We left Nicholas and Carla with the smell of romance driving through the Paris night. Since then events have accelerated. After weeks of rumour, they outed themselves during a walkabout in Disneyland Paris where Nicolas held Tigger’s hand and Carla danced with Minnie. Marriage quickly followed and Carla moved into the Palais de l’ Elysées with a small amount of pomp and a lot of furniture. However, although Nicolas loves Carla, a corner of his mind is uneasy; it’s the things he’ll find her whispering on the edge of hearing and the startled look she sometimes gets in her eyes – not to mention the echos of his ex-wife.
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theme music
Slow zoom into the window of the Palais de l’ Elysées we see Carla dressed only in an oversized shirt standing in the kitchen in front of the stove. Camera pans from the window around the kitchen and settles on another slow zoom into the pan where Carla is boiling eggs. Slow fade to the counter where she is cutting pieces of toast into soldiers and buttering them. Nicolas enters, she turns and smiles. Fade to close.
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Interior, static camera. Nicolas and Carla enter the room. They are giggling with their arms around each other. Nicolas is wearing a american football jersey in the colours of the French flag, he’s carrying an oversized teddy bear under his arm. They look at each other, smile and Carla leads Nicolas up the stairs and into a bedroom. The camera follows and stops at the doorway. It takes a step inside and pans round to show Nicolas put on a CD. Carla gets up to close the door. We hear it close behind the camera. Carla and Nicolas look at each other and the camera moves backwards, down and through the keyhole. Once its on the other side of the door the image fades to white.
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commercial: Andrea Dezsö, Lessons From My Mother (via)
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commercial: Wakamaru domestic robot (more)
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We rejoin Nicolas driving through Paris, camera in the passenger seat. He stops at a junction, leans over and re-tunes the radio. He turns the car round a corner and continues driving, all the time looking into the middle distance. We fade to a slow montage, heart strings riddim playing. Nicolas is at home with his first wife. They are both sitting reading, the room has brick walls with shelves running just below the ceiling. The shelves are full of china plates and mugs. A boy runs in, Nicolas rubs his head and passes him a book. Slow fade to the three of them attending a literary event. The child is wearing a formal tuxedo with a red sash, sitting on the knee of an eldery gentleman in a wheelchair. Nicolas and his wife are standing in the background holding champagne flutes, engaged in coversation. Nicolas snaps back to the car as his phone rings. He pulls out the aerial with his teeth and flips it open. “What? I understand completely. I’m on my way”. The camera moves backwards, falling out of the passenger door. As the car accelerates away Nicolas leans over and slams the door.
——
Interior. The hospital is cold. Gaslamp shadows flit around the corners of the corridor, out of sight of the flourescent lamps. The trolley rushes through several sets of double doors. A drone is rising somewhere at the back of the building. Carla is silent, strangely passive – her hips jut with the contractions and a fleck of foam appears at the corner of her mouth. Pianos build on the extra-digesis and the trolley slams through the final set of doors, entering a room draped in velvet. A group of doctors are waiting – their features are vague – at once both set and darting, the way you imagine someone’s face moves undeneath a mask – movement built from a fragment of images half-glimpsed every few seconds. By the time Carla is wheeled into position the crown is already showing. To Nicolas’s shock a small hand appears next to it and the child begins pulling itself out. The child’s face soon emerges, blood and afterbirth around its eyes. It looks Nicolas square in the face as the doctor takes it under the arms and lifts it into the air while another doctor cuts the umbilical cord. Both doctors’ faces continue to dart and re-form, at the moment of cutting both mirror the child’s expression looking directly at the point between Nicolas’s eyes. A third doctor is stood away from the others, facing the corner of the room. He begins to speak, quietly at first but growing louder and more staccato:
“At the moment, my friends, time will go very fast and it will dispossess us. We are no longer spectators; we have also embarked upon this history which threatens to bury us all in the same cemetary. For the will of heaven, the will of God, will be set ablaze by lies. A stream will be turned aside, it will become a river which will go to flood peaceful dwelling-places. We will be this cemetary on the edge of dreams in which fierce hands will disinter the dead and exchange them for a rare herb which gives oblivion. O my friends! this sudden light which dazzles us is not to be trusted; it is the harbinger of darknesses.
Raise your right hands and say after me: Welcome, o being from a distant land, face of error, innocence of lies, double of the shade, o you who are so eagerly awaited, desired, you have been summoned to exposed the falsehoods of destiny, you bring joy but not happiness, you raise a tent in the desert but it is the dwelling-place of the wind, you are a capital of ashes, your life will be long, a trial for fire and patience. Welcome! o you, day and sun! You will hate evil, but who knows if you will do good… Welcome… Welcome!“**
The words fade but the sounds remain, Nicolas feels something shift in the air – a moment of dizziness – he shakes his head. The room has changed… the velvet is gone, as are the doctors. The intonation has been replaced with the sound of drill out in the street several stories below. Carla is in front of him smiling, holding a sleeping baby girl. He goes and sits beside her.
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closing theme
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credits
** from Tahar Ben Jelloun’s ‘L’enfant de sable’ (translated by Johnny)
featuring in order of appearance:
Paavohaju – Ilmaa Virta
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J Holiday – Bed (soca remix C&S by wtc)
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Masta Ace – Brooklyn Blocks (instrumental)
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Heart Strings riddim mix (bahamadia – paper thin / rupee – living lies / tami chynn – what do i do now)
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Frederic Rzewski – The People United Shall Never Be Defeated (wtc 36 variations all at once mix) -original-
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Erykah Badu – Honey (instrumental produced by 9th wonder)
