Vice Verses

The Only Ones in the World

A young man is infatuated with the girl down the street who's a bit more grown up in certain ways. She toys with his naiveté, but then surprises him with a seduction. When they awake, they progressively realize they are the only people around, apparently on the planet. They exploit this freedom for a while, like an extended honeymoon, roaming around the places they might otherwise have gone on dates, which are now all empty. Slowly the emptiness takes over the situation.

A Summer Story

Whiling away their summer are A. and B., whom A has been enamored with for some time. C comes to stay with B for the summer and after hanging around them a few times, A finds he has a shift in attraction, suddenly uninterested in B. What's more, C seems much more attentive to him than B is, or than to B, for that matter. A slow build-up of flirtation and courage culminates in a first experience, though it remains somewhat ambiguous to what extent C actually likes A. C then has to leave at the end of the summer and A is left again with B, whom he now seeks only as a source of news about C. B seems to know little of what transpired, but what she does learn from A makes her become more interested in him. Hoping C will return the next summer, A nonetheless finds his situation with B altered.

Only Dreams Come True

Young and inexperienced male A, befuddled by how to approach girl B, whom he sees as much more sophisticated, is unexpectedly visited by a kind of fairy, woman C, who proceeds to educate him in the ways of wooing. With his schooling, his confidence progresses, but he becomes less inclined to the real object, and more to the surreal one. C's reaction of surprise at the twist to her plan begs the question of her status -- fantastic, alter ego, allegorical -- whether the ideal should be based on the real or vice versa, or kept separate from it.

Little Red Riding Hood

Reworking of the fairy tale in which the girl is obviously grown up but still acts naive. Woodcutter going to meet her is intercepted by female wolf, a rockabilly floozy, who tries to waylay him. When he turns her down and she asks why, she learns his destination, and heads off in her hot rod to beat him there. She first imposes herself on Riding Hood, but her presumptuous style has the opposite effect she expects. So she ties up Riding Hood in the closet and tries to use the nightgown trick on the Woodcutter. Apparently succumbing, at the last minute he jumps up, discloses Riding Hood, and effects turnabout, as they tie up the she-wolf.

Peanut Butter & Pickles

A is infatuated with B who is a bombshell, if unassuming in schoolday banality. He is surprised to find that she likes him, at least for a friend. Inviting him to her house, she makes a snack that stands for the at once odd and prosaic aspect of her character. His ideal of her is confronted by her much more earthy carriage. Her surprising interest in him compounds the ambivalence. If he looked up to her, could she be lofty if she liked him? Is there something wrong with her?

Society

Tableau vivant of a somewhat sophisticated group of students, mixing at various social events, anticipating college and so forth. The main feature is a blunt juxtaposition of their elbow-rubbing and attempted other rubbing. A is a brainy girl who is far more savvy in other areas than her more conspicuous peers.

The I-Factor

Woman A traveling in space aboard a large liner, that looks more like a mall inside, deals with authorities furtively. Alone in her room, before a mirror, she turns into a man. Again in public she seems to be snooping. She give two people that may be following her the slip by ducking away, making changes to her gender and a few items of clothing. She arranges a small solo craft she takes down to a planet, a complex there to eventually meet woman B, who seems her objective. After one meeting A attempts to turn into a man before the next meeting, but passes out, waking in kind of lab with B presiding. A is the experiment of B's charge, having been sent on a kind of test run. A is now confused as to whether she is using a man's body or persona, or he is doing so of a woman. Further complicating things is the frank desire for B the latter seems only to exploit as further control, rendering male B unable to antagonize B, but nullified when B is able to control the switch back to female. When A breaks through by trying to tackle desire, B's too, as female, a final switch of B, in front of a mirror, to the same male and back, renders it ambiguous just who has done what to whom.

Body

Straightforward presentation of woman A who befriends man B and finds him capable of being her confidant. She tells him of her feelings about herself, the matter of the title, and what transpires is a curious exposé of the line between involvement, confession, exhibition, vicariousness and auto-eroticism, passed as naturalistic, innocent. The arm's length of relationship is disproportionate to the intimacy of what she is relating, and what's shown is thus similarly played up, her privacy exposed. Whether she is ingenuous or shrewd, what measure of both, is also at play.

Love and Desire

Man A is attracted to woman B but quickly learns of the complication, that she compulsively wants a declaration of true love and fidelity even though she just as compulsively doesn't abide by that rule. The social politeness of not frankly contradicting seems to give way all too easily to dissimulating for ulterior motive. But so too does her own behavior seem to justify or even call for it. Is this the social convention necessary for even incidental encounters? Or does he confront her with her own contradiction and risk seeing what this does to her? Does his own temptation to dissimulate not produce the same in him? But would confronting it not require something like more respect which would be, perhaps curiously, more honorable, thus more like a fidelity?

Wife

Married life and suburbia, as a formidable prospect from the outset. A is the new wife who has difficulty coping with the sudden change, which of course she failed to consider, particularly the love life, as she has strange swings that seem to betray a fascination/repulsion complex. Husband B faces the possibility that he's stuck with a functional Puritan. Then B appears on the scene, a neighboring housewife who, perfectly blasé and jaded, with all the shine rubbed off the dreams, and a corresponding wiliness, draws the husband into a steamy affair. His sympathy or guilt for his wife, and whatever respect for marital fidelity it should mean, is pitted against not just the lustiness, but the comparative sanity and vitality of B. Compounding the problem is his concern that his wife's reaction to an affair might push her even into some worse state.

Trio

Blunt presentation of three people, two close female friends A and B and a new male acquaintance C they both take up, who without intending to, fall into a triangle, then a mčnage á trois, though none of them seem willing to pronounce it. Portrays the way behavior develops without commenting on it, perhaps either because they don't care to, don't know how, are afraid or are simply innocent and un-self-conscious enough.

Orthodox Relationship

Man A is courting woman B who belongs to a family of a devout faith. Despite his differences, he is curious of the customs. He seeks the counsel of his cousin C, who is of a similar faith, but in doing so the two unexpectedly grow fond of each other, risking something of a scandal from the perspective that C has been explaining. His courting B would be for her a formal declaration, as C explains, but, as C becomes more interested in the non-traditional thought of A and her own feelings, she realizes the argument for non-arranged marriage. The faith is abstracted, fictitious, no actual one named. Austere scenes of B at family dinner table and suggestions of the sexual attraction A is politely leaving implicit, while in the meantime, C in his confidence becomes more curious about it, her own interest and feelings growing more complicated.

Chambers

Maid can't resist spying on the man of the house and his lover. When he spies the spier, the man can't resist the implications and tries to lure her into more direct involvement, while at the same time wanting to maintain something of her vicarious position. The infatuation must go by the same way of the space -- rooms, walls, keyholes, screens, windows, corners, nooks, closets, shadows, curtains -- so that the setting becomes as much the physical relationship.

