Naked eye

Turn on and tune in to the Dallas Video Festival

Comments (0) By Robert Wilonsky Thursday, Mar 16 2000

March 26, 6:30 p.m., Video Box

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love Two couples sit around an elegantly spread table; their meals look as though they've been prepared by Stephan Pyles. One couple consists of an older man, perhaps in his late 40s, who wears his girth like an old T-shirt; we find out later he's an emergency-room doctor. His wife is a pretty, much younger blonde whose first husband loved her so much that he tried to kill her -- and himself, though he botched the job twice. The other couple, presumably our hosts, are also in their 30s. He has dark hair, dark clothes, dark everything. She, too, has dark hair and a small, winsome smile. Around dinner, drinking wine that becomes martinis later on, they discuss the fleeting nature of love -- how it lasts until someone dies, or until we meet someone else, and then love becomes only a memory, if that. Scott Stewart's short film, based upon the Raymond Carver short story of the same title, is deceptively simple: Beautifully shot (in widescreen, more or less), it's less a film than a small, private poem -- a conversation you've had, perhaps, but never meant to share. (R.W.)