Review of Shotgun Stories (2007) by Carl M — 27 Oct 2009

A beautiful movie about irresponsible men and responsible women.

Since few months I am very attracted to the beauty of the boys of the street. The girls in the street always do something; they are always late, run somewhere or carry shopping bags. The boys on their side, at least when the evening starts, look just bored, organize some circuit in the city between late delis to buy the new beer and wait for something to happen but it never does. They just look like they would be ready to do things but they never do, there is the possibility of manhood, but it is too complicated. Those boys are much more in the streets of Berlin than in the streets of Paris and they look sexy, their useless virility tickles my senses and make me wonder how to use it or even abuse of it!

Shotgun stories is a movie just about those boys. They drink beer all the time, they try to repair things but it never works, so they drink new beers. The surrounding is very white trash, people lives in trailers, in their van or at the best in a mortgaged ugly house.

There are no daughters in this family, the father will have sons, and he will name them kid, boy and son and they will have at their time boys too. Then, comes the fratricide Greek tragedy! An obsession for the symmetry just does the rest. Every brother has a half brother which is his reflection and complement but they were grown up (by the mothers) to hate themselves. They can move only in a triangular composition and sometimes the reflection of a brother is sometimes a nephew.

Some will escape to the tragedy; they ll leave the cursed boredom land to go to the city. When it is not really a happy end, at least there is some hope!

Like every movie about the boredom, the movie theater is almost indispensable otherwise you start to sleep in your sofa but the torrid homoerotism will keep awake some in front of the DVD.

P.S Don t miss the scene where one teenager charges a shotgun on his crotch between his legs in close up. Yes, that s the whole film, men trying to express their manhood but taking the wrong way!