r and i watched "kitchen stories" last night. what an interesting film (an official selection of the cannes film festival). the spoken language is norwegian and swedish with subtitles but, it has very little actual dialogue. anyway, if you aren't looking for action, i highly recommend it.
i am now 128 pages into "couples". and yes, it is a coincidence that two of the last three books i've read have been primarily concerned with infidelity!
"please, frank. let's understand each other. this is just talk."
"of course. i'll tell you of men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders."
"othello?"
"right."
"frank, listen. i've become fixated on you, i know it's absurd, and i'm asking for your help. as a friend."
"pre- or post-sexualization?"
"please be serious. i've never been more serious. i'm fighting for my life. i know you don't love me and i don't think i love you but i need to talk. i need it so much"--and here, half artfully, she lowered her face to hide tears that were, after all, real--"i'm frightened."
"dear marcia. don't be."
they had lunch, and lunch often again, meeting at the corners of new glass buildings or in the doorways of flower shops, a toothy ruddy man with a soft air of having done well at school and a small dark efficient woman looking a little breathless, hunting hand in hand through the marine stenches of the waterfront and the jostling glare of washington street for the perfect obscure restaurant, with the corner table, and the fatherly bartender, and the absence of business aquaintences and college friends. they talked, touching toes, quickly brushing hands in admonishment or pity, talked about themselves, about their childhoods spent behind trimmed hedges, about shakespeare and psychiatry, which marcia's lovely father had practiced, about harold and janet, who, as they obligingly continued to be decieved, were ever more tenderly considered, so that they became almost sacred in their ignorance, wonderful in their fallibility, so richly forgiven for their frigidity, demandingness, obtuseness, and vanity that the liason between their spouses seemed a conspiracy to praise the absent.