Antagonist

A gets jealous over her husband B's incidental relation with C. Although he tries to reassure her, his dealings with C trigger a series of progressively worse reactions from A, first with him, then culminating in a confrontation with C. But just as this produces the realization in A of the problem of her own jealousy, and she begins to work on this problem with B, and as she thus admits there was nothing to C, C turns around and makes it worse than A imagined, going after B. Did A's jealousy give C the idea? Is it in retaliation for A's jealous confrontation? Having seen how jealous A is, is C manipulating it, trying to push her over? Is it a cry wolf gambit, that now A will not trust her own jealousy? And for that, did C plot this all along? The suspense of motive nonetheless allows for the mirror of A and C in the curious similarity of their obsession with each other rather than what's supposed to be the object of their interest, B.

Miss Vigilante

Woman A is managing the campaign of man B, trying to portray him as grass roots, folksy. Woman C is secretary of B who turns out to be a political climber when she seduces him and then holds it over him. While trying to deal with the issue of C, A and B come to confront their own feelings for each other (he's married to someone else), the problems of all this in political life, with A finding an ingenious solution of turning C's plot against her by creating a scandal and revelation of her own, leaving C out, and making it all into showy triumph for B.

Hungerlust

Woman A draws man B into a sharply progressing affair while B has girlfriend, C. As it turns out, A's desire is pathological, her focus on B a compromise, an attempt to keep her compulsion limited to just one person, someone she can feel safe with. B finds himself in complex conflict of interest, including the appeal/repulsion of A's behavior, and how even his sympathy and more clinical curiosity play into infatuation. Also plots the impossible situation with C, who thinks the worst of him, how B tries to justify concern for A even though he can't justify what's going on.

Forget Me Not

Bare story about relationship with a time limit but how it lives on in memory. A and B meet one summer, but then must part. Montage exercise suggests the lapsing and dissolving of the memory of that time compared to after, with the chronology mixed up at first ambiguously. Languid scene in a field is followed by a shot of man A alone, in another place and time. Flashbacks to different parts of the affair gradually reveal its progress. The two times are contrasted in terms that are reversed: quick dissolves of A's time against long, lingering scene of the ambiance of the field; but then long, lingering shot of the still, lonely ambiance of A's room is followed by fluid montage of various moment images from the affair.

The Immortals

Romance novel fare, set on 19th century estates, with A an innocent, well-meaning type who has to rival the shrewdness of prestige girl B for the affections of a man. The grandiosely romantic conception, suggested by the title, is parody played straight of this wish-fulfillment fantasy, so that protagonist A's triumph over antagonist B progresses to the point of absurdity.

Behind the Shadows

Triangle develops between A, her lover B and her friend C who has a psychological problem. Through transference and sympathetic appropriation of A, whom she has childishly adopted as her model, C comes to want the boyfriend, as everything else of A's life, and manages to entangle him progressively, starting with his sympathy. The ambiguity is how conscious of her actions C is, just how crazy, or how shrewd she is being at mucking up the relationship of her friend she also envies. How far can A go with her sympathy for her friend, finding the challenge of the distinction between intention and act, when the confrontation of C seems to cause a crash of her imaginary state and more of a breakdown each time? Can each of the parties confront his or her own simulation, and what of sacrifice in the general matter of agency?

A Strange Heart

Woman A schemes to undermine couple, woman B and man C. A connives her way into the confidence of each, playing them against each other, by turns seeming to seduce the man and the woman. The ultimate aim is elusive: she may really want one or the other, or it may be that she wants to prove how they can be undone.

The Seduction of Sanity

Exploration in subjectivity, as woman A, suffering spells of delusion and hallucination, seeks help, but in the forbidden attachment that develops with the psychologist, B, she provokes a fascination with this flourishing imaginary life. The line between analyst and patient is a figure for intersubjectivity in general. The general viewpoint is seduced as well, confusing the subjectivity -- A's, B's? -- bolting into fantastic sequences including one where A's body is a landscape.

Batgirl

A straight, but punchy Batgirl comes to save the lovey-dovy B from a drolly sadistic Catwoman who resents B for her submissiveness to men, but had hoped to use her to get to her masculin rescuer. B's reaction of horror at the villainess suggests the homosexual subtext, which the entire melodrama plays out indirectly, Batgirl having come in place of the man.

The Marriage of Martha Heck

Pithy realist tale of the misconceptions of A, a high school head who latches onto boy B, a good student type, and manipulates him into marriage, thinking it will provide her a step up. Her miscalculation is about herself, as she loses interest in him almost immediately, and he realizes he's been pulled into a squalid situation. When he discovers that A is having an affair with the next door neighbor, he decides to tell the neighbor's wife, C. A and C commiserate and he even submits to her interest in him, only to feel drawn down to her even more passive and pathetic level. She represents the same state further along, and tells him of it, the many affairs of her husband.

Desire's Creation

Treatment of the Frankenstein legend in which the doctor tries to create the perfect woman for himself. Learning of the deceased through obituaries, he seeks out the best specimens in morgues and graveyards. Meanwhile, his relationship with his fiancée goes on oblivious to the rest. The body taking shape in the lab is like a gothic version of some pin-up vamp, a kind of 19th century caricature of 20th century poster girls. When the time comes for him to select a brain, he has to contemplate whether he wants to use that of his fiancee, to effectively give her the new body. Not certain if that will work, he decides to make a test transfer, and this pushes him to seek out a live candidate. He decides someone of low station will not be missed and approaches a prostitute, having to pretend to be interested in business with her at first. The test transfer results in the host creature having the will to avenge the prostitute's death, but she seeks out the fiancée to exact this on, which would leave the doctor stuck with this fate.

Fashion

Woman A is the head of company that designs women's clothing for the business set. B is a one-time model who is bucking into the management line, with possible rival ambitions, and who eventually goes for A's man. The more A comes to suspect, fear and resent B, the closer she gets also to the picture of B as just the next version of herself. Renouncing her on principle means renouncing the same aspects of herself, but of course she is now pitted against them as hostile. The bigger picture is that the women are subject to a law of succession like fashion, even beyond the superficial aspect of youth and beauty, if they play it out further in business and management, where they thought they might have gotten beyond it. It's the clothes that wear them.

Wonder Woman

An Amazonian rival of Wonder Woman has come to find her. When she can't persuade Wonder Woman to leave the terrible civilized world, she kidnaps Wonder Woman's male friend. Amazonians being what they are, the rescue forumla is inverted in that the man is at the mercy of the women. The rival seems to want to steal away the man's heart, but once Wonder Woman arrives and rescues him, the rival's real interest is discovered as well: again, being Amazons.

Greener Grass

City boy desires woman as much for the country-life dream she represents, while she desires him for the cosmopolitan life he offers. Lyrical realism shows the pertinence of the dilemma, the wearing on of idleness even through the rhapsodic, pastoral, honeymoon aspect. The woman is an elegant, but homespun, sometimes rambunctious country girl. Their love is tested by this paradox of what the other offers, how background, milieu, become separate as things contrary to the person even in love. The mutuality of love is also shown to be this paradox: that each also necessarily desires a different object, even most ideally: the other.

Secret of a Kindred Flame

A and B meet, strike it off, and have a torrid romance, both feeling an extraordinary affinity. The romance takes on a typical progression: at first they are consumed with each other, then as they spend time together, they become relaxed, but also learn more about each other. They discover uncanny coincidences: a trail of clues leading back to the ominous fact that they may be brother and sister. The family history has been obscured by other circumstances, making it hard to find out, but they know that they had parents who were once married. As this picture becomes more clear, it begins to discolor their involvement. Despite remaining ambiguity as to true blood ties, A can no longer bear the implication and breaks off. But as time goes on, including later when B is involved with another, thoughts of the desire haunt them both until they have to meet again. Blood or marriage, their "real" sibling status is never known, leaving the prospect that even if they are blood, they still desire.

