2046 (2004)

Sheer stocking rubs up calf to lashes drooping tears on lip tongue squeezing whisper--with raging patience of 6th Avenue express commuters at West 4th doors stuck half closed, "Open the fucking doors!"-- after needed rendez-vous raté, island tonearm plunges rough storm up the Pearl River. Palming paperbills of disdain only scalds the steeping taste for longan, but his ink stains wait for another fiction.

Skinny cyborg retropop phenom return destabilizer, Shenzhen/Sham Chun generation gap. Cotton candy pink Solaris spaceship neon glow, in the course of mouthing cupcake icing inscriptions mechanical word becomes flesh, only to discover--qua anti-Bridge on the River Kwai colonialist caraciture--Molotov torch held for scruffy bearded long hair beauty.

Long fused incendiary hesitation born out of interior scroll slow mo flowered years passed high card gambling destiny destroys forgetfulness ending trilogy triumphant what might have beens--"and so I'm offering this simple phrase"--anguished street sweat idealism disappears in skyline's checkered night.

Days of Being Wild (1990)

Seduce for pleasure, savor abandonment's pain.

Noir's relentless drive to embrace the past-future with no future-past modeled on a Band of Outsiders, searching for the petty cash boosting hopeless middle class corruption, heroic post-war America, domestic savagery haunting northern California redwoods Out of the Past--"Sometimes the cabin's gloomy and the table's bare/ But when he kisses me it's Christmas everywhere"--a vaccine needed for international travel, but no flight for double crossed Swede's set up in Burt's film debut, The Killers too impatient for the diner, yet hotel brooding seems interminable--"And when you kissed Robert Mitchum/ Gee but I thought you'd never catch him"--clinical depression of a man named Leslie.

At last, with dangling cigarette, face the bullets with style.

The Beaches of Agnès (2008)

Waiting for D train, Coney Island to Norwood, 36th street station, a woman reads Eat Out in TONY.

"Did you buy that in Sunset Park?"

She shakes her head no.

"I can never find that around here."

"I subscribe," she says with probably German accent.

Crossing the Manhattan bridge foggy Giacometti figures climbing cables of 1883 Gothic icon reveal themselves in blue as spinning wires.

The R68 emergency brake handle suggests a cockroach.

Route One USA (1989)

The design of 1988 winter defines the future Freudian twin jet plane towers, 22 year shadow (Sammy Davis mimicking Frank or better Fred--blackface on blackface--1960s Bert Williams) "Me and My..."

Fall into lost adolescence, unlocking quadrangles at 6 am alternate days 3.18/ hr pays for 300/ mo studio in ship of fools--one free night in south side lockup--holding the breath through smell of formaldehyde in Culver Hall, until the day training my replacement, we open the doors.

Indeed, a room of cadavers, the overbearing inflation of dread's illusory lightness--1950s rubber hot water bottle popping its plug, warm water puddling the linoleum tiles--becomes real.

The World (2004)

Buzz cut burnt man, headphones wrapping ears, proud to be an American flag T, bikes--half deflated tires--by on sidewalk.

If L.A. presents an imitation of the world, and the world seeks to imitate L.A., does the world seek not an imitation of life but an imitation of death?

When Khrushchev blew his top on being banned from Disneyland, when he proclaimed "We will bury you," he merely mimed Angeleno America's imagineered reality of street life burial.

Mouchette (1967)

Espérez plus d'espérance
Trois jours leur dit Colomb
En montrant le Ciel immense
Le fond de l'horizon
Trois jours et je vous donne un monde
A vous qui n'avez plus d'espoir
Sur l'immensité profonde
Ses yeux s'ouvraient pour le voir.

Ariel (1988)

Once you decide you will be with each other forever it's quite simple:

You will have enough bullets to shoot the thugs that get in your way. And when the time comes, your dying comrade will find the little button that raises the roof on your 1965 Eldorado convertible, sheltering you from the elements.