Tiny Vessels

This clip should have been a part of my long video tribute series In Praise of Eros Part Two: La Petite Mort, but some how got left behind, so I felt that I should include it now as a separate post. This scene taken from Frisky Summer 4: Summer Loves (2002) between Marcel Bouvier and Pierre Delon has an eerie beauty about it. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that the setting is a room in an abandoned building. Perhaps subconsciously, I’ve come back around full circle to the first scene in the La Petite Mort I posted between Marcel and Tim Hamilton. Remember that one? 🙂 What I loved about this scene, and this series of films in general, is how seemlessly one vignette blends into the next; almost without us noticing. What perhaps singled this particular scene out for me, with all the other video tributes I’ve done, music was used as a device to set the mood and match the scene’s tempo/pace. With this one, a scenario was conjured by the images, and the music was used as a means to just drive the point home.  In the other edits I’ve done it was all about setting mood. This time, I tried to tell a story using both the images and the music. Within the context of the scene, it works. There are about a couple of different ways to read this one. But I chose this way, and I used Death Cab For Cutie’s song Tiny Vessels from their album, Transatlanticism, to speak the story I found cleverly hidden behind the imagery. I know this is a situation we can all relate to in some way, either it has happened to us directly, or it happened to one of our friends. I don’t know how many times I wanted to bitch slap my guy friends for treating their partners so shabbily. Whether how I read this scene was George’s original intent is hard to say. I’ll let you be the judge. But I hope this one grabs you by the heart, as it did me, while at the same time, Ben Goddard’s lyrics grab you by the throat.
Picture this:
You meet someone. You feel that this is the one of your dreams. You fall in love with this person, unbeknownst to you at the time because you’ve been blinded by his charm, your love will be one-sided. He has something else more devastating in mind. This person tells you everything you want to hear, overwhelms you with his charms, so much so that before you realize what has happened he has you caught right where he wants you. But it’s okay, isn’t it? It’s love, or so you desperately want to think. He even says he loves you, and he promises to love you after.  You fall directly into his trap. Ensnared you decide to take a risk and you give in to him. You surrender yourself to him, giving him everything your body, heart even soul has to offer. When it’s over, you sadly realize all too late, after his attitude has changed toward you, that you were nothing more to him than just another of his conquests. He leaves you. You’re left crushed and alone.

All video and audio clips remain the sole property of their copyright holders and no copyright infringement is intended.
Video clip taken from Frisky Summer 4: Summer Loves (2002), dir. George Duroy.
Music clip “Tiny Vessels”, Death Cab for Cutie, taken from the album, Transatlanticism.