A woman surrenders a single day to a young stranger
NAOMI - 33 years old, British
LUCAS - 20 years old, British
EXT. SMALL OPEN SQUARE BURIED IN NICE OLD TOWN, SOUTH OF FRANCE - MIDDAY
A scattering of plastic seating outside a small café.
Woman, NAOMI, approaches holding a map in one hand. She peaks into the café before taking a seat at one of the tables outside. Glancing around she pulls out a cigarette from her bag. She waits a few long moments, impatiently glancing at the beaded doorway. She checks her phone. Suddenly a young man, LUCAS, falls through and into the sunlight, turned towards the café as if half arguing with someone inside. He turns to NAOMI and stops. After a second he approaches.
LUCAS: Qu'est ce que je peux vous servir?
NAOMI: (in a bad French accent) Café s'il vous plait.
NAOMI: Lait? Oh no, merci. Noir.
LUCAS bows his head and slowly leaves.
NAOMI’s coffee is almost finished and she runs her finger around its rim. LUCAS watches her as he clears things from the other tables, sorts another customer’s bill, then delays as he makes his way back inside.
NAOMI turns at the sound of children’s laughter. A boy chases a screeching girl round the corner of the street. When NAOMI turns back LUCAS is sitting in front of her. She looks around confused before settling her gaze on him. Â
NAOMI: Erm, puis-je, uh, vous aider?
LUCAS: (In a natural english accent) What’s your name?
NAOMI: (giving a huff of laughter) So you speak English now?
LUCAS: Why? Did you think I was French?
LUCAS: That’s good. Oh that’s great.
NAOMI: Should you be sitting down? While you work I mean.
NAOMI: Well then you needn’t be here at all.
NAOMI: Right, you like it here.
LUCAS: Where are you from?
NAOMI: (Debating whether to engage) New York.
NAOMI: (After a beat) Dorset.
LUCAS: Stop. (He jabs at his chest) Somerset. That’s crazy, isn’t it?
Moment of silence. She notices but does not acknowledge him studying her.
NAOMI: Sorry. I thought you were saying you were on holiday. Me? I’m not sure.
LUCAS: You’re not sure if you’re here on holiday?
NAOMI: I don’t know how long I’ll be here.
LUCAS: Well its beautiful. Lots to do. You shouldn’t leave too soon.
NAOMI: I’ll keep that in mind.
NAOMI counts some euros out of her purse and leaves them on the coffee dish. Gathering her things, she begins walking away.
LUCAS: (Gets up, calls after her) Where to next?
NAOMI: (Glancing back) I’m going to see the Cathedral, maybe walk through the gardens.
LUCAS: Ah the Promenade des Arts! Good okay.
NAOMI gives a small smile.
LUCAS: It’s just you’re going in the wrong direction.
NAOMI slows to a stop. She looks down at her map, turns it then turns around herself. LUCAS is still standing there.
INT. THE INSIDE OF THE CATHEDRAL.
The two stroll round the cathedral’s interior. Walking next to the tray of candles LUCAS drags his finger through a flame. He snatches his hand away and jogs a few steps to catch up with NAOMI.
LUCAS: Each of these ten chapels are dedicated to Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows.
NAOMI: They’re gorgeous.
LUCAS: Just wait until you see the one of Saint Rosalia. Whoever painted it really butchered that poor face.
Passing by, an old male tourist shushes them and frowns. LUCAS pulls a face once he moves on and prompts NAOMI to cover up a small laugh. LUCAS grins.
NAOMI: (Walking ahead a little) So what about you then?
NAOMI: The continent? France? What brought you here?
LUCAS: (Looking at her) The women.
LUCAS: My grandparents. They own a house, a little north of here. In Coaraze. (Pause) When I left university-
NAOMI: You’re a graduate?
LUCAS: Ah, no. I never finished. Left a week after my twentieth birthday. I’ve been here five months.
NAOMI: Oh you’re young.
LUCAS: Irresistibly young?
NAOMI: (Thinking) Haven’t-experienced-life young.
LUCAS: (Laughs) Oh and I suppose you have? What, you’re married? Got a doctorate? Maybe you’ve sailed round the whole world twice already? Experience doesn’t have one thing to do with age lady.
NAOMI holds his eye contact for a breath. She flashes a smile as she fans her face with her paper map.
NAOMI: Lady? Okay, now I feel old.
LUCAS laughs. The tension breaks. They head towards the exit.
