My Other Wheelchair Is a Porsche (2001) Online

This is an extremely short film presumably dealing with a young disabled boy's efforts to communicate to his beautiful nurse that he is hopelessly infatuated with her. It could have been a poignant, touching, and realistic short subject. Instead the filmmaker seems intent on doing nothing more than exploiting the situation for shock value, like a carnival freak show.

SPOILERS FOLLOW--so if you don't wish to know what little plot there is, don't read on. However, you may be so repulsed by the "plot summary" that these spoilers may actually save you the trouble of seeing the film:

As the film opens, a nurse comes to visit the disabled boy, and he very explicitly takes her hand and pleads, "Touch me". She knows exactly what he means, does not respond, and quietly goes downstairs. As she works at a desk, the boy, who normally uses a wheelchair, crawls out of bed, drags himself to the stairs, and slowly, painfully tries to crawl down the stairs, all the while moaning, "Touch me", in an ever increasingly desperate tone. Finally he collapses at the bottom, whereupon the horrified nurse runs to him, cradles his head in her arms, and takes his hand gently as he gasps one last "Touch me", and goes limp. Whether he dies or not is left up to the imagination. Fade out. End of film.

I found this treatment of the plight of the disabled to be repulsive, offensive and disgusting. Yes, it is horrifying to see the boy twist his way downstairs, but is this intended to make a point, or is it just for shock value? The film gives the impression that nobody was really interested in telling any kind of story, just to dwell on the pathetic sight of this boy dragging his body down a long flight of stairs and possibly killing himself in an attempt to declare his love. There is no understanding, no empathy, and not even an indication that the director is interested in anything resembling characterization, plot development, or any of the basics of film narrative. There is just the feeling that he was leeringly, voyeuristically, interested in the boy's situation, not trying to identify with it.

Contrary to the last reviewer, I found the film to be great - very touching. The title, my other wheelchair is a Porsche is a parody of the common car sticker my other car is a Porsche - found usually attached to rubbish cars!

This sets the mood as the film concerns the life of a teenager in a hospital and his isolation / lack of social contact and his way of dealing with things. The model car provides a vehicle (pardon the pun) for his want for freedom from the wheelchair and more obviously his desire for a sports car!

The relationship with the nurse is a brief but succinct metaphor for all realisations that teenage boys go through when they 'find out' about women and thier emotions, but also a neat way of also again highlighting his desire to be released from the wheelchair. See how the Matron fits in with this narrative also! Very well done...

On the whole, a great film, very touching and well worth watching.

A young man is in a hospital and wheelchair bound. However he has reached an age where he has sexual desire - awakened by watching pornographic material on television. How his real desire is one of the nurses and he is willing to go to great lengths to get what he wants.

I do watch about one or two shorts every week give or take some are good some are twaddle. This was preceded by an interview with the director Ravi Kumarr where he said that his parents didn't know he was a director. I understood why he would be a little embarrassed to tell them after a few minutes.

Some shorts have the meaning hidden below the surface and trust you to pick up the detail from little things in the direction or the dialogue - simply because a short hasn't always got the time to set things up. I don't mind that if it's well done but here it ain't. All we get is the fact that our friend is sexually awakening - and we get this through seeing his lips part slightly and lots of clips of sexual material on the TV. We are told little more than this.

When the film runs little is explained, no clues are given to deeper issues and any symbolism is wasted. I found little meaning in this film as the director seems to have gone more for mood and pretension over any substance. Maybe I'm being dumb - I got the idea that this was about disability and sexuality but really, what was it saying?

I don't mind doing some thinking to put together the pieces but I need a bit of help from the start - or at least have the pieces fit together. For example what was the red car about? The remote control car leads the boy to the nurse without him controlling it. The only think I came up with was that Porsches are often seen to represent penises. Therefore the boy's penis has been awakened and this desire leads him to the nurse. I wonder if I asked Ravi would he say `oh, good idea - why didn't I think of that'.

Overall this smacks heavily of being meaningful but only manages to be pretentious and largely meaningless. I'll put my hands up and say that it may just be me not getting it but I think this is all deep meaningful gestures without substance. The only bit of interest to me was seeing a clip of two actresses on the video that I recognised.

This short is 12 minutes long but has almost no dialogue so it's very unclear what the filmmaker was trying to say here. The yearning of the young man, somehow handicapped and confined to a wheelchair, was palpable but we learn nothing else about him.

That yearning for physical contact was touching and made an effective vignette but as for the rest the film was obscure and ineffective.

I'm totally unclear as to where the title came from. Yes there is a red remote controlled toy Porsche in the film but it seems as though no one is controlling it and its role was unclear as the rest.

Perhaps I'm missing something but I've seen many, many shorts and appreciated a good number of them so I refuse to take the blame for being dense here. I think that the filmmaker failed to fully appreciate the unbriefed viewpoint of his audience or fell short in some other way.