The film starts with a black screen and the spark of a candle, the snap of the wood match against the box is extra crisp and ignition of the flame just as well-defined. Next we begin to hear the scratch of the fountain pen against the parchment. The camera follows the swirls and lines of the black ink as it paints the parchment, and with the dot of the period to end the sentence the camera rises so that we see what has written to be "He was my greatest lover."
Next the camera moves to see our protagonist looking up dreamily into somewhere, and the camera follows her lips as they slowly, satisfactorily rise into a smile.
The film proceeds to tell the story of why our girl, Ava Alegria is always so happy. The cause being a certain someone who we think we will get to meet at almost each turn, but never do. There are his strands of hair she twirls in her fingers, the shadows of him, the gifts.
Along the way we also discover how wonderful this woman is herself, exceedingly eccentric and the happier for it. She is completely unconventional, so enriched with the self righteous desire to chart her own course, that she makes us want her to take us along with her.
0. We also at times begin to think that perhaps this mystery charmer is a figment of her brilliant imagination.
Really now, how could someone "capture a hundred butterflies and set them free in her bedroom," or "grow her a garden in a day," "or on a whim take her on a tour of the country, traversing without a map or a schedule or a watch even."
Yet, at every turn you are still made to forget your doubts and made to feel just as hungry as she is - so much so that you are all the more anxious to discover the secret of her happiness.
The movie ends with the same exact scratching heard at the start, the sound merely dubbed in, so to subliminally make the audience believe that they are about to see the girl writing again (as we have witnessed her do a few times during the film).
But as the camera pans across the microscopic granular weave of the paper and up on to the pen, climbing the length of it while simultaneously panning out so that we see that it is a male hand and so that we see what he has written to be "Ava, my lover," a great swell of emotion and relief perks.
However, we never let the viewers actually see "the man." No, that would be all too easy, too Hollywood. The perfect ending is to see only the hand that writes and the words, because they suggest that there was actually a real person that was the protagonist's object of affection, leaving our imaginations wide open to another chapter.
As a side not, knot, note, I must say that I cannot relate how vital it is, when communicating a vision, to relate what it is not. The more you can tell those who will make what you are dreaming into reality, the more likely it will conform to your elucidated-hallucination. So elaborate on the negative, to accentuate the positive, for it is amazing to me how often people misinterpret when left on their own - oh, why can't they see what is so clearly laid out in your head?
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