MURDER and murder

A film written, produced, directed, and edited by Yvonne Rainer. 16mm, color/b&w, 113 minutes, 1996. Distributed by Zeitgeist Films.

Principal Cast: JENNY (Isa Thomas); YOUNG MILDRED (Catherine Kellner); DORIS (Joanna Merlin); ALICE (Alice Playten); MILDRED (Kathleen Chalfont); JEFFREY (Kendal Thomas); YVONNE (Yvonne Rainer); FLO (Jennie Moreau); JIM (Rod McLachlan).

Daytime. Early fall. Very wide shot, an almost deserted beach. The theme music from Jaws begins. Steadycam begins to move at a rapid pace toward two tiny figures who, as we get closer, are revealed as two white women playing with a frisbee. They are the ghosts who haunt the film.

JENNY, the older of the two (in her early sixties), is wearing a brown 1915 bathing costume. Although her legs, which are clad in brown stockings, are grossly swollen, she moves with agility. YOUNG MILDRED is around eighteen and wears sunglasses, a straw hat, and an unbuttoned man’s shirt over a turquoise two-piece outfit consisting of peddlepushers and midriff-baring sleeveless blouse. Music fades down as they speak. MS [medium shot], low-angle. JENNY and YOUNG MILDRED look off-screen into the distance.

JENNY: Uh-oh, here they come.

YOUNG MILDRED: Hey Jenny, let’s give them a run for their money. Let’s get into the act.

(Reverse angle. JENNY and YOUNG MILDRED run away from camera toward steadycam crew that is moving toward them. MCU [medium close-up] of JENNY. There follows a kind of cat-and-mouse game as JENNY and YOUNG MILDRED try to get themselves “framed” and the camera-person tries to avoid them.)

JENNY: (To camera.) My name is Jenny Schwartz. I was born in 1896. In 1915 I lived on Hinsdale Street in East New York with my parents. If you’re looking for my daughter Doris, she’s over there. (Pointing. Camera pans in the direction in which JENNY points. YOUNG MILDRED plants herself in front of camera.)

YOUNG MILDRED: (To camera.) My name is Mildred Davenport. I was born in Scarsdale, N.Y. in 1942. I just graduated from high school. . . . (Off-screen.) Jenny Schwartz is dead.

(Camera evades YOUNG MILDRED and moves toward two middle-aged white women sitting on the sand. DORIS, in her early sixties, is speaking to ALICE, who appears to be in her mid-forties.)

JENNY: (Off-screen.) Mildred, I’m as real as you are.

YOUNG MILDRED: (Off-screen.) Ok, so you’re a ghost. But I’m alive, because I’m going to be fifty when I get together with Doris.

JENNY: (Off-screen.) And I’m going to be seventy-eight when I die. So what? (Now shouting to camera crew.) Don’t believe anything Doris says about me.

YOUNG MILDRED: (Off-screen.) Why should she talk about you? You’re long gone. It’s me she’s obsessed with.

JENNY: (Off-screen.) But I’m her mother!

(Dissolve to MW [medium wide] of DORIS and ALICE.)

DORIS: Maybe I was delusional. It was 1 A.M., a warm night. I stopped at a shop to buy fish and chips and ate it as I strolled the mile from the theatre to my hotel. I was all alone and felt relaxed in a way I hadn’t felt for months, even years, like my body belonged to me, and I belonged on that street. I had no doubt about my right to be on that street all by myself savoring my fish and chips late at night. It was a kind of bliss.

ALICE: Doris, you’ve changed the subject.

DORIS: Oh yeah, you want to know what it’s like with Mildred.

(CU ALICE and DORIS.)

ALICE: I don’t mean to pry, but yeah.

DORIS: (Thinks for a bit.) You know, Alice, never in my wildest dreams, my most far-out fantasies, did I ever come close to imagining that I would one day be able to say “with the utmost conviction” I love eating pussy.

(Cut to wide shot of the ocean. A frisbee sails across the frame followed by JENNY, running after it.)

JENNY: As long as she’s happy.

(Music “Herbert Clark’s From the...