from Mother, I
Scene 27. Int. Morning.
This is a scene of mental preparedness in which Pierre rehearses his resolve to follow his mother’s order: drink the infernal cup of debauchery to the very dregs or else... A scene marked by the double helix of shame and a terrifying hunger for pleasure. Although nothing happens on the diegetic level—Pierre sunk in his chair—this mental interlude is the essence of the imaginary register, rich and feverish with fantastic images assailing the young man as if he were a blank slate, a celluloid screen. Il se fait son petit cinema. The interior reverie starts with Rhea’s striptease, which should be filmed all arms and legs, a slow liquid pan that loops back to the sluttish disorder Pierre encountered in his father’s library. In this self-con game, Pierre tries to outwit the very thing that scares him to death by pretending to succumb to the most detailed phantasms his febrile imagination spits up. In accordance with libidinal economy’s strange sense of time, he’s cashing in on a pleasure check that hasn’t been issued yet. It will be the director’s challenge to evidence the splendid copula between film and desire.