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simultaneously elicit affective responses, for example by using film technique and aesthetics
to beguile the spectator's senses, or by enhancing the emotion cued by characters or
situations.
The foregrounded presence of the cinematic medium increases the viewer's awareness
that each film's fictive world is linked to the reality of the director's enunciation which is
often conveyed conceptually by dialogue, and by shooting techniques which, regardless of
the sort of narrative focalization that is initially employed in given sequences, invariably give
way to an extra-diegetic viewpoint, that of the director via the camera. In terms of narrative
development, the viewer's cognitive activity of formulating hypotheses and expectations is
rendered problematic in all three films, exemplified by the constraints that the style of
Partner puts on Branigan's notion of the bottom up process - the viewers' mental
organization and interpretation of what occurs on screen, a process centred on the senses with
'little or no associated memory' being involved (Branigan, 1992: 37). The viewer's cognitive
engagement is also rendered difficult by devices such as the suppressive narration in Tango,
and by the peripheral position assigned to Matthew's character to whom viewers form an
attachment in The Dreamers.
In all three films, the use of frame composition, colour and lighting create - together
with the music - a mood of fascination and unease which is enhanced by the way the
narrations cue a perception of the protagonists (Giacobbe's double in Partner, Paul in Tango,
and the unpredictable twins in The Dreamers) as disturbing. However - compared with
Partner - Tango and The Dreamers present visual approaches characterized by a greater
emphasis on sensuous, refined aesthetics, although their narratives rarely feature sustained
sequences of clear-cut emotions. Like Partner, their viewing experiences are characterized by
the intense and saturated modal qualities described by Grodal, as intellectual and stylistic
cross-references are evoked. The depiction of sexuality in Tango and The Dreamers was
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