LastingAware The greatest movie ever!

Titreenp SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

GazerRise Fantastic!

Staci Frederick Blistering performances.

HRoss007 I enjoyed the film itself, though deeply disturbed by the turn of the plot. The three of them falling into a Ménage à trois, seemed natural enough at the time, and obviously the sex was extraordinary for all three of them. But then Mickael goes psycho about it, and calls his girlfriend a slut! She is more realistic and existential about the fact that the sex was 1,000 times better than with just him alone. Mickael's puritanical backlash was so disappointing. Vanessa cannot get Mickael to admit that he enjoyed it.I agree with some of the criticisms of the camera angles and film editing. It was not clear in the sex scene that Vanessa had sexual intercourse with Mickael as well as Clément, not until revealed later when Vanessa is discussing it with the school nurse. The scene is spontaneous, hot, and passionate - and leaves you wanting more! But my disappointment is in the character of Mickael, and the outcome of the plot. It's a movie! It's just one plot of many possible. Well designed, well played - and when you find it disturbing, that is Art! As many remarked, the film and situation are not "Gay" in the sense of homosexual attraction. But it is "Gay" in the sense of the Ménage à trois being a "Non-traditional relationship." Although this film is about Adolescents, the immaturity of Mickael can occur in most older people too. I have searched chat rooms for years, trying to find examples of people who have managed polyamorous relationships without jealousy or abuse. Even in fiction, it is usually treated as a transitory state with tragic endings. (See "Jules et Jim", "Cabaret") I still believe in the Possible!

leplatypus I chose this movie because I was looking for a triangle friendship between a girl & two boys. As I lived this situation and get lost in it, I hope a similar story would inspire me. My major concerns are: - Why (a) & How (b) the triangle forms ? - Why (c) & How (d) the triangle degenerates ?(a) The movie offers a plain answer: "because it's better !". (b) here, it's an open triangle: the three share things together. Mine was a closed one: every ones knows the others but never the three are together or speak about the missing one: (c) The movie doesn't offer spoken explanations but rather prefer visual & emotional assumptions: the end comes with sensuality, sexuality coming up in the triangle, or more accurately, when for one member, deep feelings are tied with intimacy, and, as for the latter and the former, they can be divided. I agree with that.(d) In the movie & in my story, silence is the proof that something isn't well.. And in a ironic and painful way, the tool for this sad times, is always the phone: I lived this dreadful planned phone-call: "Call me back: I wait you"… and when time comes, the phone is silent…. A variation is also shown, when the line is connected but one refuses to speak… All those scenes were very very hard to see for me.If the movie was a great help in that way, he got also a lot of flaws:I zapped on the boy's family problemswhy the shower scene on the DVD cover is cut on the movie? how Mickael gets finally into the hotel ? is Clément always seeing Salomé ? he says "no" but has her address; and who is the girl with him in the bar: his girlfriend ? how can she knows about the address ???what finally happens to Vanessa: the ring at the final shoot is a proof of engagement ??? with whom ?????

