Friday 10 March 2017

Light Sleeper | Paul Schrader, 1992


Light Sleeper | Paul Schrader, 1992

"Is there luck for me?" A two-years clean dealer is looking for normalcy. His associates are going straight with a cosmetics venture that has no place for him. His way of life is ending. For now, he's wordlessly driven back and forth across the city on delivery, feigning friendship to mask transaction; brief encounters, then on to the next one. He's becoming an island. His apartment is shrouded in darkness, the floor lamp a faded lighthouse on the shore, illuminating only the objects in its immediate vicinity: a desk, a notebook, a bottle of wine, cash money from the night before; the remaining space is an uncharted silhouette longing to be filled, a nothingness that could be everything — then fate intervenes. Two chance encounters in as many days with the love of his life, an ex-lover he has neither seen nor spoken to for years. Their addictions tore them apart. But now they're both clean. They reconnect, passion consumes the darkness and the past fades away. There's nothing but the present. They spend the night together in her small apartment, red light bathes the room, but they don't wake up in the bed. They're naked on the floor, pushed between the wall and the bed frame. The room is now an inexplicable shade of green. The intimacy he craves is there, but the pieces don't fit together as they should. Beds are meant to be slept in. For him, this could be everything he's ever wanted, but for her, "this is the end." The past comes rushing back. The night before and the morning after. They've relapsed. She gets dressed and tells him to do the same. He tells her he loves her but she doesn't hear him. Bridges crumble into the ocean. The islands remain alone.