RED

Not a repertory screening of the Kieslowski film. I overdid it last night, so just a little chamomile, now, bright and fragrant, both hands on the cup. I still remember when Madeleine brought me a tea, before Alice started, that lovely moment when you’re tripping and a person who’s gone off on a mission for so long you’ve effectively forgotten them returns with the thing! Odysseus has a great time but Penelope’s pleasure has been vastly underestimated, arrival transforms waiting into the harmony all seekers long to find.

“No criticism so sharp as seeing they think you need to be flattered.”—James Richardson. Another wish-fulfiller. RED’s an acronym: “Retired, Extremely Dangerous.” You gotta love those boomers, they won’t quit. Bruce Willis (Cop Out) is the ex-CIA spy to whom the designation applies, “bald, white male, fifties,” he romances Mary-Louise Parker (but it’s chaste, she’s really an estranged-daughter figure) and is forced back into action when revision comes calling. Way back when, “he retired drug lords, terrorists—hell, he toppled governments.” Now, “They don’t make ‘em like that anymore.” Turns out he’s still got it: “Old man, my ass.” But at the same time, as Parker realizes, “You’re hard on the outside, but gooey on the inside.” At the CIA, “Things have been a lot different since you left.” Oh God, the holidays are coming, get ready for this routine up close.

It’s unclear whether or not the mystery at the heart of the film—what really happened during a botched CIA incursion in Guatemala in the 80s—is in fact a reference to the recently-owned-up-to U.S.-government-sponsored experiments infecting inmates with syphilis, in that nation, in the 1940s. Or was it just a lucky guess? Out in the traffic circle the war memorial—an omnibus tribute, it turns out—has been as if by viagra’s action re-propped. Even elegy, or especially elegy, is just one last chance to get it up.