They enter a comfortable quiet as they make their way out the cathedral doors and into the sun, now lower in the sky. They walk, Lucas one step in front, down a narrow street. NAOMI rummages for her phone, looks at it for a moment, then drops it in her bag. She returns her attention to LUCAS who is looking up at where the tops of the buildings meet the sky.
NAOMI: What do you do then?
LUCAS: Work, at the café. Look after the house. My grandparents aren’t around much out of season.
NAOMI: That must be lonely.
LUCAS: Sometimes I suppose. (PAUSE) I think maybe you’d know what that’s like.
LUCAS: Just that you, you seem…
NAOMI: (TESTING) What is it you think you see when you look at me?
NAOMI: You don’t know me.
LUCAS: I know you interest me. But yes that is true. I don’t know you, nor you me. We have all evening to change that.
EXT. PROMMENADE DES ARTS – EVENING
The two walk through the Gardens. They stop by a wall that looks over the rooftops of the Old Town and the ocean beyond it. LUCAS begins dancing an exaggerated waltz. NAOMI laughs and he leads her in with a hand on her waist. She lets her chest rest against his.
EXT. AN EMPTY STREET - LATE EVENING.
The temperature has dropped a few degrees but the air is still thick. Lucas holds a finger up, signalling for Naomi to wait. He crosses the street and goes into a nearby shop. Minutes later he tears out, holding a bottle. He grabs Naomi by the hand as they race down the street and off into an alleyway.
NAOMI: (Out of breath) Oh my god. Oh my god. What did you do?
LUCAS: (holding up the bottle) Cognac?
NAOMI: Did we just shoplift?
LUCAS: Would it make you feel alive if I said yes? (searching her eyes before whispering) I paid. I even him let him keep the change.
NAOMI: (beat) You are a mean, mean person.
She hits him on the arm. He pretends to be hurt, flinching and laughing. He starts running again.
LUCAS: Let’s go to the ocean!
EXT. THE BEACH PROMMENADE
Walking along the seafront LUCAS takes small sips of the cognac, looking out at the water. NAOMI smokes and looks at Lucas. She taps his wrist and motions for him to hand her the bottle. They walk a little further.
LUCAS looks at her. He looks at a strand of her hair that has crossed her parting. He fixes it then fixes his eyes on hers.
NAOMI: When I came out here, it was to leave something behind.
LUCAS: That’s very brave.
NAOMI: I think it might be the opposite of brave. (Pause) I left my job last spring. After a while in that house I realised I couldn’t stay where I was. I wasn’t ready to go back to England. (pause) I was unhappy. Thought I’d try somewhere hot.
NAOMI: I don’t want you to be sorry.
They look into each other.
LUCAS: You make me nervous.
NAOMI: Funny, you make me calm.
They have stopped walking.
NAOMI: I’m staying near the Port.
INT. AN APARTMENT BUILDING
NAOMI unlocks the door and makes her way inside. LUCAS is for the first time hesitant in entering her space. Placing her belongings down NAOMI makes her way into the kitchen. Turning from the cabinet with two glasses she finds LUCAS leant against the wall on the other side of the room. The two stare at each other for several moments. LUCAS begins slowly walking towards her. He has one hand on her hip before NAOMI’s phone starts ringing. She goes to her bag, pulls out her phone and rejects the call.
LUCAS: (following the break in tension, crosses to the sofa) Someone important?
NAOMI: (with her back to him)No. I’m not sure anymore.
Lucas: Okay. Come over here then. I can’t think with you over there.
NAOMI walks over to the sofa and sits. Their arms line up on the back cushion. LUCAS stares at where their fingers nearly touch.
LUCAS: Though I’m not sure this is any better.
The bottle of cognac is half empty. A bottle of red wine is more than half empty. NAOMI and LUCAS sit closer than before.
NAOMI: What other languages do you know?
LUCAS: (Slowly considering the bumps of her knuckles under his fingers)
Te amo sin saber como… ni cuándo… ni de donde.
LUCAS: Sonnet seventeen. Do you know its translation? You understood what I said?
NAOMI: (Turns head away to sip from her glass) I know Neruda. I don’t know Spanish.
LUCAS: You know what I said.
Naomi: You know why. Because you don’t mean what you say, you’re being ridiculous.
LUCAS: Maybe it’s you who’s being ridiculous.
NAOMI: Don’t act like a child.
Before LUCAS can answer NAOMI’s phone rings again. This time, she walks over to it sat on the table. She watches the display as it rings out. She places it down. LUCAS stands and approaches her.
LUCAS: Why couldn’t I love you?
