values or intent, at least in the US. But like that Winterbottom project, I’m swept away by the excellent filmmaking here.
This is Swedish, and if I can place myself in a situation where sexual urges are considered in a more healthy way than here, I can take away a pretty powerful experience. So set aside the sex and substitute more direct opportunistic passion. If so, you will appreciate the economy of this, which in the hands of others would drag in all sorts of extra devices for no additional experience.
It is the editing, the rather amazing editing. I imagine it is a film school project. Nominally the story setup is a fantasy initiated at a bus stop and matured by imagining in bed later. We cut back and forth with the imagined event getting more explicit. But then without us noticing, this becomes our fantasy and not hers, as extra scenes are intercut which expand the cinematic richness beyond what the story supports. This is multilevel seduction and scary effective.
Neither filmmaker seems to have done anything else I can see.
Posted in 2022
Ted’s Evaluation — 3 of 3: Worth watching.