Passengers

Limited information premise involving three characters on a train. Man A is apparently with woman B, but is then diverted by woman C. What seems like an impromptu, perhaps extramarital intrigue then begins to spiral with suggestion: about some kind of espionage (which of course the participants would not speak of explicitly), about the relationships of the characters (that A and B are merely assuming identities for some other purpose), about the intentions of any of them. The ambiguity makes it an allegorical vehicle for, come full circle, relationships.

Astrophysical

A series of sketches, science fiction spoof scenes, the only connection that they are apparently set in the same galaxy and time. A roving-eye, digressive story of often campy episodes. A is the closest thing to a central character, on some sort of quest, at one point set upon by something resembling a giant larva. B is a robot whose face seems fixed in an expression like that of a blow-up sex doll, and who also performs that function. But the comic aspect of this also presents the Daedalian uncanny, the life-like, and as it ripples out: actor for machine for human. C is a goddess, as she tells others roaming the heavens. Or does she only think she is, because an entire planet does?

Love and Destruction

Anatomy of relationship, in which woman A, a jealous lover, shows a tendency to come unravelled. The progression is of man B's wondering what this person is: someone who turns pitiful or awful as time or the situation determine, or rather someone who's love had always been linked with this possibility.

Brave Men Come From War

Soldier A returns from the Vietnam War to his wife B, but then he must visit C, wife of his dead buddy. A's commiseration with C becomes a progressive correspondence, first from sympathy, but growing to an uneasy entanglement that eventually provokes the analogous problem of his own wife's loss. What is devotion (and to whom) where emotion, impulse, reaction, remorse, desire are incalculable?

The Fairest Skin

Woman A is acquaintance of man B whose wife, C, has recently died. A finds B's mourning to be a challenge and seduces him into a fascination with his own intrigue with death. Suggests that A is defying and conquering the entire issue of fidelity and attachment as well as the fear of death. Additional twist comes when man is stricken with another woman, D, resembling his wife, whom A then decides will make an object for a recreation of the scene. What she has in mind for the end is a matter of suspense.

In Transit

Woman A is companion with man B aboard a spaceship in transit on an undisclosed mission: the whole a figure for relationships themselves. The silence and lethargy of space, even any suspense about what they are doing there, becomes the banality of a relationship, two people isolated with each other.

Beauty Sleeps

This is what happens with the witch while Beauty is asleep, and the prince has his sense of good and evil stood on its head. The witch is subdued, sophisticated, elegant, cultured, dark-haired but quite the opposite of cackling hags. A sense of villainy is at first part of the allure, but she proves to be much more or other. She tries to persuade him obliquely that it's for good reason she did the deed, cast the spell to put Beauty to sleep. But though the prince comes to find the "witch" worthy in all respects, he feels that no matter what else, he cannot leave beauty in her spell. When he awakens Beauty, however, she proves to be something uncanny: a gruesome Disney burlesque, exaggerated bourgeois neurosis, a kind of overgrown blonde child model or creepy doll. Her kind of monstrosity removes all suspense as to why the witch put her to sleep. Would the prince now want to?

The Suburbans

Slice of life of suburban set, the narrative viewpoint wanders into and lingers around their activities, then catches them at adulterous intrigues, at which point the dramatization becomes more direct. Just as casually, the scene passes, sometimes the camera pulling away in the middle of action. Two women, A and B, blend in to Christmas parties, dinners and the like, but also having a certain vivaciousness that, according to the rules of their ilk, must be carefully slotted for its occasion.

Shady Lady

When private detective A is hired by woman B to spy on her husband's affair, the investigation turns up woman C. Dick tails her, happening upon woman D, her friend. In the process of investigation, he is fascinated with the femme fatale picture of exotic C, but his typical advances are resisted by D, who seems school-marmish. The P.I.'s ideas of character are what mask the real plot. E is the secretary of the P.I., who since she is married, is content with the noncommittal encounters her boss also prefers, their relationship showing how the adulterer spys on adulterers.

Growing Out

Bildungsroman of young man, A, confiding his relations with women to B, a woman with whom he is involved in political activism. A thinks of B as a refuge from the wiles of romance, and as she questions his strange pronouncements of wanting to turn off his libido, he comes to relate his previous history involving confounding of romance and friendship, how he has been taught by women of their experience, complicating the compromise between his selfish interest and sympathetic involvement. Flashbacks show these stories in allusive montage. A comes to learn again, however, that trying to be sympathetic can still mean you've got the other person wrong, as B proves to be not as disinterested as he thought, in either men or him.

Perversion

Man A in pleasant relationship with petite, frail woman B finds himself compelled to bawdier heights. He makes an arrangement with a suburban callgirl C, a stark contrast from his girlfriend: older, full-figured, crude, and who appeals to the man as much as a kind of debasement. But then another prospect turns up in the form of D, an acquaintance who physically is more similar to the callgirl. She turns out to be interested in A. If not quite as pithy as C, she engages him in a curiously similar way. It becomes ambiguous whether he is trying to mold the lover after the callgirl, or vice versa. D, by being something in between a mate and the arranged relationship, serves as the propostion for such a possibility, but also realizes the contradictions.

The Pilgrimage

Man A and woman acquaintance B, after talking about their current disappointment with things, especially relationships, decide to pool resources on moving away. They take one car and pick a destination, aiming to be roommates if that will help out, but hoping to resist the pitfalls of a "relationship." Along the way, they talk in more detail about their recent past. In flashback is story of A's girlfriend C, and another lover D who was eager for him to start anew with her, but whom he has also left suspended. Despite all their misgivings, the road couple nonetheless are drawn together by the very act of confiding their regrets and apprehension, only to find themselves more confused about their destination.

Living Space

Solemn portrait of a single woman content with her solitary style. A tone poem of the mundane, a view over her shoulder as she goes to work, idles in her apartment and then meets up for dates. One suitor is all too unsympathetic to her terms, and while he is obviously frustrated, things return to the quiet watching state on his parting. Another man who is more agreeable, with his own appreciation and equivalent detachment, has discussions with her in which she expresses herself on the matter. After one meeting, he is followed instead of her, to give the inverse sense of their related solitude.

Trials of the Common Man

Everyman A is put on trial by the women of his life, from the most intimate to the most fleeting: they serve as judge, jury, prosecution, defense and witnesses. The trial takes place in a seamless studio "heaven" setting, a la "Stairway to Heaven." Cutaways to scenes narrated in testimony. The prosecutor is a particularly vindictive ex-wife, the one who knows his wiles the best, while his defense is taken by an inexplicably tangential relation, a woman who seems to have as little interest or knowledge of him as he has memory of her. The judge is an idealized beauty, almost in contrast to the stature she should have, but as the very ideal of what he'd want to impress she thus serves as the worst thing for his repute, and proves to be all too keen as well.

