Odd, incomplete and often stifled

SECOND PERSON. B&W, 44 minutes. 1993

Working without a script, the actors grope for words, attempting communication unaided by studied dialogue. Their conversations are odd, incomplete and often stifled - punctuated by awkward silence and natural humor. The camera remains static in each scene, with the characters moving in and out of the picture frame. This technique creates separate rooms of each scene, a collage of the whole. The viewer becomes a fly on the wall, a voyeur.

 "Second Person" purposefully breaks all the rules of high drama in order to probe the other side of romance, that which simply persists. By using the absurd it gets at something which feels uncomfortably true, even familiar.