I know not what to write that would do the pure and boundless aesthetic experience that this is justice. I will, however, say this:

Needs arise in the body, needs whose satisfaction relies on their communicability. In turn, communicability involves interpretive labour. This is exhibited most clearly before the subject's introduction into the field of language, with the desperate caretaker seeking to decipher the infant's cry. What follows are repeated attempts at signification that the caretaker engages in, until they…

Even engaged in a concerted effort to abandon any expectations regarding the functions that cinema is meant to perform and the affective, aesthetic, or conceptual experiences that it is meant to inspire, this didn't do it for me.

There is something to be noted regarding the banality of everything within the film: the fact that the conversations aspire to be erudite but fall sorely short, the frigid mediocrity of the characters (except Maude and Françoise, whose richness is, even still,…

"Here I am back and still smoldering with passion, like wine smoking. Not a passion any longer for flesh, but a complete hunger for you, a devouring hunger. Where has gone the time when men fought, killed, died, for a glove, a glance, etc? (A victrola is playing that terrible aria from Madame Butterfly– “Some day he’ll come!”)” (Letter from Henry Miller to Anaïs Nin)

A Cavafy poem in filmic form, a passion lived through only when long enough has…