The sequence opens with Daniel watching a lady of Spanish origins passing by, while he is joined by first his boss, then a friend. It shows a substitute for desire, which seems to be the key to understanding Daniel’s relationship to the opposite sex. He longs to see women from far away, without any real desire to touch them, to lust after them from a distance, from where they can be subject to a specific picture or role in his head. He keeps them at a distance through a cinema screen, or the shop window and the archway on the other side of the lane.
The beautiful Spanish woman’s journeys are filmed at day. The only shot where the camera leaves the shop to film from a bench on the street, comes from a cinematic fantasy, heightened by the closure of the iris, owing nothing to the realism of that which follows.
In the following sequence we see three situations featuring the same two main characters in the same place: the bicycle shop where Daniel works, from where he can see a little street and the porch on the other side of the road. Daniel’s is the only point of view we can see from.
1. Thinking he is hidden behind the shop window he watches the girl kissing boys under the archway over two nights in a row. He is experience kissing both at a distance and by proxy. At the moment he is a hidden, unseen voyeur.
2. The following morning, the girl comes into the shop to buy something. She approaches him in an unusual way as she comes to pay, looking piercingly into his eyes. He ducks away from her approach, missing the kiss that she maybe intended. She has entered into his voyeuristic bubble, where he thought himself hidden and unseen, provoking him. This action changes his status in the next scene.
3. The same situation as the first one, but reversed. She looks intently at him whilst kissing another boy, in essence kissing Daniel by proxy.
Comment
The sequence opens with Daniel watching a lady of Spanish origins passing by, while he is joined by first his boss, then a friend. It shows a substitute for desire, which seems to be the key to understanding Daniel’s relationship to the opposite sex. He longs to see women from far away, without any real desire to touch them, to lust after them from a distance, from where they can be subject to a specific picture or role in his head. He keeps them at a distance through a cinema screen, or the shop window and the archway on the other side of the lane.
The beautiful Spanish woman’s journeys are filmed at day. The only shot where the camera leaves the shop to film from a bench on the street, comes from a cinematic fantasy, heightened by the closure of the iris, owing nothing to the realism of that which follows.
In the following sequence we see three situations featuring the same two main characters in the same place: the bicycle shop where Daniel works, from where he can see a little street and the porch on the other side of the road. Daniel’s is the only point of view we can see from.
1. Thinking he is hidden behind the shop window he watches the girl kissing boys under the archway over two nights in a row. He is experience kissing both at a distance and by proxy. At the moment he is a hidden, unseen voyeur.
2. The following morning, the girl comes into the shop to buy something. She approaches him in an unusual way as she comes to pay, looking piercingly into his eyes. He ducks away from her approach, missing the kiss that she maybe intended. She has entered into his voyeuristic bubble, where he thought himself hidden and unseen, provoking him. This action changes his status in the next scene.
3. The same situation as the first one, but reversed. She looks intently at him whilst kissing another boy, in essence kissing Daniel by proxy.