There was Resnais early on, later Ruiz, Greenaway, and many others, from the Coens to Almodovar. The blueprint is by now familiar; a narrator who finds himself in a story that he gives rise to, funneling self into encounter and vice versa, and all sorts of elusive interplay between what is real and what is imagined.
Here we have it laid out early in a shy young guy, aspiring author who has not yet began to write but might be (knowingly or not) looking for a story, who one day chances upon a girl. She's bubbly, eager to know him, and holds a sense of mystery, someone who decides to just go off to Africa on her own, completely unlike his own inhibited self.
But having just met her and learned to pine for her, she disappears. Coming back from her exotic trip abroad, she disappears from him with a rich guy she met whilst there, someone who drives a Porche compared to his beat up lorry. This turn in the story makes her look superficial but we're dealing with impressionable 20 year olds here who are just setting out to explore in the bigy city.
So she disappears and he starts looking for her but that's now in ways that begin to amass a story around him. Is it the kind of story he was looking for? Later in the film we see him type in her apartment, now tidied up as his own place, which might always have been that.
And in this story that unfolds around her disappearance we have what? This mysterious rich kid who goes around burning greenhouses for no reason, reflecting a suave version of his father's anger, his father's anger perhaps tied to their abandonment by the mother. There's a vision that lights these up together, of a kid standing before a burning greenhouse. And lo - the mother now coming back to visit, and his promise to help her, with money that he doesn't have of course.
The most worthwhile parts of the film all revolve around the realization that here is a lonely boy, at a most sensitive time of his life who must face it alone, who might have just spurned the only person that would have been there for him. This is poignantly given in a brief exchange - insulting her for taking off her clothes, when she was really expressing melancholy joy in her dance, and is most likely as alone and fragile as he is, means she completely disappears from his life.
There is a lovely balancing demanded of us as viewers here that might go unnoticed and speaks about relationships in general, and who we are late at night; the girl did not promise to be the love of his life, you can never do that, and she was maybe not as pure and whole at just 20 years old as he might have dreamed (is anyone ever really?), but being there, persisting with getting to know her through turbulent self, she might have been the one to share that tender time of his life with, the time when you discover together.
So this is touching work about anxious youth trying to grasp life that I didn't expect to find tonight. Pantomimed urge in order for it to become real. My only caveats would have to do with missing a sense of genuine life, for example in how the girl enters his world - but it might be that we never really see her outside a story about the urge to find her.
Here we have it laid out early in a shy young guy, aspiring author who has not yet began to write but might be (knowingly or not) looking for a story, who one day chances upon a girl. She's bubbly, eager to know him, and holds a sense of mystery, someone who decides to just go off to Africa on her own, completely unlike his own inhibited self.
But having just met her and learned to pine for her, she disappears. Coming back from her exotic trip abroad, she disappears from him with a rich guy she met whilst there, someone who drives a Porche compared to his beat up lorry. This turn in the story makes her look superficial but we're dealing with impressionable 20 year olds here who are just setting out to explore in the bigy city.
So she disappears and he starts looking for her but that's now in ways that begin to amass a story around him. Is it the kind of story he was looking for? Later in the film we see him type in her apartment, now tidied up as his own place, which might always have been that.
And in this story that unfolds around her disappearance we have what? This mysterious rich kid who goes around burning greenhouses for no reason, reflecting a suave version of his father's anger, his father's anger perhaps tied to their abandonment by the mother. There's a vision that lights these up together, of a kid standing before a burning greenhouse. And lo - the mother now coming back to visit, and his promise to help her, with money that he doesn't have of course.
The most worthwhile parts of the film all revolve around the realization that here is a lonely boy, at a most sensitive time of his life who must face it alone, who might have just spurned the only person that would have been there for him. This is poignantly given in a brief exchange - insulting her for taking off her clothes, when she was really expressing melancholy joy in her dance, and is most likely as alone and fragile as he is, means she completely disappears from his life.
There is a lovely balancing demanded of us as viewers here that might go unnoticed and speaks about relationships in general, and who we are late at night; the girl did not promise to be the love of his life, you can never do that, and she was maybe not as pure and whole at just 20 years old as he might have dreamed (is anyone ever really?), but being there, persisting with getting to know her through turbulent self, she might have been the one to share that tender time of his life with, the time when you discover together.
So this is touching work about anxious youth trying to grasp life that I didn't expect to find tonight. Pantomimed urge in order for it to become real. My only caveats would have to do with missing a sense of genuine life, for example in how the girl enters his world - but it might be that we never really see her outside a story about the urge to find her.