Surviving Desire

Hal Hartley's 1992 film runs under an hour and was made for American television. Martin Donovan plays a literature teacher who has spent weeks unable to move past the same passage in class, holding his students and himself inside that text. His interest in one of those students throws off both the course and his own life. All of Hartley's known habits are here: flat, fast dialogue, actors speaking without looking at each other, humour arriving from inside seriousness. The most remembered scene is a dance three men suddenly begin in the street; there is no reason for it, and that is exactly why it works. The short running time can make it look like a sketch, but the themes of Hartley's features are at their densest here. Desire is not helped by knowledge; the more the teacher has read, the more helpless he is. Who it's for: those who like nineties American independent cinema and Hartley's dialogue rhythm. Who it's not for: viewers who want naturalistic acting; the speech here is deliberately artificial and will lose some people from the first scene.