The character I play is a woman who's been married for many years. They live in a walk-up on East 12th Street, rent controlled. On the outside everything looks normal, she sculpts on the weekends, and works for a jewelry distributor at Bergdorf's and he teaches art at a private school on the Upper East Side. At one point, in the 80's, they were hip and cutting edge, but in middle age they are neither. But beneath the surface of their normal marriage is a deep dark secret. He forces her to sit for the same portrait every single day at exactly the same time of day. He wakes her up at 3:15 a.m., and guides her to a chair by the kitchen window. Obediently, she takes off her clothes, and sits in the exact same pose. Legs apart, hands on hips, looks straight into the eye of the lens. He turns on a clip lamp attached to an overhead bookcase, and grabs his camera. This camera has changed over the years-- from Polaroid, to 35 millimeter, to digital, to the one he uses now on his iphone, and takes her picture. She's never asked to see the images, and he's never offered.
She's not a weak woman at all, she's very strong and very intelligent. And the movie turns on why she allows this to happen, and the question of whether or not it is something that she can stop, or even wants to stop. She doesn't like waking up in the middle of the night. She doesn't like taking off her clothes, and having her picture taken. Thirty years ago, her tits were small and her waist was tiny, but now at 50 her body is falling apart, and she's getting more and more uncomfortable. She knows what precipitated this ritual-- or, at least, she thinks she does, but it's not something she likes to think about-- and in fact goes out of her way to not think about it. But if he's been photographing her for almost thirty years, there must be close to 11,000 images. During the session, they don't speak. And, after so long, words are not really necessary.
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This story is like one of those voices in a person's head that just won't go away. So insistent and uncomfortable.
"She's not a weak woman at all, she's very strong and very intelligent. And the movie turns on why she allows this to happen, and the question of whether or not it is something that she can stop, or even wants to stop."
*
Perfect ending--and I love the fact that you made her older.*
I love the tense metafiction at work here.
I saw the work of a woman photographer who photographed herself & her offspring nude everyday for forty years or more. She started when she was a 20 something mother with a three day old child at breast. It was only she and her daughter and an avocado plant for about twenty years, then her daughter became a mother with an infant at breast. When she published the book, it was banned as child pornography. How art dies in a PC world. Great story.
Daniel Harris, yes, I saw her work, too. Sally Mann. I really liked her work, it def skirted the line, which made it dangerous and but also beautiful.
Art or OCD?
Brrr. A nightmare. *
Creepy and full of disturbing revelations.*
It IS creepy, but at the same time it's wonderful. The process, the ritual, I suppose, is all form. But there is content, mostly imagined. This is a very deft piece, very fragile on the one hand, but one that smacks you up side the head on the other.
Of course I want the whole story, the novel, the movie itself, but if this is what you are giving me, I'll take it and I'll go my own places with it, which is quite possibly it's (your) magic.*
thanks Nonnie -- it is actually the beginning of my new book, and glad to see it works1
Wow, this is wonderful. "She's never asked to see the images, and he's never offered." *
Yes *