NAOMI: Stop it Lucas, let’s just move on from this.
LUCAS takes a gulp of wine, places the glass down and moves towards her.
LUCAS: Maybe you’re right, I don’t love you. There is nothing here at all. (Places her hand to his chest) I feel nothing when your hand on my chest feels like my hand also.
NAOMI: You’re quoting him again.
INT. BEDROOM OF NAOMI’S APARTMENT - MORNING
NAOMI wakes. She watches light cut through the blinds and onto LUCAS’s cheek. An empty expression passes over her features. She closes her eyes. Hearing a ringing from the other room she realises what woke her. She quietly moves out of bed and into the other room before picking up the phone.
NAOMI: Julian. (muffled male voice is heard) Yes I know I’m sorry. I’m- I don’t know- calm down. (takes a breath) I don’t know when I’ll be back. I told you when I left I wouldn’t. (listens) There are a lot more things I need to sort through here. (voice is louder) No, I don’t know how long. Please, can you just give me some time. (she responds with affirmatives as the voice gets slowly calmer) Jules I’ve got to go now (listens) Yes I promise (pause) you too.
NAOMI lets the phone bounce onto a sofa cushion and veer towards the crack. She drags her fingers through her hair. As she walks back towards the bedroom she snags a cardigan off a nearby chair and puts it on. Pushing the bedroom door open wider she sees LUCAS sat up, swathed in bed sheets. His eyes are glassy and vacant with understanding. She stands leaning at the doorway wrapping the cardigan around herself. They stare at each other for a long moment before he casts his eyes downwards. They see too much pity in each other’s gaze, a guarded apology in her step towards him. She cards a hand through his hair and he closes his eyes. She moves away and Lucas grabs a hold of her hand as it drops. Removing herself NAOMI takes a pack of cigarettes from the dresser, walks through to the balcony and shuts the door behind her.
My script is a response, in part, to the writing practices and theories of Ernest Hemingway and Gabriel Josipovici that we have studied throughout this module. Through the use of concise dialogue and action, in the absence of detail and description, I intend to reveal more realistically the emotions and intentions of my characters.
Josipovici criticised excessive descriptions in writing, asserting that they get ‘in between us and anything meaningful.’[1] The belief is that these detailed descriptions push a reader away and into an awareness that they are being sold a story. He referred to the ‘dead words’ functioning only to ‘make visible to our imagination what the eye instantly catches.’ His argument is narrow but applicable to my writing inspiration and style. Translated to screenplay, I was working with a medium that already relies heavily on accompanying visuals so, to reflect the practice, my intention was to strip back the lengthy descriptions even further. Using minimal adjectives and adverbs, I committed to having every description of scenery, character or action have a purpose and assist the progression of my story; to avoid ‘dead words.’ This minimalism that Josipovici describes is the very thing that drew me to Hemingway’s work. Characterized by extreme sparseness and simplicity, his bare style has the effect of sharpening the focus of the writing. Initial reading of Hemingway’s work, it appears that not a lot transpires in regards to plot whilst in reality the sparse action makes room for you to see character dynamics and encourages you to draw on emotional insight to realise a lot is being said. I wanted to emulate a story that presents as an unassuming peak into two lives crossing paths but actually exposes the important subtleties of human behaviour.
Primarily my piece is focused on this growing relationship between my two characters, not the scenery which surrounds them, that may detract from their interactions. When writing direction or scene descriptors, I wanted only to detail things which would offer explanations or highlight important motifs. Hemingway’s Hills like White elephants, uses the setting of a train station to represent a junction in the journeys of its two characters and a tension is created with the train’s impending arrival. While scenery offers a lot of symbolism in Hemingway’s short story, I wanted my play to express atmosphere but not one specific location. I chose to pick out small details that would help connect and aid parts of the story. For example, the repeated appearance of the phone, gives it significance and prompts questions that are then revealed in the final scene when Naomi finally picks up. The phone is an interruption and a tether that stops her from being completely removed from the life she wants to escape. An earlier direction sees Naomi watching the children laughing as the boy chases a ‘screeching girl’. This at first seems a distraction from the plot line but offers a metaphor for the chase that is going to commence between Naomi and Lucas directly afterwards.
