This kind of mutual psychosis between people is one of my favorite themes to explore, and although it may be a natural thing that occurs when people fall in love, it takes time. But for Kris and Jeff, this was an instantaneous connection between them beyond their control. The way they speak to each other at first, he’s very terse and straight and it’s never very romantic, it just happens as if they’ve been this way forever and they’re dealing with it. There’s no slow fall into it.
There are a couple things going on. From a plot perspective, you’re looking at two people who are thrown together because their pigs are somewhere in the world being thrown together, and so this tether is making them behave in ways that don’t quite make sense at the front of their minds. So it’s almost like they’re having their faces pushed into it, and this is the way it’s supposed to go. But it doesn’t seem to be working. That’s the way I thought about it, like in a romantic comedy this is Hugh Grant and Sandra Bullock or whoever, this is the part where they would be flirting and somebody would drop a book and pick it up and it goes well, and in this, this was like the event where it’s never going to go well. There’s nothing organic about this, the strings are being pulled somewhere else. So playing with that is both fun and part of the exploration. But also, I don’t know what could be more romantic than people who have been broken to their lowest point, the romantic promise that exists when you’re just destroyed.
And this love is all there is to cling to.
Yeah, that’s intoxicating. Like The Hustler, one of my favorite movies. It took me a while to realize that I don’t really care about the pool playing, I care about these two alcoholic broken people that are very holed up.
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