The Wood Nymph

Harried, married man, A, is set upon from all directions: his wife B pressuring him to be more devoted, his mistress C doing the same, his job, etc. Suddenly one evening, he bolts off into the woods behind his stately home and there encounters a fairylike apparition, D. He continues to have these visitations, thus being taken more from both wife and mistress. When he tells each of them what's happening, they think he needs some psychiatric help. "Harvey"-like occurrence may be a symbolic compromise of the man's situation, psychologically mapped the way a dream is, suspended between various possibilities or options so he doesn't have to decide, or has another way out of the dilemma.

Daphne and Josephine

Two women become interested in each other because of apparent differences, and start to become friends. There is homesy, southern Josephine, who seems much more at home with romance at first, and the midwestern, quaintish, quasi-sophisticated Daphne, who seems more experienced but has her "knowledge" called into question. They met through the same circle where each also met man, C. Each one of them is going out with him, but is not aware the other is. Their friendship with each other has to do with the infatuation of difference, but when they discover the dilemma, the friction, despite making apparent conflict, shows just how similar they are with their ideal of love, even as that is what sets them against each other. Also demonstrates how that ideal is held above other relationships even when it's a worse prospect.

The Fine Line

After woman A starts up a fling with man, B, she just as quickly wants to break it off. Not knowing quite how or having the nerve to do so herself, she nonetheless has the nerve to enlist her friend, woman C to do the job. C tries to explain to B, ever so diplomatically, all the reasons, that A is already involved, etc. B is despondent, and C finds herself having sympathy. In getting to know C, B strikes up a companionship that eventually becomes amorous, but the two of them wish to maintain the line, however fine, between friendship and the kind of feelings or relationship both of them of are wary of by the example of A.

Days, Nights & Years

Portrait of a single working woman, living in an apartment complex typical of 70s/80s with its sheet rock walls, crisp, white, bare, and a modicum of decoration. She spends long gaping evenings filled with fatigue, boredom, but a lack of any real means to resituate herself, even mentally. The rapturous thrill of sex or the rapture itself of a romance inevitably take their place in the routine.

The Art and the Craft

Friction between two actresses in a professional theater company becomes more severe when they both become involved with the director. Their rivalry involves different philosophies about acting: A being a Stanislavskian who believes in internal depth, while B is more a mimic who disdains "real" acting as pretentious. Their offstage behavior expresses the same dispositions, A serious, idealistic, grasping, B mocking, jaded, wiley. B sets out to prove that in real life something like passion is faked, or played out, specifically challenging A's ideal of true love between serious artists, as she wants with the director.

Genesex

After his spaceship crashes on a planet, a man finds himself in a beautiful paradise attended by woman, a statuesque blonde who wears nothing. As he submits to her and gives up hope of salvaging his mission (the spaceship is lost), the situation becomes curiously more like that of Adam and Eve. They appear to be in a garden of Eden, with no other humans, all the creatures at peace. This becomes more uncanny, however, when, sure enough, the man strikes upon a singular tree with spectacular fruit. After spying the woman with a snake, he then backs into fulfillment of the dread by running when she picks the fruit. He runs into a storm, then to an abrupt edge of the verdant paradise: a cracked desert. After being overcome, he awakes again, tops a crest and sees a towering civilization with Egyptian style pyramids. He is captured and taken to the ruler, who looks much like Cleopatra. Again he finds himself tempted into a relation, because his knowledge is fascinating to her, of sharing the rule of this civilization. But the uncanny sense of this as Earth's history makes him grow just as fearful. His attempts to inform them of this bizarre repetition again boomerangs, when a cult of followers forms, inspired by such warning. This grows to create a civil strife, culminating in him leading them off, like Moses, into the desert.

Bang, Bang

Man A, involved with woman B, has encounter with roguish woman C. She turns out to love intrigue too much for him, but he stepped in quicksand. He tries to avoid her, but she runs into him again, and his reticence only spurs her pride. She continues to pursue him, and by a combination of the volatile appeal and his thinking he can placate her, he only becomes more engtangled in a more ambivalent situation, also trying to keep her from causing trouble with B. He eventually passes a point where trying to extricate himself provokes her, and his lover, B, is also threatened, not just with the discovery, but by C directly. The title has has more echoes when, at the end, two shots heard by the man have a double twist: He finds B holding the gun, but, after the suspense of looking, no body.

The Game of the Ghost

Woman A is approached by man B with a bizarre request. Nonetheless, she agrees: to pose as the dead wife of B in a scheme to confound several members of a meddlesome social group, in particular a conniving would-be lover C. A develops a fascination for her role, for the situation of maintaining a strange distance with the man by never being quite herself, compelled also by the inverse proportion to how much more intimate she allows herself to be. Thwarting the others makes A and B quite devoted to the scheme, cool and confident at that. This is played off reactions of C, gossiping with others, of all the various angles: it can't be the wife, what if it is her, what if it's her ghost, it's absurd and he's crazy, but look how they work, etc. But it's apart from the various social functions that the real drama develops: is A consumed by the role? Are B's feelings only for her in the role? And, even more strangely and significantly she comes to realize the question: are hers?

Wicked Testimony

A is a female student of college professor B. He realizes she may be in need of special assistance when she comes to him, as she's slightly unhinged. But she quickly turns his deference towards her into something worse, as she tries to seduce him. He's guarded, and tries to inform her politely of the difficulty of the matter: he's married, he shouldn't be exploiting his student, and she shouldn't be putting herself in such a position. She seems to back off, but then comes an investigation of him when she accuses him of harassing her. While this obviously becomes a problem with his wife, C, his having to insist on his innocence despite circumstantial evidence (the visists to his office), it turns up a further intrigue when a colleague, female professor D, also wonders about his innocence. She's having an affair with him. A makes matters worse by trying to blackmail the professor into a settlement: she'll drop the charges if he capitulates to her. He has to try to prove the extortion, but he's also worried about opening up the other matter. Can he profess his innocence to his wife on this matter while concealing the other affair?

The Sad Luck of the Living

While A despairs of his relationship with moody and brooding B, a chance meeting with C offers a refuge, a perspective detached. C, however, in response to his troubles, offers an even sharper pessimism, in fact a fatalism suggesting a desire for suicide. He thinks it's only rhetorical, especially as she wants to have a tryst with him. Afterwards, she talks of the caprice of it, the singularity, how she wants it to have no other purpose. He thinks she wants it be a one-night stand, doesn't want him to pursue it. He returns to B, but finds himself thinking of C. When he finally succumbs to the temptation to contact her, he learns that she did in fact kill herself. He dwells on the multiplied guilt of responsibility, failure to take note or follow up, the encounter with respect to his lover B, either of them and the relationship cast in the light of survivor. Does one have the courage to go on living, or the courage to die?

Spirits of the Storm

Man A is intrigued with woman B, whom he thinks is unapproachable, but who is chummy with him. She seems to indulge him about another interest of his, C, but it's this latter who becomes the mysterious one, compared to B's familiarity. Unexpectedly B makes advances, and turns out to have a mysterious side of her own, as she just as abruptly drops out of contact. A meets up with C, only to then chum with her about the curious B. Another impulsive meeting with B leads to running in a thunderstorm, ending up in an apartment while the storm rages on. Romantic impulsive character is kept on the edge of irony, never quite discovering how overblown B's indulgence may be, or if her interest was only piqued by the challenge of the other, C. The moment of the storm, the scene there, is returned to as the central figure. Are later scenes, detailing B's inevitable departure, flashing back, or is the scene in the storm anticipating? Is the storm scene or the others a dream or imaginary?

