VESPERTINE

I opened up VESPERTINE having missed the whole Goncharov moment. Still, I found a lot to enjoy this game. It is brimming with sensual descriptions–the pressure of pen on paper, of fingers on skin. Desire is portrayed as being at once voracious, destructive, desiccating. What felt most erotic to me were the descriptions of characters watching each other, and the descriptions of hands–Andrey’s hands holding an espresso cup, fidgeting with the knife, caressing the pages of his book. (As an aside, I notice this about Adrien Brody’s hands, too. I feel like he manipulates small objects with a practiced artistry that makes me wonder if perhaps he had previously trained as a mime or close up magician?)

One of the most intriguing aspects of VESPERTINE was how different perspectives are woven through the narrative. The main text seems to be in third person–but limited to Andrey’s perspective; the highlighted text connects (via a short popup in Goncharov’s POV) to sections that seem to be third person omniscient; and the footnotes link to passages narrated in first person, as Goncharov. I was puzzled by this choice at first, because Goncharov the film does not seem to be explicitly about textuality, scholarship, citation, different ways of reading, etc.–at least in the same way that a game like Harmonia is about those things. Goncharov the meme/arg, however, is kind of built on that. So in that rather meta way, the format–and its foregrounding of the ways that we “read” texts–really makes sense. There are diegetic ways in which the format is effective, too. “Goncharov’s” footnotes, commenting on “Andrey’s” exposed text, feel invasive, appraising, erotic. I don’t know, maybe that’s reading into things a bit too much. But the text-footnote dynamic did make me wonder: even though Andrey must/will eventually kill Goncharov (I think?), who is really being hunted? Who really is in control? Both are questions that, likewise, sexually charge the dynamic between the two men.

VESPERTINE was the perfect length for a brief but evocative interlude in a larger story. Just when I started to get antsy and wonder whether the plot was going to advance, it was over. It left me feeling curious about the overall Goncharov story, but at the same time satisfied with this glimpse.