Joaquim da Silva Fontes, Significação e Estabilidade do Género no ...

themselves in the projection of inner states and emotions, doing so in a mise-en-scène that
converges on disorienting images and visual distortion and off-centred framed images.
The characters’ names also appear to have been chosen very fittingly: the punning
name of Christopher Cross and the sex kitten, appropriately named Kitty. Christopher,
from the Greek “christos” (the anointed one, Christ) and “phero” (I carry), therefore, “the
bearer of Christ”. And to emphasise the name even further, “Cross”, a cross which will
prove too heavy for the character to bear, one that potentially represents his redeeming
martyrdom.
During their nightcap conversation, Chris tells Kitty that he likes painting and she
assumes that he must be very rich, selling his paintings in Paris, as soon as she hears him
saying that he would like to own a Cézanne painting. At no time did Chris find the chance
to either affirm or deny anything so when time comes to say goodbye that night, he takes
her back to her place, completely enamoured (“Will I see you again?, he asks her ruefully),
looking at the white daisy she had given him at the bar. He makes his way back to his
place, holding and admiring that flower, representing all her beauty, and symbolising
(falsely as it happens) loyal love and innocence.
This section is called “Against the Clock” because I see Chris as a time-piece
himself, a carefully crafted precision mechanism, whose limited interiority is both
regulated and functional. As I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, the watch is
passed down the banquet table to Chris and our first view of him (other than as a dark
silhouette from the back) comes as he takes the watch, beaming with delight. Urged to
make a speech he stammers over the first person singular, a motif that establishes not only
his modesty, but his fundamental ontological insecurity: “well, I – uh – I – I hardly know
what to say...”. His uncertainty with both the first person pronoun and the verb “to be”
during the night he had been offered the gold watch hint that Chris is not truly a
mechanical man, but rather is someone with a weak sense of self, someone who has never
grown up, and whose “twenty-five years of faithful service” inscribed in his new timepiece
represent truly empty or wasted time.
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