CHAPTER 115 - Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)

“Revenge is a kind of wild justice, which the more man’s nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out.”

— Francis Bacon

Of Revenge

Within a typical five-act structure, it was typical of action-thrillers to lose the plot after the third act. Usually, this was because misguided passion often overruled the law of narrative momentum.

Some films forwent narrative breaks entirely, transforming into a series of increasingly larger explosions, usually ending with the good guy walking away, not even noticing the collateral. To distract from this sad fact, it was typical to place a young woman in a tank top beside the lead. It also helped if there was cleavage aplenty, and bare, tanned legs.

Evidently, The Pro aimed to be different.

The protagonist was in his early fifties. He was not traditionally good-looking. He did not have chiselled jaws and sported a permanent five-o’clock shadow.

The female lead was very sweet, made up to be younger than she actually was, and the costuming had made sure that virtually no part of her body sat unnecessarily exposed.

Nonetheless, Olivier Brassac had expected the film to lose its nerve, at least a little, after the corridor. It was the habit of Hollywood never to slow down. After all, if Aubert had been a British spy, and Eppie a femme fatale, Act III would be a battle over the bedsheets.

That… that would be a crime.

It was to Brassac’s immense surprise and delight, therefore, when director Ferroni chose to return to form.

Tick.

Tock.

It recursively revisited the metronome from the beginning, from the clock, with the same wooden throat, with the bass booming through the cinema.

Then the situational comedy began.

The life of The Pro man and his adopted, orphaned cat.

Marcel slept, as he always slept, in a chair with his hands on a gun. The girl, emotionally and physically exhausted, had fallen unconscious on the bed. At first light, Marcel’s routine began. A large and calloused hand opened the fridge, poured the milk to the exact line, drank it in four gulps, rinsed it three times, washed the cup, then poured the last glass of water into the plant on the sill.

Then the glass returned to the towel, lip down, followed by a three-quarter turn, after which Marcel returned to the side table to maintain the Beretta. To complete the ritual.

Tick.

Tock.

Unlike every other repetition, a pair of white, tender hands picked up the cup, gingerly, carefully, and shakily poured herself a glass of milk. The pour was off. It did not meet the ring of residue already inside. She drank it in sips. She rinsed it twice.

Josie wore the same loose T-shirt, the very one she had come “home” in, and the same jeans. She spilt the milk a little and mopped it with her sleeve, looking mortified.

She smiled at Marcel warmly; the audience melted.

When the camera cross-cut to Aubert, Brassac almost snorted.

The Pro smiled with a mask of anguish. It was as though someone had pinched the tender flesh under his armpits and twisted until he bled.

Josie’s smile held; it was her only defence—

—but Marcel could take it no longer; he crossed the room, his jaw set, his hand reaching for the cup.

Josie flinched. Not a small flinch. She shifted into defensive mode at once, shoulders up, chin down, one arm raised to protect her face, the reflex of the body that had learned through habit and experience, and… repetition.

“Voilà!” Brassac nearly clapped. He loved it. The visual storytelling. The conscious choice of non-verbal interaction was perfect for Marcel.

Marcel’s hands came down on the glass.

Three rinses.

Marcel poured the third cup into the drain. Too much water was not good for the pot plant.

Marcel dried the glass.

The glass did a three-quarter turn.

He did not respond to her flinching.

For Marcel, the turn of the glass was, at this point, more important.

He gave her a nod and went back to his chair, to maintain the gun.

The sequence that followed played upon the same cruel humour. The girl was a quick learner, because being slow meant being hit. The next day, the glass was cleaned three times, and rested on the same spot with a three-quarter turn towards the light.

Marcel insisted on throwing out the third pour.

Tick.

Tock.

They ate lunch. They ate dinner. Spoon, fork, plate. One plate. Marcel ate first, then Josie.

Day three, Marcel looked at the almost empty milk with incredulity, like a part of his reality had just collapsed. He poured what was left, and it refused to meet the line. For the first time in the film, The Pro began to sweat. A portion of the cinema laughed, and Brassac shared the mirth. The moment was elevated for distress, and yet, Aubert’s Parisian deadpan, his sheer disgust at the empty milk, had made it work.

“I’ll go get more,” Josie offered.

The text here was copied from the author's published chapter without approval; their official posting is where the story is published.

Unthinking, Marcel slipped her a note, and for the first time in three days, Josie left the apartment.

The moment the door opened, Brassac saw the foreshadowing.

Oh…

The girl walked past her old apartment, now covered in police tape.

The door was open, open to all, even a survivor.

Josie got the milk.

From a crack in her door, the landlady watched Josie descend the final landing, muttering.

Down on the corner, the bodega owner said nothing, because he was in the business of selling groceries.

It was a haunting juxtaposition.

What followed was a second montage. An old French song on an old radio, provincial, whimsical, a little nostalgic. Shot after shot. Josie at the two-ring stove cooking eggs, and the pan smoking. There were two plates now, and Marcel ate the burnt eggs without complaint.

Then there were two cartons of milk.

Then two glasses.

Then the two of them at the same table. She was eating cereal; he was assembling his Beretta. Whenever Marcel repeated a routine, she would repeat it after him, mimicking his actions, even his facial expression.

