Flirt retrospective: Hal Hartley

Cast:
Parker Posey (Emily), Martin Donovan (Walter), Bill Sage (Bill), Miho Nikaido (Miho), Kumiko Ishizuka (Naomi), Dwight Ewell (Dwight)

Flirt is a film composed of novels, the closest to an autobiography of all works by Hartley. It describes three different versions of the same scenario about love: in New York we watch the relationship of a man and a woman, in Berlin - a gay drama and in Tokyo we have not only a multicultural perspective (a Japanese woman and American man), but additional context arises as the novel is partly set in a theatre.

Every sequence begins with a lovers' meeting, after which one of them has to decide quickly about the fate of their relationship. Every sequence includes the same elements: a love triangle, a pistol, a choir commenting on the events (these are men gathered in a men's room; then workers and finally women put in one cell). The autobiographic aspect of the Japanese novel makes it the most intimate: Hartley himself plays the main character's lover, while the part of his beloved woman is played by Miho Nikaido, who married the director in 1996. Maybe this is why this story is the only one to end well.

Anna Taszycka

After shooting and editing both the New York and Berlin sequences, I think I was really ready to discover a place like Tokyo - a totally foreign place.

Hal Hartley