(Welcome, everyone, to the recording of a very avant-garde artsy art film of oppressive suffering, unstated feelings, vaguely explainable actions, non-sequitur scene shifts, deep meanings, and long gazes. Do not forget the clash of new and old, death and sex, individual and collective. Just remember: It all has to be deathly serious. Oh, and since this is a French-American coproduction, we speak english.)
A small room. It seems to be a cheap apartment in a big city. The wallpaper is actually a shoddy green, but the monochrome visuals don't let us see that. A slightly wrinkled woman in her forties sits in a cheap sofa, by an equally cheap table. On the table is a book, a rather large, bound one. It is closed. For a long time, the woman sits there staring at the wall. We can see her sweating. She takes up a cigarette, lights it, and smokes. No music can be heard. A knocking sound can be heard, two sharp thuds. The woman takes another pull on the cigarette.
The young man fidgets with a letter. He knocks again. Inside, the woman keeps smoking. Her jaw is tense.
"Helene!"
The name echoes hollowly in the hall.
"Helene!"
A single tear runs down the woman's cheek.
The man is dressed in a low-key, rather worn suit. In his hand is an umbrella. On the umbrella is a field of colour, so far the only thing of colour in the movie. It is a sharp orange shade, but folded together so we can't see what it is. The rest of the umbrella is probably black. The man is older, with deep wrinkles in his face. He looks at the younger man for a long while. The other eventually speaks.
"I did not expect it to be you."
|
Down the hall rolls a clown - a harlequin, in fact - on a unicycle. The unicycle is made of ebony and onyx. The clown is very thin, of indeterminate age and gender, and while mostly black-and-white like the rest of the film, there are literally 4 frames, all separate from one another, in which it is in unbearably glorious colour. It rolls past and through the others, then away down another hall toward some unknown destination.
Everyone else totally just saw that...but they will not admit it to one another.
The younger man sighs deeply and looks at the older man as if he wanted to say something. He shakes his head and thinks better of it, then steps past the man to leave. The older man looks after him and whispers to himself: "It wasn't your fault that he died." The young man doesn't hear and leaves. The door at street level closes with an echo of finality through the hall.
After a long while, the woman opens the door. She is still smoking, and looks warily at the man, though not without a hint of a smile.
"Hello, mister Dulot. Why did you come here?"
The man follows her into the worn room. He keeps his umbrella. We see his face. It is an old man's face, wrinkled and tired. He is clean shaven, but a beard would probably suit him better. His head is crowned by male pattern baldness, and what hair he has is white. He is looking at Helene, a wistful look mixed with regret and shame.
"So, no words between us?"