The Last Honest Lie
Key art
Filed beside the screening
The picture is The Last Honest Lie.
Scenario
2:57 · 16:9
Rain makes the window a curtain of gold lamps and one distant red light. A man stands close to the glass, coat dark at the shoulders. A card on the sill reads THE LAST HONEST LIE in plain letters. He speaks one short sentence, mouth careful, and stops. His breath fogs a small oval and clears. The rain does not care for the sentence. It keeps moving down the glass. The gold lamps beyond stay gold. The red light stays red. His reflection stands where he stands, for a moment obedient.
The card's letters are dry. His fingers rest on the sill and not yet on the card. Minutes pass as rain and as the fogged oval appearing and leaving with each breath he spends. He does not speak a second sentence to cover the first. The room behind him is dim. A chair holds his shape's absence. He watches the glass, not the chair.
His reflection does not stop. It finishes a different sentence after his lips are still. A second face in the glass, beside his, takes those words up and keeps them going, jaw working against the rain. He lifts the card. The reflection sets down a different card on the same sill, its writing turned away from him. He steps back into the room. Both faces stay against the glass and go on speaking. The turned card in the glass slides a finger along the sill and stops, writing still hidden. The slide follows the setting-down. His own card, in his hand, takes rain at the corner. A letter darkens. He does not blot it.
He touches the pane. His reflection touches late, out of time with his fingers. The second face does not touch at all. The red light down the street blinks once and holds. Rain darkens the letters on his card. In the glass the two mouths continue. His mouth stays shut, and the wet street keeps its gold and its one red point. The late reflection's fingers leave the glass after his have already left. The second face's jaw does not tire.
The card in his hand keeps its darkened letter. The card in the glass keeps its writing turned away. He stands back from the pane with his mouth shut, and the two mouths in the rain do not stop for his silence.
Rain keeps the window busy. Gold lamps outside do not rearrange themselves into a sentence. The red point holds after its one blink. His coat shoulders stay dark where the rain reached them earlier, though he is back from the glass. The oval of breath does not return because his mouth is shut and he is no longer close enough to fog the pane. In the glass the two jaws keep their different sentences. The card he holds drips once from its corner onto the floor, and he does not bend to save the letter that darkened.