The film started ten minutes ago, says the man as he hands us our prebooked tickets. Another young man shows us down the stairs and through doors marked ‘Screen 2’ into darkness. There’s no light coming from the screen and it’s so dark in there I can’t see a thing. Fortunately the usher turns on one of those muffled torches and I slavishly follow his weak green light until it stops and hovers, presumably at the end of a row with vacant seats in it. By using his circle of light as a rough guide to where he is standing, then calculating from this where his ear might be, I lean towards it to whisper my gratitude, and accidentally kiss him on the eyelid.
The film is an Austrian subtitled film called What Is Love (without the question mark). The synopsis on the London Film Festival website says it is a meditation on our relationships with each other and with God. I chose the film carefully from a diverse list. I’ve chosen successfully, it seems, because as we feel our way along the row to our seats, I can sense that the people around us are already engrossed enough to be irritated by the disturbance.
We sit and settle. Then she stands again and slowly, regally, divests herself of her cashmere coat. On the screen the scene changes to a middle-aged couple seated at a table. They are having a heart-to-heart in front of the single, centrally placed, static camera. ‘On a scale of one to ten,’ says the man, ‘how much would you say you loved me?’ The woman thinks for a few moments and says, ‘One or two.’ This draws cruel titters from some members of the audience.
She then decides she would prefer to sit in the vacant seat on the other side of me. So she stands up again and gathers up her coat and handbag and squeezes past and sits there. Then her daughter, ten years old, a tiny slip of a thing in a big red gangsta hat, decides to move also, to the seat on the other side of her mum.
We settle once more. Out of her Louis Vuitton bag comes our jumbo bag of toffee popcorn, a family-size box of chocolate fingers, and three fizzy energy drinks. These she opens noisily and dispenses right and left. Finally, on go the Cartier ‘Jackie O’ sunglasses and she at last addresses her attention to the couple on the screen. They are still dissecting their relationship. She is complaining that he’s barely spoken to her for three weeks. He says he hasn’t felt well. He’s had an earache. So why didn’t you tell me that you were unwell, she says. Couldn’t you tell me even that?
The dialogue and the acting isn’t bad. Watching this couple conscientiously analysing his recent coldness confirms me in my opinion that the monogamous human relationship must be one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever heard of. I turn my head to catch her attention and register my relief: relief that we are watching an intelligent film, and relief too, perhaps, that we aren’t in one of those. But the face behind the big sunglasses is totally absorbed by the dialogue and hungrily chewing a chocolate finger.
Then I can feel someone whispering urgently in my ear. What now? Someone kneeling in the row behind us has his mouth next to my ear. The voice is male, Italian, husky with emotion. Is this one of the most importunate homosexual advances in a cinema I have ever known?
The emotion is profound, almost tearful regret. He’s a representative of the London Film Festival, and he is chucking us out. Unfortunately he has no choice, he says. What Is Love is an as yet uncertificated film. To be on the safe side, uncertificated films are treated as certificate 18 films. The child with us was allowed in by mistake. Therefore we must now leave. He will try to arrange a full refund. The emotion aside, the voice is sincere, kind, intelligent. I feel for him: the poor man obviously has no idea what he is dealing with here.
I note with exquisite anticipation the sudden change behind the Jackie O wraparounds as she turns and catches something of what is being said. In an instant, her expression changes from complacent enjoyment to the sharply focused one of the war horse in the Book of Job who, ‘saith among the trumpets, Ha, ha; and smelleth the battle afar off, the thunder of the captains, and the shouting.’ As the person addressed, I have to say something. ‘But she is 18,’ I protest. She’s small, even for ten. All there is to see of her in the darkness is the hat. ‘And we aren’t going anywhere, in any case,’ says her mummy, commencing hostilities in a deceptively level tone.
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