Batman Saves

In an indefinite future where the nocturnal inhabitants of a shelled out city assume characters, as if in a perpetual costume party, A has adopted, in ethos rather than dress, "Batman," an obscure character from a forgotten kind of fiction, and replicates Robin in the form of a young girl hanger-on, B. She even attends him while he talks on a red phone. C is an already vaguely feline persona whom "Batman" believes is his "Catwoman." Other denizens include members of a vicious, secret female gang called the Scream Candies. Some of the latter try to infiltrate A's skyscraper lair, and A becomes suspicious that C may be part of them, particularly as she's not disposed to B. A climactic tussle in the lair, the lights having been taken out, culminates in a terrible scream with someone falling down an elevator shaft. Both B and C have disappeared, and A fears both may have fallen. He eventually discovers the body of one of the Scream Candies, B turns up again, but C never does.

Romance and Juliet

Portrait of a kind of overgrown adolescent, an all-American beauty, A, who is good-natured and curious enough to accept all kinds superficially, but then easily disconcerted by what she cannot or doesn't understand. Intrigued by man B, whom she finds "different," she nonetheless has trouble knowing how to deal with him when desire for her must follow, necessarily mean, certain conventions he disregards or disdains. The tension progresses between whether her peachiness can actually lead her to a different understanding, or whether her conventions will only lead her to feel more alienated, or even betrayed and violated. When he decides it best to leave off, this only provokes her to feel the failure is of her own ideals, thus a vicious circle she is caught in.

The Next Dance

Cinematography and montage excercise, "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" meets "An American in Paris." A bare frame premise: man A with woman B, they are going to bed, with hardly any fanfare. This dissolves to dancing, ambiguous as to whether it is the dream of one or both, or simply the representation of something else. Dance numbers from big movie productions. She, B, is a peroxide blonde amalgam of various stars (Rogers, Reynolds). C, tall, dark and leggy, a la Syd Charisse, comes along to offer antagonism and intrigue. The dream expresses everything -- plot, drama -- only with dancing. It spirals when the dancers often approach, as if leading up to, engaging in the activity they are serving as metaphor for, only to express that again with -- more dancing, another number, progressing in ever more abstract sets until finally a barren stage, like a striptease of set design.

Sweet Romance

In black and white, and in a stylistic mock-up of 1940s melodramas, woman A is in a kind of romance, not unlike Jennifer Jones in "Love Letters," with man B. There are completely contrived feints and starts and obstacles, mostly of A's own doing. But whenever she comes together with her lover and they kiss, there is an abrupt cut to shots intentionally overlit, blanched out, and as if aged and drained of color, of woman C having sex with the same man, these a mock-up of 70s porn. What is thus juxtaposed are two paths of movie production distinct due to social codes, the comparison becoming itself formalistic, as of two paces: the sex having become monotone compared to the melodramatic rising and falling and seething, with appropriate music, of the romance where sexuality is a subtext.

Altered Images

Two women of fringe artsy inclination vainly disdain each other from a distance, though this expresses how much they are alike. Each is a sort of wayward debutante, A more involved in trying to be bohemian but actually more tilted and kneejerk, B seeming to be more precious and elegant, but actually more level. Their rivalry is piqued by their involvement with the same man, as A is starting up with B's ex. The unavoidable run-in produces a turn of mutual appreciation, not surprising to the man, but going beyond what he expected. The pride in their wariness of each other turns into identification, and becomes more treated by that than by their claim on the man. His upstaging manifests what an adjunct he was for either, how they are more interested in reflection of themselves. A portrait of the paradox of identification, wanting to be at once alike and different, especially as vanity.

Marsha from Mars

In peculiar portrait of peculiar crowd, A leads a little group who are so infatuated with her as a paradigm of weirdness, they believe she is from another planet, specifically Mars. Done as a fake documentary, it's a portrait which betrays the groping aspect of its characters, the ambiguity of whether they believe this, want to believe, want to make anyone else (including the audience) believe, or simply insist on pretending such a thing.

Skin Deep

Woman A and man X pick up woman B at a dance club. When they have sex with her, it is B who makes for the biggest climax, with special effects (the reason for which will become known). But it's then A who collapses, lifeless. B now goes on with X. She is the new host of a kind of psychic parasite, who takes the place of her host's soul. When she vacates one body for another, the previous dies. She and her lover "possess" women for the sheer fun of different bodies to play with. B (the body form, or actress) and X pick up C, who becomes the host. When they in turn find D, they unexpectedly discover a soul which refuses to die and manages to transfer backwards into the previous body: the villainess in the person of C becomes D, but D's soul then lives on in C. Apparently they have struck on another such parasite, who is not yet aware of the ability. C is thus three personae, each of the others two. When they try to foster this new transplant in C, tension grows about whether the main vampire will be more interested in one of her kind than in X.

Porn Flick

Backstage drama in the porn industry, showing the making of scenes. Details the involvement of the film-maker A with various of his stars, B the wiley pro, although that means not such a good actress as performer, and C a more innocent newcomer. Plays out along two axes: how the etiquette or politesse or social conventions are almost the opposite of "censored society," i.e., that there's almost an obligation or expectation to mix business and pleasure (when business is pleasure, but also shows how when business is supposed to be pleasure, pleasure becomes business); and the reflexive trick of whether this whole is not itself a self-serving fantasy, a corny, cheeky guy's dream.

The Bright Lights of Sin

Two young women hang about in a college town. A is loyal to a young punk scoundrel, while B is promiscuous, finding her sympathy split between her friend and the others who often act contrary to her. They maintain a chumminess as much by suppressing their differences before each other as by being intimate. Metaphorical flourishes come as the phantasmatic worlds of each.

Tahoe Dream

Dreamlike meditation on time and persona. A woman apparently imagining herself in the 50s at a Tahoe resort, as if she could inhabit the time of her mother, then "returns" to the present, but aged from that time, and as if now reminiscing to the time of her youth. She then has a sudden "where am I" reaction. Is she the mother imagining herself the daughter? Is she still in the projection, the dream? Scenes then alternate between positions as if suggesting the confusion, but also detaching more from any particular subjective position. A final scene shows the present-day young woman in a modern car approaching a sign for Tahoe on the highway, then cut to her bathing in the sun beside the lake, in a 50s-style bathing suit that could be then or retro.

Here Under Heaven

In the 20s, A is an aviatrix. Her lover, man B, is part of a wealthy set who are also A's backers. But as A gets more caught up in her flying exploits, and the fame and attention they bring, B begins to feel neglected. He begins to wonder if her failure to commit is more principled than circumstantial. He strikes up a fling with flapper C, who is all too willing to land him. But he simply doesn't care for her like he does A. Aerial imagery, A's flying, is often cut to in amorous moments, as a metaphor, a parody of indirection and censorship, the suggestion of its appeal to her, and the conflict of desires.

