With no fanfare, we’re dumped straight into the story in media res, panning over a city, then zooming in to see a man and woman embracing in a parking lot, then breathlessly discussing some plot they have to get away from someone. Not much is clear, except that there’s some backstory here that we’re not privy to, a situation that continues for a while, as the couple returns, separately, to a club were we discover that the woman is married to another, much smarmier man who she doesn’t like much. The beginning of this film doles out information like a morphine drip…just enough to keep you going, but never too much. It’s succinct and matter of fact, setting up characters and relationships with a beautiful economy, but keeping you grasping to know the backstory, how these characters got to where they are.
Thankfully, there’s soon a flashback that fills in the blanks, but only after you’ve managed to do most of it yourself. It’s a rather satisfying technique, managing to give the audience a feeling of investment and agency as well as the necessary exposition. Even the flashback is economical by noir standards, with the requisite defeatist voiceover kept minimal, for the most part letting the action play out without comment, content to just add a bit more to the backstory that was left so tantalizingly slender in the first few sequences.