They took turns pruning and taking care of the pot plant.

Brassac wasn’t sure if the props department meant it, but the plant looked healthier and grew larger over the next week.

She slept on the bed. He slept on the chair. She asked him why he drank milk, and he answered that drinking the milk made him strong. He had heard it in an advertisement once. Sweet as sugar, the pair grew close, even if Marcel’s paternal regard was an emotion he could not comprehend.

It was a slow sequence.

To Brassac, the pacing was necessary because the calm before the storm was the source of the tension. It was very important for the film to remind the audience of what Josie would give up and what Marcel would lose while making their misguided choices.

The sequence must have felt too long for some of the audience, because Brassac could see that they had grown restless. For the French cinéphile, though, the lull was perfect.

It took nine minutes until the next plot point arrived.

Recursively drawing upon an earlier visit, the audience saw Vincent Lorenzo, Marcel’s employer, at a social club somewhere in NYC. The ledger made its second appearance. Only this time, the girl was there with them.

“Enough for what?” Lorenzo asked. “The girl?”

“For school,” Marcel replied, still deadpan, still without emotional inflexion.

The mobster’s face softened. More foreshadowing. “I imagine half a million is enough… for any school in the country…”

Noting that Marcel could not sign his name, Josie taught him how to write, her blonde locks draped over Marcel’s shoulder, over her faux-father’s calloused, rough-hewn hand.

At night, the lull sequence came to an end. The audience was informed that the cosy was over. The film was about to enter its fourth act.

With Marcel at his table with the disassembled pistol he would soon reassemble, she spoke from the bed, her knees up, and her face warm and soft in the light of the sole surviving lamp.

“Stop…” she whispered.

Marcel looked up.

“We have money. You heard him. Half a million. We could… we could just… be here. Together.”

The subtlety of what followed was the strength of French cinema, and not typical at all of a Hollywood urban thriller. Marcel looked at his disassembled gun on the cloth. He looked at Josie. He looked at the gun again.

Macro close-ups, cross-cut to the beat of the background music.

His eyes, grey and uncomprehending.

Her eyes, baby blue and desperate.

Then, in the visual tradition of classical cinema, Marcel picked up the slide and began to reassemble his gun. Josie said nothing. In the light, she merely hugged her knees and watched, her gaze never leaving the silhouette in the dark.

Brassac sighed appreciatively. This truly was…

La mécanique tragique.

It happened.

It happened just as the film had foreshadowed, and “BB” Bradshaw made notes to personally praise “Bebe”, the script doctor who had worked the narrative flow to perfection.

Ten minutes ago, Josie had walked past her old apartment, its entrance strewn with police tape.

Ten minutes and two montages later, the girl had returned.

Marcel had refused to quit.

Her new family, if there was one, was no more attainable than the affection of her neglectful, deceased father.

In the jargon of cinematic narratives, this was called “the hinge.” It was a trope, well-worn, but well-loved.

Lovers became foes.

Foes became lovers.

Victims became avengers.

A bad director made the moment ham-fisted and forced—a good director merely allowed gravity to take its natural course. Ferroni, Bradshaw noted with gel ink, proved himself to be the latter.

The Novak flat, a week on, with sagging police tape, was a set for predestination. Together with an audience who could see the tragedy roll in like the noon tide, they watched Josie walk into the apartment, toward the kitchen. Her costume had changed; she wore a different tee, and she wore a washed-out denim skirt, and her hair was different, signifying change—but this was not a scene of hopeful transition.

Josie went to the kitchen and saw under the table where a body had been—a tiny thing, now just a stain in the rough shape of a small boy who had bled out.

They watched the girl kneel and put one hand flat on the floor.

Then she made a noise that was as pitiful as it was gut-wrenching. It came out of her thin and high and weirdly wet, catching at the throat. Alone, it sounded like a cat choking on something it could not bring up. Visually presented with her jack-knifed body and the close-up of Josie’s face—the message was visceral.

What hope the cosy montage had brought was gone now.

The girl bent until her forehead almost touched the stain—then a tear ran to the edge of her nose and fell, darkening the same stain.

It was in moments like these that Brandon loathed his technical knowledge. Rather than immersion, he was counting the shots.

His notepad said “one”.

Someone on a Steadicam had circled the kneeling girl without losing focus once. Stranger still, the lighting had remained consistent from every angle. There was no shift in white balance, no jarring failure in being too warm or too cold. The camera operator was clearly a master of lens and light, far beyond what a budget film like this could realistically afford.

Was there even a mark? The girl was looking at the floor. There was no mark for her to follow.

He shivered just as her sobbing stopped.

Her tears had melted her makeup, but because the shot was continuous, it kept on going.

The smile on Josie’s face, performative or otherwise, was now gone, clean gone, and the cinema had gone quiet with her.

What replaced it was hate.

The man sitting next to Brandon had covered his mouth and was struggling to exhale.

Brandon wrote “4 min, NO CUT,” then sank back in his chair.

On that scene alone… any critic worth their salt would quit their career before giving the film anything but three out of four.

A first-time director.

A first-time actress.

Brandon shivered.

Just how many takes did it take?