Chris Knipp Mikael (Johan Libéreau) is the seventeen-year-old captain of a high school judo team who, as the film opens, is encouraged to befriend another team member, Clément (Pierre Perrier), whose wealthy father is the team's sponsor. Once they start working together on the mats, they and Mikael's now ripe childhood sweetheart Vanessa (Salomé Stévenin), with whom he's already having sex, become a triangle.Maybe it's generalized attraction or maybe it's envy that allows Mikael to share Vanessa with Clément in a secret orgy-à-trois right on the gym mat, we don't know. What is pretty clear is that Clément's family is rich and happy and Mikael's isn't particularly either. Mikael's dad (Jean-Philippe Écoffey) is a boozer whose drunk driving loses him his cab driver job, his angry mom (Florence Thévenin) does janitorial work at his school, and they live in a "banlieu" ghetto flat where mom has to cut off the electricity for two weeks because they can't pay the bill.The "bac" high school general final exams are coming up and so is an important match for which Mikael must lose eight kilos in six weeks to qualify for a lower weight class. Mikael may outpace Clément in judo, but Clément has every other advantage, even to a better understanding of the strategy of the sport. Mikael feels dispossessed by comparison and this feeling is heightened when Vanessa and Clément again have sex – this time without him, because he flees from a hotel room he's gone to with them: his class and his sex have endowed him with simpler notions of sexual roles. Only Vanessa of the three feels truly free to explore.Cold Showers is Antony Cordier's first full-length film. It was well received in France, showcased in the new directors section at Cannes, and has US distribution. The physical frankness of the film may offend puritanical American sensibilities. In the Rendez-Vous Q & A Cordier said he's a fan of Larry Clark, and showed Clark's Ken Park to his young principals before shooting because he knew they would like it, and it would serve as a test: would they be able to go this far in their interpretations? Well, Ken Park has been shown in France, but remains barred from public screenings in the US. Douches froides is milder than Ken Park, but its nudity and sexuality are still quite bold, including sexual "democracy" of showing male bodies as freely as female, indeed more so, since the camera pursues the judo team into the showers to follow their horseplay and shows Clément and Mikael frontally nude after their sex marathon with Vanessa.Vanessa thinks sex with both boys is the best. Mikael decides it was wrong and comes to regard this experimentation, whatever his motive for participating in it, as having been a mistake. After the hotel incident, from which he flees, he rejects Vanessa, who for her part never forgot that Mikael was the one she cares about.Douches froides isn't meant to be prurient, just open. Cordier wants to show the physicality of athletes and adolescent sexuality and also to confront how tragic and extreme adolescent life is. Mikael is chosen as the film's main character not to represent the dysfunctions of youth but its normal problems, and the fact that he faces specific class issues which he cannot transcend simply by being high-functioning. (The filmmaker studied editing at a prestigious French arts school, but grew up in a provincial working class family.) The hero's new friend Clément is a golden boy because he comes from wealth and privilege. Both have parents who seem more adolescent than they do. It's the youths here who are facing some of life's most serious issues head-on, while the parents seem juvenile or evasive.A weakness of the film is that despite its rich physicality, there isn't much depth of character portrayal. The depiction of Mikael in particular is marked by a certain opacity. Despite his voice-over we rarely see into him, and his goof-up on the bac geography test is so total it makes him look inappropriately like a dimwit. Nor does his relationship with Clément go beyond judo moves and a party at the rich Steiners' house where his dad disgraces himself. A plus is that the details of judo – a major sport in France – are very authentic. Otherwise, Cordier has chosen to classicize and generalize his milieu and his language. The location is made deliberately unspecific and the French is correct and without contemporary slang – two ways in which Douches froides differs from Kechicne's recent prize-winning L'Esquive (Games of Love and Chance), which it resembles in taking youth seriously and attempting to show their relationship issues in depth.(Shown as part of the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema Today at Lincoln Center March 2006, Douches froides opened in Paris June 22, 2005. Picture This, a US company that focuses on gay and coming-of-age films, has bought the US rights.)

de_xeet It's been a long time since I have been in the art-house theater and I went to see Douches Froides because it has gotten such great reviews in the papers.The thing is with this movie, is that it has no head or tail, but merely a section in time about the life of the three main characters.When it started I already knew that it was gonna be a long sit down, but sometimes things can get better, in this case not. There is no real character development or interconnection between the players. You start in the middle of a situation, all of the sudden there's a girlfriend and then there's a guy with whom he needs to be friends with in order to fulfill his sports ambitions, but the way they are put together is quite odd, since they are "just put together", so it seems.And all of the sudden they have sex with each other, at least one you can see of. The feeling of guilt or jealousy with the other guy is hardly noticeable and really all I could think of during the movie was "when are they gonna have sex again?". And when you think of it, it's quite insane really. Because it basically means there is nothing really worth looking at, but three teens going at it and that, for me at least, makes it a very crappy movie, stay clear from it and save your money (my €7,50 is wasted), there are better art-house movies than this one.I give three stars for the acting performance, one each.