headed back to the hotel to finish preparations and by preparations I mean more drinks.
Our car arrives to take us to the theater. At the theater there are some media and small bouts of conflict between the two competing film festivals. We file into the sold out theater and wait for the movie to start. The lights dim and there is a hush.
The film opens inside a psychiatrist office with a doctor and his younger female patient. She’ s a sexually promiscuous deviant, and the doctor is an older married man on the cusps of his own breakdown. In the back of the theater is a lone viewer mumbling under his breath sexual charged comments at the screen. It was too dark to see what he was doing but I have a feeling that he would have been right at home in a 1970’ s Time Square theater.
In the second vignette, a strange tale of homosexuality. The audience is generally quiet not really understanding what is going on. I look around waiting for someone to walk out, but everyone sits, waiting for whatever is to come next. On screen the two guys are in a Chinese restaurant. One of the characters spouts off an off color remark, I look at the Japanese girls sitting next to me. She’ s laughing. Was it polite laughter? Was it genuine?
In the third vignette a group of friends gather to watch a boxing match. It’ s a high tension event because the only fight in the room isn’ t on the television. The characters engage in an argument full of racial slurs, machismo, and jingoism. The audience is unmoved and uncomfortable laughs echo through the room. At this point I’ m sure people are going to walk out.
The fourth vignette featured more yelling, from an unhappy couple driving, but overall giving