Within the room are paintings that themselves are narrative maps and the camera lingers on one and another as great semiotic maps. They see into the world as we the world look into that tiny hotel room. Microsoft's version of Googlemaps (suitably plugged) provides the maps for how they use the world as the matrix for their discovery. Thereafter, the women in the room have their own theater as they look out on the world. The characters pause as they feel the eyes of the audience upon them. Early we are told that this room in which the entire film occurs is on the site of the ancient Roman theater. This has two explorers who see each other fully, the basis of love Medem raises the experience of their sight into each other to the level of our sight of them. But the real effect is a sensitive discovery of the nature of urge captured by another soul. Commentors will likely focus on the sensuality of some parts of it and the nudity in most.

Two women - strangers - meet, fall in love and separate in the course of ten hours or so. The actual plot is the thinnest skeleton, and I understand it is borrowed from another film, the way Shakespeare borrowed most of his plot skeletons. Complex unknowns, urges and liquid needs. This is love as it is in our souls and not as it is in date movies. And folks, the engagement is full of tension, ambiguity, fear. Every one contributes to a great upswelling of emotional engagement. This is film packed with cinematic and narrative devices, and every one works with the others. In his structural experiments in prior films he has sometimes been deft but the folding is obvious and does not support the emotional delivery that it should. He also - so far - has found it useful to place women as the fulcrum of his films. He is all about narrative structure and adventures in folding beyond the norm. I do not expect everything he does to change my life, but I know he will never fail to enrich in some way. +++ Medem is to my mind one of the three greatest living filmmakers. The structure should not be apparent to you before you see it though, because the way you discover this and its mysteries, mirrors the way the two people here discover each other and themselves.

The comment below talks about structure, as my comments usually do. Folks, there is a spoiler alert on this comment and I urge you to take it seriously.

Watch room in rome