Know

2 minute exterior dialogue film

Know

EXT.  A BENCH NEAR TO THE PLACID, STAGNANT GRAND UNION CANAL, IN A MORE RUNDOWN PART OF INNER CITY WEST LONDON. NOON ON A CLOUDY AUTUMN’S DAY.

Mid Shot from behind the bench: A man and a woman are sitting with their backs to the camera, faces turned apart, there is a slight breeze that licks through their suspended silence. It whispers and catches their hair and collars.

Front shot at the same width:

             Zach

You got that pose from a film

Closer front shot: The woman turns around, her shoulder caressing an invisible axis. She peers at him, every inch and line on his face.

Julie

I wanted to be with someone else

The surrender in his pale eyes pierces the white of her skin. He seems older now. Weighed down by bags on his face.  He looks up and around, their horizons are bounded, there is no room for irony.

Zach

You are about to meet the person you will love the most. More than anyone that you’ve imagined loving until now. Even your mother and grandmother will pale in comparison to him, (slight break in the rhythm) or her.

She looks away dismissively

Zach (continuing)

Its four centimeters. You can’t flush it out now, it’s not like the clot of blood you got rid of when you were a student

She turns around instinctively, startled by something

Julie

I’m still a student

He looks past her, blasé, accepting those words at their most abstract level. Looking down, sighing. Tracing the trail of an insect with on finger, without touching the wooden surface of the bench arm on which it walks.

Zach (with less expression)

Yes, a student, a student of life

She looks at him now, deeply enquiring, fishing for focus

Julie

Everyone I see walk past I imagine might be our child. We can’t control it. We are at the doorway of an unknown.

Shot centered off centre, more on him: He peers closer now

Zach

Now you’re talking like the Julie I know

Shot lowers: He takes part of her hand and squeezes it. She looks down guiltily, trying to blind herself to something, some memory, trying to break or crack it. He is stroking her hand soothingly.

Julie

I was the same with him too. I don’t know if it’s me or you. He was always slouched there watching TV. And I just wanted to

(She opens her mouth and falters. Trying to catch the air, fish like)

Julie (continued)

To talk, to tell him, to tell the world, what we are, why we are here. Who I am. All of it

She looks at him placidly. A little shy of her outburst

Zach

What better way to tell us than by giving us a child?

Julie

But you don’t really think that the woman controls. That the secret lies in her. That from her life spreads. It’s all a pose.

Zach

Like your pose?

Julie (quickly, looking down)

I don’t know

She continues

Julie

Maybe it’s fitting that I be so reticent in pregnancy. That I acknowledge it’s doom as well as joy. The woman doesn’t control. She follows. She follows the burden of her body, and the man is left to fight in spirit. She in sweat.

Zach

Which century are you living in?

She looks down, Closer Shot followed by Julie P.O.V. shot: her gaze follows the ripples, the dimples in the water. She looks up at him, honestly, from inside the cover of her mood.

Julie

Maybe I’m just scared

He looks at her again

Julie (continuing)

You didn’t think I could be that, did you?

He looks away, and now we focus on his pause, his silence. He looks back. Closer shot, centered on him, with her still in the margins of the shot: In a collection of all maturity and sighs as if saying “Yes, I did. I knew more than you thought about you”.