Declining the Offer.

I just watched the first fifty minutes of a film called Snow Cake. So far the protagonist, Alex, has made connections with three women.

The first is a teenager who is delightfully dippy and utterly compelling. She gets killed in the first few minutes when the car being driven by Alex is run off the road by a careless truck driver.

The second is the teenager’s mother, a high functioning autistic woman who is difficult to relate to but fascinating in an academic sort of way. She persuades Alex to stay over until Tuesday when the garbage collection is due. She can’t touch garbage, she says, and now that her daughter is dead there’s nobody to put it out.

Then there’s the woman next door, a raven-haired and achingly attractive 30-something who just oozes sultry. She invites Alex over for a meal, and half way through she says: ‘I like you. I really like you. I hate having sex on a full stomach, so why don’t we skip the rest and get to it?’ ‘If I’m to be honest,’ replies Alex, ‘it’s what I came round for.’ ‘Good,’ says Ms raven-haired seductress, ‘I’m glad we cleared that up.’

Alarm bells rang. Having it made that easy would be a bit like being given a plate of sawdust for dinner. It would be all bulk and no substance. And so I found myself wanting to change the script, and watching a film becomes more difficult when you want to change the script because you feel it's taken a wrong turn. I left it just as the Sultry One was taking her boots off.

I expect I’ll pick it up again tomorrow because the direction might change again. Besides, it stars Alan Rickman who is one of my favourite actors. And his character was so like me until he said ‘If I’m to be honest, it’s what I came round for.’ I would have got up at that point and said ‘I have to go now.’ And when the raven haired beauty asked ‘Are you offended?’ I would have replied: ‘No, just impotent.’