Confessions

A female psychologist for a university, A, helps a student, B, who claims she has been harassed by a professor. A is startled to learn that the professor is man C, whom she has been seeing. She doesn't let on to either patient or professor, for the time being, not wanting to violate confidentiality, but worries about how the situation compromises her. She feels that B has a profile for projecting that undermines her claim, but the psychologist finds herself wondering about the man, and having compulsions of her own to find evidence about B's claims. Then another student, D, comes along making the same claim about the professor. D also has tendencies similar to B's, but A must wonder even more which way this coincidence works. Is C someone who provokes this projection, if inadvertently? Or is it too much a coincidence? The contention of all these factors, and A's own feelings towards the others with her professional disposition, tests even her notions of psychology, especially as the affair remains inconclusive. In the end, with the students gone, insinuation and ambivalence remain about the man.

Bad Dreamers

Three women's lives intersect in the person of a shiftless, unrelenting poet who seems to operate offstage in total deference. A is the relatively central character, a young woman half drifting through college, not sure what she wants to do; B is a teenage groupie type who may be even more adrift, but more used to it; C is a local TV anchorwoman with a particular narcissistic fascination. The poet, D, acts as the cipher around which they orbit and against which they strike themselves off. A watches a soap opera and unexplained cuts to dream sequences, which may or may not be hers, eventually begin to take over the form of the whole.

Lady Killer

Man A finds himself trapped in circumstance when the victims of murders are women with whom he has had some relationship, each murdered after incident with him, no matter how slight. When the number falls to acquaintance B, he by now feels apprehensive and warns her of the danger, if at least that he is implicated and she may be associated with an accused murderer. She persists in her interest in him, seeming to believe in him and willing to help. But her behavior and the nature of the relationship changes as is gradually revealed the twist encrypted in the title.

The Farce

Backstage tale about a cast preparing the production of a bedroom farce, cutting back and forth between the actors rehearsing and being involved in their own soap opera offstage without seeming to take stock of what the very play they're doing is telling them or the similarities. A is an older actress, the wife of the director, B, and is jealous of young actress, C, whom he has cast as the ingenue. Actress D, with whom the director is having an affair, also becomes jealous of C. Another young actress, E, is having an affair with actor, F, who is the lead and playing love scenes with C, whom E is also envious of over the ingenue part. While the onstage play is Moliere-like, refined, the offstage drama carries on at a ludicrous gait, the adult actors behaving as high schoolers in the throes.

American Heirs

Tableaux of events in the lives of a wealthy American family and the strange blend of principles that is peculiarly American for this would-be royalty. The tone and method of "The Cherry Orchard," with juxtaposition of sparse scenes, often anti-climactically mundane. Woman A is the most recent family prospect, the new fiancee of family member, man B. C is B's former wife, D a female cousin, E the wife of another family member, all of whom seem to be all too charmed with B. The family is seen from the point of view of A, the newcomer, during one big gathering after a funeral. A finds herself approached by all the women, who seem strangely curious about her, and the suggestions mount of bizarre interrelations of this "Camelot" set.

New Era

The beginning of the 20th century expressed in the relationship between a cosmopolitan leftist intellectual (like John Reed) man A and a tenement-district prostitute B he takes up, whose street-urchin demeanor can also be disguised in rough-gem looks in even flapperish glamor. A Pygmalion story as the man tries to prove that someone from the masses can be sympathetically educated. From the other direction, wayward deb C shows her own sublimated savagery, jealous of A's attention to B. Other intellectual friends in A's circle comment on whether A is making his own form of exploitation. B's ingenuousness is appealing to A in contrast to his circle, but her scruffier, mischievous behavior makes her unruly for any of his intentions.

The Adult Syndrome

Meditation on becoming like our parents, how a group of young adults find themselves replicating the errant behavior they thought peculiar to their parents. More particularly, locates the contradiction in woman A, who constantly invokes a notion of maturity to denounce man B's affair with more subdued woman C. While C is more capricious, less reflective, not wanting to ponder things, A turns to nasty, spiteful, vindictive behavior.

Imagine

Man A involved with woman B has in his imagination C, but the apparently scandalous way the latter is his ideal reverses when dealings with her only return him to B for any real contact. This is lifted to another level of ambiguity of whether C is a real person A knows, for why she is so untouchable even in his imagination, and in which case B may be the one he's actually imagining.

Apocalypse Baby

Woman A strikes up relation with soldier of fortune B. He then has to contend with her adopted daughter C, who is resentful of him, but who then approaches him with curiosity about his past, finding out about his CIA connection before her mother. C begins to try to lure B, by seducing him, into a plot to kill her mother, then run away to Asia to a seedy coastal dance bar his cronies are running. B succumbs to C but arranges the departure in such a way that the act of killing A will not be seen by C, thus hiding the fact of whether it's actually done. They meet with one cronie in L.A. to try to round up American women they think will be a bigger attraction in the club, C having to see the squalor of this, but vengefully wanting to participate in the pimping. Their arrival in Thailand further shows the world of these soldiers of fortune, with the situation becoming more menacing for C.

Being Past

Man A, once a famous comic strip artist, has suffered a heart attack and must stay with his daughter and son-in-law after living as a recluse. He broods about being trapped by his age and is visited by figures from his past, who torment him with his regrets and taunt him with the fact that they are imperfect memories. His trying to remember takes him through a cascade of revelations, each in turn made suspect by being only his memory. Woman B is the main obsession, lover of C, who despite supposedly being A's best friend, remained mysterious. D was part of their group and had a secret fling behind even B's back. E is the wife who remained outside the group, F the second wife, mother of daughter he is now with. G is a woman even further in his past, in the 20s, whom he got pregnant and his father shuffled out of the way.

Wishing Madness

An artsy college girl, A, an 80s New Wave version of a flapper, takes up irresolute hipster boy B, to fashion into her own project. They trump up their affair with an idyllic sense of the madness of passion. Out of an almost blind desire to embellish, they tell stories not only to other people (each one often telling something entirely different, even contradictory) but to each other as well. Their romanticizing of desperation, of the extraordinary and grandiose, leads them to weird manipulations and flirtation with violence, though give to fabrication much worse than they have the guts for.

Men, Words, Ghosts

Two men bemoan the death of a woman A through the course of a drunken night. B is her boyfriend, C a friend of both. As the two men sob and eulogize, they also discover their different views of her, including some that seem contradictory. B comes to learn that she was also involved with the C. A appears in flashback, including one in which, while idling about with both of them on a similar evening, she uses the pretext of wanting to play cards to call up another woman, D, who has been trying to court C, just to needle her at first, but as it turns out, really both of the men.

Habits

A is a woman who demonstrates that sexual adventurousness does not equal any other kind of liberation, as she remains bound to workaday conventional life in every other way, even bemoaning how her active sex life has become a boring routine. With a new partner she picks up one night, B, to complain to, she also reports the desire to recruit another woman C into the their trysts. Meanwhile, B is already involved with the very woman, noting the contrast that C still has much in front of her to explore and, that the very things the jaded A describes as boring, A and still have much enthusiasm for. The suspense of whether C can be approached for this opportunity B would eager for gets clouded with another: B's concern that A's attitude might really have a bad effect.

