VENICE/VENICE (1992; w/d Henry Jaglom)

Aka Vice/Versa.

After "Interviewee" proposes film's thesis - effect of movies (fantasy/unconscious/romance itself) on expectations of real world (defined for HJ by relation [via camera: own dysfunction, "finding film" in editing/thru dialogue seeing into self thru others' eyes/experience - narcissism of which he later speaks]): do movies disillusion us about love, or does love disillusion us via the movies? - cut to water (unconsc "channel") + young French journalist Jeanne-Marie (romantic "reporter," agent of unconsc [as all wmn in HJ's assertion he likes filming them for their openness, they conduit to own feelings], w/ whom dir has "romantic" [intimate, symbiotic - unrealistic] relationship) coming to film festival (à la other-festival film Cannes' similar "Blue": emerging into "theatrical" dream-consciousness - "as far from reality as you can go"), her "searching" looks dir's own spiritual longing coming near.

Dir Dean (w/d HJ: injecting self into drama lucid dreaming, where subject aware of dream-state + influencing its course [as suggested in recursive ending]) at Venice festival (sunken city named for goddess Venus the mind at rest, its waterways the channels of the erotic/feminine unconscious) to represent America w/ recent film (HJ films aspiring to portray legit facet of homeland, as self) despite discomfort w/ that ("not representative" - of Hollywood: separate from country/whole personality, he truth contra fantasy + America's introspective side vs mainstream action-entertainment); "doing business" for him (seeing self as conscious facilitator [at one w/ own "medium"] à la HJ Someone to Love character), seducing starstruck J-M during café interview (cf Last Summer in the Hamptons + Déjà Vu outdoor encounters: artist/exhibitionist mtg muses in public) similarly part of job (both courting press + invoking romance/unconsc), infuriating put-upon secretary Eve (his counterpart: liaison to pragmatic, "real" world neglected, her later wish he would make her his wife desire of facets of self to fuse into whole) when he skips out on other obligations (he in turn seduced by fantasy).

Holds forth on bad vs good narcissism (while x-cutting btwn he + prettyboy star Dylan: the laughingstock body) + reality v fantasy (documentary interviews interrupting narrative less confusion btwn as amiable competition, speakers seemingly goosing story + vice/versa [V/V]) as men v wmn (former purportedly less revealing: alienation from self-img dir attempting to resolve by drawing out opposite) + life v film (latter the heightened reality analogous to fantasy/wmn/good narc'm, which he craves but interview subjects betrayed by [they suffering reciprocal alienation]); meta/physics-major J-M (similar htd reality to film: she film itself à la DV ghost) offers tree-falls-in-forest example of Schroedinger's Cat (which theoretically dsn't exist while in box [cf A Safe Place's magic box/camera: thing, once absorbed + abstracted, no longer part of alienated outside world - why HJ makes films]) + asserts "we think things are separate, but they're not" (she herself facet of self cast off "before the Big Bang" [birth, when male breaks from fem Other] + reintegrated, as physical + fem world via camera [scene of Dean interview intercut w/ J-M discussing him w/ his frmr lover Carlotta via unifying flashbulb snaps]), he opining "we're rediscovering each other - in Venice" (eros 1/2-world reconciliation of opposites).

Cut to Venice, CA (restatement of original text/location, un-sunken, ie brought into consciousness), where J-M again arrives (via concrete streets, vs opening water: the solid, real world) at Dean-house (Self, v neutral-ground Italy) in middle of party (dream, where disparate unconscious elements mingle: confusion btwn un/consc proving J-M's point about false boundaries/distinctions, she ghost-muse entering waking life), he w/o ™ hat (either absent of artifice/camouflage or w/o "lid" to hold in thots/fantasies), and mts heart-on-sleeve girlfriend Peggy (wisdom of Dean's own emotions; presence of both wmn mind at x-roads, weighing options btwn intellectual + emotional); on walk + canoeing (restating Itln promenade + gondola) tells Dean CA different from her poster-img of it (à la interviewees + film: she now lucid drmg, entering fantasy consciously), losing further illusions concerning him thru dialogues w/ other characters (mind in colloquy w/ constituent parts of self to gain truth à la dir himself, she now autonomous agent of his unconscious à la Kane Thompson).

Peggy bows out (resolved: tenuous connection w/ reality [sez Dean helped her enter world], mind w/drawing from consciousness as sleep deepens) + J-M beds down (she also resolved as independent, film to follow both moving back twd consc'ss + her dream playing out, fantasy of fantasy [as film "romance" of a romance]), Dean taking her next day to office (where business/consc activity conducted) where gathered wmn (constituent parts of her/his own anima, convened to put cap on dialectic) interviewees for "wife" role (reconciliation of romantic ideal w/ pragmatic possibility: uniting V/V), concluding w/ her effort (mtg w/ own conjunctive anima) where he offers her role in Venice film (recursive mind turning in on self in hermetic dream + uroboric nature of un/consciousness); in Italy (moviola over which HJ and J-M quibble: collaboration now instead of Dean's god-like control [cf Dylan's paranoiac party scene, where he rails against Dean's direction; each w/ pop-cult icon names the divided cultural psyche], resolution of interviewees' conflict immersion in frustrating ideal), she cites Heisenberg's law on possibility of particles being in two places at once ("Venice and Venice? Past and present? Film and reality?" - men and wmn/consciousness + subconscious) as film cuts btwn V/V idylls (memory/associative unconsc recognizing + reconciling parallels + similarities), camera finally w/drawing from monitor to reveal empty editing room (ego-free deepest unconsc aka heaven [where erotic unity restored, correcting "Big Bang" of monotheistic Judeo-Christianity (cf put-upon Eve)], characters t'selves transcended in order to commit film now to audience; impression also of God surveying His work before again immersing in same) then returning to screen (art/absorption, à la ASP + DV endings + StL's vanished Orson Welles).