shouts in their faces to get a startled reaction.
He bosses his whole world around according to how it fits within his frame.
Bored, he tells all the models and his assistants to close their eyes.
Then he walks off and leaves them waiting while he visits his friend next door, an abstract expressionist painter.
*
The Abstract Expressionist tells him – I don’t mean anything when I do them. Afterwards I find something to hang on to.
The Abstract Expressionist says – It sorts itself out. It adds up.
Sarah Miles brings David a beer and massages his head.
Maybe she is his wife.
The way the film is shot, everything is seen through stripes and behind layers, wood blinds.
The frame continuously changes shapes.
*
As David leaves the studio, Jane Birkin and her friend ask to speak with him.
They are aspiring models.
With his feet up on his desk, he rolls a quarter between his fingers while they talk.
He’s got sleepy eyes like Michael Caine.
*
He drives fast through streets in which first every building is painted red, and then every building is painted blue.
He stops in a neighborhood in which every building is stone.
In the antique shop full of headless statues and plaster busts and pieces of marble, the old man working there tells him – There are no cheap bargains here – and blows dust into David’s face.
So David grabs his camera and wanders into the park.
Little is happening, and the park is silent except for the birds and the patterned soft whack of a tennis game.
David chases the birds when they land, and shoots them as they take off away from him.
*
Vanessa Redgrave and an older man saunter up a slope into the bushes, and David hops and clicks his heels as he follows them.
The couple is playful and affectionate in a clearing.
Stepping over a fence to hide in the bushes, David shoots the couple.
He moves closer and stands behind a tree, and then he’s not very far at all and he’s shooting them.
They’re distracted by their kisses.
Vanessa looks around, but the man looks only at her.
For a long time it is silent, except for the breeze through the trees and the small clicking of the camera.
Finally, Vanessa notices David and chases after him, away from the clearing and down some steps.
She is furious and insists that he stop photographing them.
She says – This is a public place. Everyone has a right to be left in peace.
It’s not my fault if there’s no peace. – He replies.
She falls to the ground and bites his hand to grab the camera from him.
She says – You’ve never seen me. – And runs away.
*
Back at the antique store, David talks to the young girl who works there.
It seems maybe he’s scouting her to be a model.
She says that she’s fed up with antiques and wants to head off to Nepal or Morocco.
But their conversation is cut short when he falls irrepressibly in love with a big wooden propeller buried in the stacks that he insists he needs at that very moment.
He tries to throw it in the back of his convertible, but the girl says she’ll get it delivered to him later that day.
It turns out that he wants to buy the junk shop.
He tells his secretary that he thinks the property value will go up because he sees queers with poodles walking around.
*
David delivers his photos of the factory workers to his agent, a man in a suit eating a very fancy lunch alone in a restaurant.
The factory workers are naked in some of the photos, and changing into their work clothes in others.
To order his lunch, David touches the waiter’s arm as he walks past.
He tells his agent – I wish I had a ton of money. Then I’d be free.
Through the window, he notices a strange man looking around in his convertible.
Before his lunch even arrives, he runs from the restaurant to follow the man.
He lays on the horn constantly when driving.
But a parade of protestors carrying hand made signs against nuclear weapons walks by in silence and he waves them past, waits for them to cross.
*
When he arrives back at his studio, Vanessa shows up to get the film from him.
He puts on some Herbie Hancock music and offers her a drink as if it’s a sudden afternoon seduction.
They argue about who has the ultimate rights: the photographer, or the subject of a photo.
He tells her that she should be a model and stands her up against a purple background.
He takes his coat off and commands her to sit next to him.
His wife, presumably Sarah Miles, calls and he tries to make Vanessa talk to her.
He sets a smoldering match down on the head of a statue and pets it affectionately.
He explains to Vanessa that beautiful women are boring objects.
She says it’s the same with men.
But he cuts her off to insist that she listens to this Herbie Hancock song, and that she remain still when doing so.
He commands her to smoke slowly and against the beat.
She asks him for a glass of water and when he steps away to get it, she tries to run off with his camera, but he is waiting for her at the door.
She takes off her shirt and offers him sex in exchange for the film.
He tells her that he’s not interested.
He offers her the negatives, but secretly switches the roll of film that he hands her.
Once he hands her the film, then they kiss and head off to bed.
But someone rings the bell, and David answers the door topless.
His propeller is delivered.
They get high topless together in the afternoon and think of the propeller as a sculpture.
Saying goodbye, he asks her name.
She won’t say it, but writes down a false phone number.
At this point, there is a big piece of lint right in the lower center of the frame.
It is navy blue and curly.
*
When she leaves, he immediately develops the film to see why she was so anxious about retrieving it.
For the process of printing out big photos, he uses a magnifying glass and big metal contraptions.
Blown up, the photos are grainy, but the look of concern on Vanessa’s face is apparent.
David has to blow up a small detail over and over.
Maybe he realizes that he never saw the man again, after Vanessa chased