I found myself with a little time to kill, this evening, and started browsing around free streams at Amazon. I ran across Cashback, which sounded very weird and interesting.
And it was. It's about a young man, still in art school, who breaks up with his girlfriend and develops terrible insomnia. After reading a lot of books, he finally decides to get a night shift job at the nearby grocery store.
His way of avoiding watching the clock involves imagining the people around him being frozen in time, and him painting them. It is a little weird, as he does some things that really can't be done unless he actually is freezing time, but I think that's just his imagining them happening.
In any event, he eventually realizes he's interested in the cashier at the store there. But, of course, as soon as things start going well there, his ex-girlfriend shows up.
But that's really just the bare bones of the story. The movie is very introspective, and spends a lot of time figuring out how he got to where he is. I must say, his introspections were much more interesting than any I ever did after a break-up.
The way the story is told is very... slow, I suppose, but without being methodical. In fact, much of what is told seems very random.
I'm not sure what else to say about it, but it did feel very artful. And it really felt like an unfolding, rather than a linear telling. It reminds me a little bit of Wong Kar-wai's Chungking Express. I'm not sure why, exactly... It's kind of a "stop and smell the roses" kind of vibe, I guess. Maybe it's just the way both slow things down from time to time. I quite like both, although I will say that I think Chungking Express is much better (but that's one of my favorite movies, so it's hardly a slight against Cashback).
Hmm... I haven't watched CKE in a long time; must remedy that. Must see how the Blu-ray looks (since I have it).
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