The Calling

Christian woman works in an environment in a big city where others mock her, despite the fact she doesn't push her belief. One man, however, intrigues her as more considerate and apparently principled, even, she thinks, living up to the conduct she wants to have towards others. He admits to attraction and they both reluctantly develop a relationship, their desire working in spite of either. Because at the same time the closeness also allows her to learn his more far-reaching differences with her belief. Is this kind of desire or love more truthful than their principles? Do the principles of each require the love of the other, because, if not in spite, of the difference? Or is it just impossible, wrong for them to be involved?

Double O Nothing

A famous secret agent has disappeared and is replaced by an unknown agent who will pose as him to cover for the disappearance in a ploy. The agent tries to follow the tracks of the predecessor and finds a maze of women, all of whom may be connected in some plot or as some gang. The mystery spirals, rather than resolving, the new agent losing more and more of his grip than gaining information, so that he doesn't know whether his own agency is misleading him, too. In the labyrinth, he becomes less certain of his own identity and has only the facts of the other to inhabit, till eventually comes the suggestion that there may never have been the famous one in the first place, but only a string of agents playing this persona.

The Last Premiere

In the fledgling film industry of the new Soviet Union, A is an established movie star of the typical prestige cinema of the previous era who, despite reluctance, but fearful of having no work, consents to a film project by a revolutionary group. The film-makers are man B and his lover C (à la Dziga Vertov and Elizaveta Svilova). B finds himself enchanted by the star, curious about the ambiguity of her intention, and when a relationship ensues it provokes response from C, including political ones which B criticizes as being masks for plain jealousy. The contrast is of C's supposed more liberated political view of women with the revolution and B's more cosmopolitan sophistication even dealing with affairs. C's bid to characterize B as decadent is seen by B as naive and despotic.

Situation Comedy

Farce in realist trappings in which friends A, a woman, and B, a man, have a little reunion on the latter's arrival in New York. Back at her apartment, they continue to talk past the time her roommate, woman C who is also an old acquaintance of both, goes to bed, and on so late they decide B should not go out to travel. A decides he should stay in her room to prevent a disturbance by the roommate discovering him in the night or morning, but there are romantic overtones and it may be a pretext. Things shift when the morning after the eventless night, roommate C encounters B going to the bathroom, and in the pause of the simple surprise, the awkwardness turns to spontaneous urge. She pulls the man into her room. Later A comes out of her room and thinks B has left. Unable to confront A with their deed, B and C keep up a pretense, and a hide-and-seek affair sometimes in the same apartment, while A continues to woo B: including an occasion where C and B have to pretend to meet again and have dinner with A. Both C and B fear the reprisal but also for the stability of insanely jealous A. Contrasts the way A is tortuously deliberating romance while the other two, not really interested in all that, are just doing it, C even having to talk with A and console in her in the matter.

Old Habits

Woman A doesn't know quite what to make of man X and asks woman B, who has known him longer, about him. B relates how when she first met X, she thought he was interested, but after an awkward encounter she didn't understand, he behaved assiduously as only a friend. When A then lets on to X she spoke with B, he goes to B to ask what she told A. This provokes a discussion of what did happen, with X revealing that he thought B was not interested in him. Suddenly the situation is changed, and B wants to try again, though now it poses her awkwardly with respect to A. Then C shows up, ex-girlfriend of X who, though they are now painfully different in disposition, longs for the comfort of the feeling they once had. B gets wind of this and becomes jealous, situated to A as C to her, and to C as A to her, without caring for the implications.

Change of Guard

In an apparently modern world, an aristocratic couple lives on an estate with a building much like a castle. The man is apparently someone important, a lord or dignitary, because the place is besieged: by an army of women. The woman of the manor, A, is intransigent and unrepentant as the invaders, led by woman B begin to interrogate her and then re-condition her to a female-led society, or at least regime. A is thrown into a dungeon-like cell with other women prisoners, and especially one, C, talks with her about what has happened and their fate. C, despite also being obviously of the same aristocratic set, is weaker, more scared or perhaps just more willing to consider the situation, if not entirely what the women are proposing. They don't know what has happened to their husbands, or the rest of the world outside the estate. As A and C are taken away variously for further sessions with the women army members, A watches as other women don't return to the cell. Finally C does not. A then appears to concede enough to B so that she is taken to her room, ordered to dress up in her own clothes for a formal dinner, and taken to the formal dining room, where the women prisoners are all dressed similarly, each sitting next to one of the woman army members who are in their own style of dress uniform. When A breaks the order at dinner by protesting this is no different, it situates even herself crossways, and she's returned to her cell, with the implication that the others have capitulated to what they will now force of her.

Kingdom

Starting from "happily ever after," two fairy tale lovers, perhaps a prince and princess, return to an enchanted kingdom, living isolated in their fanciful world, cut off from any of problems, but as such living in a kind of dead space. Their apparent obliviousness to the monotony they present as a spectacle for anyone else makes them seem progressively more waxen.

The Spider

Man A has woman friend B through whom he meets woman C, during a difficult time for A. B thinks she can set them up and leaves them one evening after they've all visited. While A and C are talking, they see a spider crawling on the wall, and although C's first impulse is to get rid of it, they decide to watch it. They talk about how something that is so monstrous on one level is so fragile on another, how they are really the monsters to it. While A thinks C is very appealing, pretty and sweet, he fears that she's a bit too naive or at least too earnest and sensitive, and that he might be concerned with too many difficult nuances for her. The more she is obviously taken with his attention and willingness to discuss, the more he feels the need to express this to her, and tries to with difficulty. The explanatory retreats seem to catch him more in a trap of declaring interest. Finally C proposes it's too late for him to travel. A tries to indicate that he only takes it as an invitation to use her couch, but C quite surprisingly asks why he wouldn't think she was asking something else. His apprehension sets him up to be overcome by how nice she is, but then it leaves only the larger apprehension of what will become of them after.

Love Stains

Woman A, going through the trials of separation and divorce, meets up with male friend B who has just been jilted in a bewildering way. She consoles him and they spend time in mutual sympathy, while also allowing some desire to be vented, though confusedly, but mostly they tell each other the stories of their failed relationship, which contrasts how each is different, but how the effects are similar. Meanwhile, B also meets up with woman C, who tells him the even more outrageous story of her relationship with a boyfriend who has become something of a stalker. When B tries to tell A about this, A suddenly manifests jealousy about what's going on with C. B notes the curious way it's so easy to fall into becoming even what their other parties have been. They are left in this tableaux of the outskirts of relationships.

Square Zero

The convoluted decadence of two college professors, live-in lovers: man A in English and woman B in architecture. Both refuse to profess loyalty of the conjugal type, despite sometimes fierce jealousies. His constellation of satellites, various brushes and involvements with mistresses, students, colleagues, seems to be the main problem, but B proves to be well occuppied, too. A and B plot their idea of a certain kind of fame, together and each separately, and nurture their sense of achievement, but they are going through even this as a kind of routine, their dissolution demonstrated with the shenanigans. Their conceits are shown in flights of fancy where their milieux take on dreamlike proporitions: texts, books, architectural drawings becoming giant as the scene or landscape they are in.

