A VERSION OF LOVE

From novelist (Harry Gold, 2000) and biographer Dillon (Paul Bowles, et al.): a spare psychoanalytical tale constructed much like a “serious art film,” with ambiguous scenes and loaded dialogue.

It’s circa 1960, and Lorle, a divorced mother, is in a car with her lover Edmund on an overnight trip to California’s gold country. Adoring Edmund, she can’t stop analyzing his every gesture, even as he avoids intense dialogue. When the car breaks down, they must leave it at a local garage and fly home. A man named Vern gives them a ride to the airport. Later, Vern invites Edmund to come pan for gold, but Edmund rebuffs him. Back in the city, Lorle sees a note on Edmund’s door signed “Love, Carol” and is inflamed with jealousy. Soon Edmund, who was previously Lorle’s analyst, breaks off with her and marries Carol because Carol offers him peace. He recommends a new analyst to Lorle, who grows emotionally stronger while Edmund weakens. When he visits Lorle, they make love but she gives him an ultimatum: not to visit again unless he calls by Saturday. Before the deadline, he has a fatal heart attack. Meanwhile, Vern, who, like Edmund, has not emotionally recovered from his WWII experiences, lives cut off from his past—in a cabin—until visited by his boyhood friend Neal. On a return visit to Neal in the city, he meets a woman who’s opening a resort in Mexico. His lonely life no longer satisfying, he looks up Lorle and invites her to Mexico. She accepts, though she’d refused to do the same with Edmund, fearing too much strangeness. In Mexico, Vern and Lorle find great sexual chemistry, he now obsessed with her the way she’d been with Edmund, she disengaged just as Edmund had been. Frustrated and angry, Vern storms out. Driving around, he saves some people in fire. When he returns, he and Lorle find a bittersweet peace and head home.

Very cerebral and rather obvious.