A further example of symbolism exists as part of the heat theme and imagery that reoccurs throughout the play. The description of Lucas touching a flame, burning himself then running to catch Naomi illustrates a parallel to the wider plot. I wanted to include small things to warn ahead the desire and pain that was going to follow for these characters. Heat and passion remain in the background of the play. I was inspired by my favourite Hemingway novel The sun also rises: Fiesta, in which tensions rise with temperature. I set my place in the South of France, placing two British characters in a foreign country. The idea of the ocean and sun as an escape is a trope linked to travelling and a desire for freedom. This desire manifests itself between Lucas and Naomi as they indulge in haste temptations. The quick progression from meeting to affair was something I struggled to pace but I used to my advantage the setting as an environment for reckless behavior. I wanted to illustrate, as Hemingway seems to acknowledge in his work, that something happens to your mind and behavior when you’re in motion or in foreign countries away from your comfortable. I found the freedom of a screenplay allows for sudden shifts in location and time. This fragmented style allowed me to contain the timeline of one day into a ten-page script. I did not want to be dependent on one location to reflect the lives of the characters. Instead the unfixed space they possess highlights the removal from normal and shift towards reckless abandon. The montage of moving from place to place was inspired by similar sequences in films as well as the moving narrative and setting in Hemingway’s Fiesta. It demonstrates a freedom and hopefully evokes a dreamlike effect. The jumps and unfinished conversations have the effect of breaking up the lineage of their story to indicate a frantic pace.
By committing to a fragmented structure I feel that it allows to keep somethings from being revealed. This is a step towards the realistic as human behavior is characterized by secrecy and unspoken words. My play’s style is stilted and enigmatic. I wanted to maintain a level of mystery, where the characters themselves are also left figuring things out. There is so much unknown and unexpressed in the use of bare dialogue and jumps in time. I want a reader to feel immersed in the scene without knowing everything that is going on or having it made explicit for them. I did not want to alienate audiences with dialogue that is too heavy. In Hills like White Elephants, the two characters’ exchange little more than a sentence at a time during their continuous back-and-forth dialogue. This is the type of economic dialogue I am comfortable with and believe to be most effective in racking up tensions and holding the reader’s attention. The starting point for my scripts is always dialogue and I find that my character’s start talking before I know what the play is about.
Hemingway’s work heavily fits into a genre of post war literature, wherein he demonstrates a reluctance to inflate or over reveal.  Maintaining parts of the character and story that cannot be accessed offers the realist depiction of human existence. The disparity between thought and speech is also something I have taken from the tone and realism in Hemingway’s work. Providing only glimpses into the lives and thoughts of your characters maintains a truth to your work. William Faulkner used blunt descriptors much like Hemmingway, wherein the omission of crucial details, such as the repeated ‘hitting’ in Faulkner’s Sound and Fury referring to baseball, leave the reader somewhat in the dark for moments throughout the text.
Cyclical repetition and dialogue is something used by Hemingway in Hills like White Elephants, for example ‘you’ve got to realize’, ‘I realize’, ‘you’ve got to realize.’ It creates friction and atmosphere of intensity. The dialogue between my characters include many repeated lines either by one or between them both. For example, ‘I like it here’ and ‘right, you like it here.’ This aids the stilted awkwardness and tension of their first. It also, hopefully, demonstrates a shared sense of humour and a dialogue that is very responsive to one another as though they remain stuck in conversation to preserve every moment of heat or apprehension. Reoccurring phrases, along with economic dialogue, highlight how little is said whilst adding weight to the words that are.
As someone who greatly enjoyed Hemingway’s writing style, I was initially determined to use this opportunity to his emulate prose. What I found was a weak spot in my creative process as I found the prospect intimidating and slow. It became apparent that my strength lay with script and once I accepted this revelation the process became more natural and dynamic. I fortunately found that his bare prose almost begins to take on the shape of a script as it follows characters and heightens the significance of every interaction and word of dialogue over description. His stripped back narration provides a cinematic vision. The translation, characterised by inspiration more than imitation, came from maintaining the bare style and economic dialogue.
Writing in script removes any one character’s perspective or narration but equally does not provide a third person omniscient narrator to assist the reader. Instead the reader or audience must provide their own narration. I took inspiration from Josipovici whose narrative and dialogue is void of judgement. I wanted to remove myself as narrator because I think it lets my characters come to life and build their own dimension. Audience is left room to create worlds for themselves, before being then represented on screen or stage. Mostly importantly the focus remains on the dynamics between characters which is not tainted by over exposure.
I want the play to invoke a feeling lowered inhibitions and a window of time shrouded in desire and escapism. It should create atmosphere, setting and intention without explicit descriptions of emotions expressed. They should be read in the silences, the proxemics and the dialogue.