These Times

Man A sees regularly on his morning commute bus a woman B. He tells his friend, woman C, about her, that she is striking, also because she looks like woman in a Klimt painting. The relationship with C is ambiguous as to the degree of interest of either, but A's telling of B does seem to pique C. B meanwhile introduces herself after seeing A again on the bus, but there is another ambiguity between them, hesitation perhaps from each about what the other's interest is. Meanwhile, intercut with this, B and C appear as two women in fin-de-siecle Vienna, apparently friends, in various settings possibly the same day or across different meetings, carrying on a glancing discussion which eventually lands on the possibility of reincarnation. The contrast of the mores and sensibilities of the times is commented only by this juxtaposition, with the intercutting changing in proportion, the latter day scenes longer first, then the earlier time ones, so that they become normalized, including their own banality, and the last brief scene of later times has the effect of a surprising fate.

Witch Way

Bold and eccentric woman A takes to man B through a mutual friend, overly identifying with him on the basis of disappointed love as the friend told her he had been jilted. As if her pushing herself on him weren't enough, she also reports that she is a witch. B is interested, mostly deviously and ironically, but she takes his interest as genuine and is flattered, falling for him more. While another woman friend C warns the man of involvement because of her own suspicions, he manages to like even the witch thing as color for the whole thing. When some strange effects ensue, such as hallucinatory experiences at a party (he sees her dancing then more with a devil-like creature), he begins to wonder about his susceptibility. Is it his imagination, her spell, or something else she's using to make him believe?

The Other Sister

Man A is smitten with woman B, only to learn she is married and is scarcely interested in him besides. He then meets her sister, who, it turns out, resembles his own. She thinks this is far-fetched, possibly just a line he's using. But then a stranger comes up to them and asks if they are brother and sister. This gives her the idea of creating just such a provocation, going out and publicly displaying affection just to make people wonder if they are brother and sister, and telling anyone who asks they are. When she proposes this to him, he is reluctant, but it's not certain whether this is for the idea itself, because he thinks she's only interested in this joke, or whether the whole suggestion of the resemblance is too creepy. When he does consent, it remains ambiguous even when, after the performance date, they carry on together alone and she gets really into it. Is it really the idea of the incest she likes? Is blood thicker than resemblance?

Brilliance

Young male writer A becomes infatuated with woman B who, along with her ample figure, is a classified genius studying physics and philosophy. He can't help wanting her for her body all the more because of her mind, but in his fumbling over self-consciousness about this, despite the fact she's quite interested in him, too, he gets informed from her life story of what it's like to be reduced to a commodity or convenient ideas of both.

Rare Jewel

Portrait of A, a young black woman film student, trying to make her way in a milieu of urban artists and gadabouts. While she may be more naive intellectually and something more of a pretender, she latches on to those whose projections and idealizations of her are eventually shown for their own kind of pretense, though often by her own mischief or mishaps, mostly involuntary, but sometimes quite deliberate. She moves in overnight with a pretentious white male artist, then has a fling with a Latino woman that betrays the petulance of both of them when they clash, A giving both the slip. Young black men on a bus try to lay claim to her by race, balking at her music taste. A more circumspect white intellectual gets her attention, perhaps because he's more wary of her, and she progressively tries to invade his life, nosing into his other relationships. When he does consent on occasion, she causes him more trouble. A heart-to-heart he manages to have with her reveals a past of abuse, but the real concern this elicits from him she also has to buck in a kneejerk way, deflect with childish impertinence.

Creepy Girls

Woman musician A lurks in the urban underworld but has a neurotic fascination that expresses itself primarily in jealous visions of other women. When she takes on a lover, she is at pains to hold back the jealous presumptions that precede the fact. Thus begins a spiral of eruptions and self-checks that present the world full of rival female creatures: one who transforms into a black cat; another seen as a bird of prey; another is a campy S&M vamp; and another at one point becomes a spider in a web.

The Slave

Relationship between a black woman A and a white man B becomes one of progressive dependence. She offers to put him up when he's fallen on hard times, and lets him idle in the house, as he has no car and little means, and knows few others in the city strange to him, while she goes off to work or even on with the rest of her social life. What is at first done as fun and desire, a kind of mock relation of him as a kind of house boy, becomes increasingly charged, more serious with the unspoken psychological tussles, the dependence, and even a kind of outbidding even of their desire. He must wait on her to be gone even long into the night or the next morning, and tries to counter some resentment making a play at a friend of hers, C who visits when she's gone. C reports this to A and she retaliates by bringing a home another man and forcing B to endure. Each turn can be reconciled only by B acting more subservient to get A's graces.

Top Billing

Parodic backstage drama set around magazine devoted to large breasts. Reigning favorite A is unnerved when lover/promoter/editor/business partner B wants to deal with up-and-coming sensation C. A anticipates and fears that C will climb the same ladder she did, including taking her lover once he's her promoter. Other stars of the niche are involved: from former favorite D to new product E. All the aspirations and jealousies, justified or not, are of course precariously linked to the main feature, and to a bust aesthetic (one character quips "in this world it's bust or bust").

Hide and Seek

The relationship of three separate people, each seen alone and with almost no speaking, is suggested only by the way the passages are juxtaposed, intercut. They could be thinking of each other, they could be looking for each other. They could be in three entirely different locations, or in just one, doing nothing more than playing hide and seek.

The Philosopher Stoned

An idealistically philosophical, perhaps too serious young man, meets up with an adventurous woman, who sees herself as a new breed of sophisticated intellectual, and finds her wanting to seduce and jade him as some kind of challenge. She takes him on a kind of tour of the underground, making him watch from closets when she picks up other men, and inviting other women to take their turn as well.

The Lovers

White man A and libertine comrade B, a black woman, plot to coax C, an Asian woman, into joining them from another city. When C does, a three-way relationship develops in the converted warehouse pad of B. The threesome goes through the same kinds of highs and lows as a couple, with the various combinations and complications that result from their number, each two taking turns from the odd one out, whether in favors or grievance. They have lulls, banalities, disenchantment and growing irritations, and while there are sometimes jealousies outside, they're usually too caught up with those within. When B summarily announces her disinterest and leaves what began as her pad, A and C at first think it better for them, but then find themselves with no spark.

Vex and Silence

Adult comic-book fare about dark metropolis where lurk, especially at night, allegorical characters, mainly the unwitting duo of woman A, a kind of apotheosis of passivity who literally goes wherever the next person leads her, and woman B, a compulsively violent renegade with a vicious chip on her shoulder on an apparently indefinite spree of brutality. Their stories are seen in parallel, intercut. A's behavior is at first an exaggeration of compliance, but there is a strange consequence, as the various men that pick up on her all undergo drastic transformations after sex, apparently due to the narcissistic overload of having a perfectly compliant object-partner (example: her first "victim" at the height of his absorption turns into a howling wolf, then crashes off into the night and an unknown fate). Male character villains, or at least rogues, with phallic theme powers also crop up (Sir Penis and Power Tool), becoming special challenges for both, but mostly for B.

Gens de Couleur

In Haiti before its revolution, a strange hierarchy resulted from establishment of landed blacks, to which the title refers. Black gentry had to sit at separate tables when they dined, even as friends, at the estates of the white gentry, though they were superior to white rabble. The strangeness of these social strata are exhibited by how they intersect with the caprices of one white nobleman: his white (French) lover and fiancée-to-be A, a black slave B, and then C, the wife of a black noble.

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