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The Festival had 14 prizes in all, gave a total of 30,000 Euros to many of the winning filmmakers, and concluded with a ceremony that lasted well over two and a half hours. Part of what made the event interesting was the same default position that sustained me through the 64 shorts I saw: the notion that at a festival as genuinely international as this one, a certain education was possible, however limited, in how people in other parts of the world were living and thinking—all of which provides a potential context for better understanding some of the choices involved, conscious or otherwise, in how Americans live and think.
A subsequent scene in the locker room between boys at the school charts the process by which they decide that the boy with the longest penis is the one entitled to win the girl with the jiggling breasts. The measuring is handled by each boy with a ruler, turning away from the camera and the other boys as he does so. But the hero, fearing that he won’t measure up, refuses to participate. When the heroine gets wind of this contest, she rebuffs the hero, believing that he’s complicit in the game. But then the other boys, irritated by his lack of complicity, pull off all his clothes and push him out into the school corridor, shutting the door behind him. Then, when the heroine comes along, she takes pity on his embarrassment and hands over the pair of sweat pants she’s carrying. After he puts them on, they exchange warm looks, making it clear that their romance has been rekindled.
