- A short film noir delving into the dark heart of drive, desire, love, lust and loss.
- A playwright with a dark past risks his life in returning to his home city to find out if a woman with whom he once had a passionate and illicit affair ever truly loved him, only to learn that it was only ever the unknowing and distance that kept their desire alive.
- A famous playwright from Belfast returns to his home city with the ostensible purpose of staging his most recent play. The play itself, however, is nothing but the expression of his own inner turmoil: his pain and inability to keep living without knowing if the beautiful woman with whom he once had a passionate and illicit affair ever truly loved him. And the true purpose of staging it is nothing but an excuse to return to the city where he is no longer welcome to visit the woman and ask her if she has ever felt the intensity of love that he has always felt for her.
Late into the night, therefore, the playwright sets off for the city's most luxurious hotel, an establishment owned by the woman's husband, a wealthy and influential man with connections to the criminal underworld. The playwright knows that his chances of seeing the woman are slight; upon discovery of their affair many years ago, the husband put an end to it and made threats to the playwright's life if he ever tried to see her again.
It is with surprise, therefore, that the playwright arrives at the steps of the hotel to find the woman's husband waiting for him. Apparently having moved on from past conflicts, he makes a deal with the playwright: he may buy the woman a drink, say his goodbyes to her, put his past behind him and leave her for good. There will be a car waiting for him at midnight and he will be escorted out of the city and back to the airport. Should he lay a finger on the woman, however, consequences will be disastrous. He will pay for the pleasure with his life.
The playwright enters the hotel. He finds the woman at the private bar, as if waiting for him. He does not tell the woman of the husband's proposal. The writer and the woman have drinks and reminisce. She soon takes him up to her bedroom. Despite their knowledge of the all dangers they are inciting, the couple begins to passionately undress. Seductive, the woman asks the writer to tell her the story of his play. She quickly understands that the suicidal protagonist of the story represents the playwright and his desperate sentiment at not knowing if she ever truly loved him as much as he says he has always loved her.
An argument ensues. The woman tells the playwright that she cannot put words to her own feelings. She tells him that love is an enigma and that no one can ever truly know themselves. As if the writer has punctured the fantasy of their relationship, as if he is trying to order her to decide there and then between passion and love, she tells him that he should leave, that he should never have come back. She tells him to take the back door of the hotel, the only place where her violent husband will not be able to trace him.
The writer, however, informs the woman that it was the husband himself that allowed him in. He tells her of the husband's offer. The woman is angry - why did the playwright risk coming to her bedroom? Why did he touch her when there are cameras all over the hotel? The writer replies that he has nothing left to lose, nothing left to live for. He decides it's time to leave and to finally confront the husband. The woman chases after the playwright, convinced that he is to face his certain death.
But when the couple leaves the hotel, they discover that the husband has gone, that his heavies have gone. The woman looks up to her husband's bedroom. The curtains are drawn: it's clear he has gone to bed. At first the couple is confused. Why has the husband, who has for so long been opposed to their passionate and tempestuous relationship, apparently given up on preventing their coming together?
The truth begins to dawn on the couple - as they come to realise that they are now perfectly able to run away with one another and start a new life - that it's a prospect that has all of a sudden lost its power. They come to understand a truth that the husband has already come to know: that it was only ever his prohibition of their union that kept their fantasy of a relationship alive. The couple only ever wanted what it was too dangerous to have. The only thing that could kill their desire was the husband's standing aside.
And so, as dawn begins to break over the city, the couple must come to decide if they are brave enough to explore the uncertainty a new challenge: a normal relationship. They must decide if their feelings are nothing but ones of desirousness and passion. They must decide if they are ready to feel the pain that only comes when truly 'falling' in love...
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