Flirt

The first part of this collection of three short stories started out as a short on its own but writer/director Hal Hartley decided it would be interesting to explore the theme in further detail. So he filmed the second and third parts using the same basic story as the first one but changed the characters and location. The first part is set in New York where Bill (Bill Sage) tells his casual girlfriend (Parker Posey) that he will let her know whether they have a future together before she leaves for Paris to meet an old boyfriend later that day. In the meantime, he phones and arranges to meet the wife of a friend with whom he has started a tentative affair. When he arrives at the bar where he is to meet her, he finds that his distraught friend is already there, armed with a gun. The second part is set in Germany, and the ‘flirt’ is a gay American who lives with an art dealer but has started an affair with a married man, the third is in Japan where a female dance artist is drawn into an domestic argument between her choreographer and his wife.

It is a very brave move by Hartley to use not only the same story in each case but also mostly the same dialogue, and he only pulls it off with moderate success. The familiarity with the story allows you to concentrate on the dynamics of the situation, and how various people and cultures react differently but it also means that it requires a certain amount of concentration to watch without being distracted. The events on screen do not reach out and grab your attention as you already know what will happen. The characters on screen are not particularly sympathetic so it is easy to adopt an air of disaffection which Hartley’s characters themselves are famous for. Also the shortness of each part doesn’t allow for the kind of dialogue and labyrinth-like plot which would make it more involving. In the third segment, however, Hartley allows himself to play with the scenario more, and consequently this is the strongest section. He even has a cameo as the boyfriend of the ‘flirt’, who is a film maker, coincidentally called Hal. If you have only seen the directors most successful film, ‘Amateur’, then you will be disappointed with the lack of excitement and humour this has compared to that film, and regular fans of Hartley will find the lack of depth discouraging.  Kati