Daily Dialogue — August 14, 2015
INT BAINES’ HUT DAY
He turns to her about to speak, but stops unmanned by a new fragility to her strength. He blinks rapidly
BAINES: Ada, I am unhappy because I want you, because my mind has seized on you and thinks of nothing else. This is how I suffer, I am sick with longing. I don’t eat, I don’t sleep. If you do not want me, if you have come with no feeling for me, then go!
BAINES walks roughly towards the door and opens it, his softness turned suddenly cruel.
BAINES: Go! Go NOW! Leave!
ADA is stung by his change of tune, she takes a step towards him and eyes filling with tears of anger hits him hard across the face. BAINES’ nose begins to bleed yet his face slowly lights up as if she has spoken words of love. ADA is flushed, shocked, the two face each other at this very moment of profound awareness of each other, profoundly equal. With each new breath, with every moment that their eyes remained locked together the promise of intimacy is confirmed and reconfirmed and detailed until like sleepwalkers who do not know how they came to wake where they did, they are standing next to each other and beginning to kiss each other, the lips, the cheeks, the nose.
There is nothing practiced about their tenderness, only their feelings and emotions guide their instincts. BAINES’ face crumples with the exquisite pain of his pleasure, ADA cradles his head to her chest.
BAINES struggles through her dress anxious to touch her skin.
EXT/INT BAINES’ HUT DAY
Outside STEWART surveys the hut suspiciously. BAINES’ dog growls as he climbs on to the small verandah. Carefully STEWART peers through some loosely slatted boards. There are sounds inside which are worrying him. By standing on the seat he has found a spyhole where he can see ADA and BAINES kissing, undressing.
He reels back angry, but just as we might expect him to burst through, he steps up to look again; the fatal second look, the look for curiosity. He watches BAINES bare-chested undressing ADA, her buttons burst, ADA laughs, BAINES touches her under her skirts — anywhere, he takes himself under her dress pulling down her stockings.
STEWART watches, stepping down to peer lower as BAINES buries into ADA’s skirt. He does not seem to notice the dog licking his hand. Suddenly he pulls his hand away and looks at it, wet with dog saliva, he wipes it on the boards and continues watching as if mesmerised.
INT BAINES’ BEDROOM DAY
Inside BAINES’ small bedroom the raw dark boards contrast with the softness, whiteness of BAINES’ and ADA’s bodies, The long black strands of ADA’s hair stick to her cheek and wrap around her neck. Her face is flushed and her eyes are bright. BAINES rolls his face across her chest, gently, slowly savouring the flavour of her body. Drunkenly they continue their sex slowly, slowly. ADA’s breaths turn to low murmurs; these small sounds are extraordinarily moving to BAINES whose face swoons with joy.
BAINES: What? What? Whisper….
— The Piano (1993), written by Jane Campion
The Daily Dialogue theme for the week: Adultery. Today’s suggestion by Lois Bernard.
Trivia: The last movie Nirvana Frontman Kurt Cobain watched before he died.
Dialogue On Dialogue: Commentary by Lois: “I couldn’t find video of the end of this excerpt but wanted to include it as the scene is made more poignant by the cuckolded husband peering from without. As I reread this script this morning there was a very slow build up to this scene, beginning with Ada’s coldness and silence, exchanging letting Baines glimpse small parts of her body building his desire for her and withholding her slowly growing trust and desire for him. The dog licking Stewart’s hand increases the contrast in this scene.”