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Short Films |
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64 Die Versöhnung
66 Stella
67 Galaxis
67/68 Jane erschießt John, weil er sie mit Ann betrügt |
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80 Hast Du Lust mit mir einen Kaffee zu trinken? 84 Zwei Bilder |
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| Feature Films | ||
| Info |
| Rudolf Thome
in conversation with Gudrun Max and Karlheinz Oplustil in Berlin on 27 January
2000 "Rio Bravo" versus "High Noon" |
| Interview | In your film Hanns
Zischler plays an artist celebrating his sixtieth birthday. You yourself
turned sixty just after you finished filming. Is your new film an autobiographical
work? No more and no less than the others. What prompted me to write the screenplay was not really my birthday. In 1998 I saw Theo Angelopoulos’ film "An Eternity and A Day" in Haifa. I found the film extremely annoying. Two months later, I was in Paris showing "Tiger-Stripe Woman Waits for Tarzan". I was asked what my next project would be and my answer was: no idea ... I saw Angelopoulos’ last film and was so irritated by it ... who knows, perhaps I’ll make a film about an ageing artist, too. Except that I’d do it completely differently - not at all sentimental, with deep significant meaning and full of artistic pretensions, but light-hearted, funny, ironic and very simple. So, when I cloistered myself away to start writing, this was the first thought that entered my head on either the first or second day, and I suddenly thought: why not? Another thing that occurred to me was the fact that when Howard Hawks saw Zinnemann’s "High Noon", he was so angry that he made "Rio Bravo". I read this in the Sixties and I’ve never forgotten it. The next thing that fell into place was the title, which came to me, I think, on the very first day. A film’s title is always very, very important to me. I need a title so that I can start writing; it’s a kind of a goal, a focus, so that I know where I’m going when I begin to write. Like someone wandering about in the desert making for a distant oasis - hoping of course that it’s a real oasis and not a mirage. Dante and the South Sea Where did the term ‘Paradiso’ come from? Whenever I set about writing a screenplay, I start by making handwritten notes in an exercise book. Whenever I’m abroad I go to all the supermarkets to see what kind of exercise books they have there. In 1998, I was invited to present "Tiger-Stripe Woman Waits for Tarzan" at festivals all over the world, and so I collected quite a number of exercise books. As I was about to start writing this film I glanced at this pile of books, wondering which one I should use to write in. The one I chose was yellow with the word "paradiso" on the front. There was a picture of a palm tree on the cover and a stylised depiction of a South Sea island. I was trying to think of a title when I suddenly remembered the exercise book cover and thought: that’s a great title. And so it was. There’s a part of Dante’s "Divine Comedy" entitled ‘Paradiso’. Were you thinking of this, too? As soon I had settled on the title "Paradiso", I looked it up on the net and, of course, Dante’s "Divine Comedy" appeared. There’s one character in the film who was to have been called Beatrice, like Dante’s muse, but now she’s called Berenice. I was toying with this reference. In Angelopoulos’ film, Bruno Ganz is, I believe, older and, at the end of the film, he dies. Is this an important difference between the two films? The characters in my films are usually much younger - especially the women. In the past, one of the criticisms levelled at my films was: why don’t you portray people of your own age. Actually, what people say to you really does matter and so I thought, alright, I’ll do it! Now if I’m making a film about a man aged about sixty, it’s almost impossible to avoid using things from my own life. It’s something I’ve always done. One only has to remember all the aquariums in "The Microscope"; they were actually here in my apartment. As for my sixtieth birthday - that was a just a ruse, really. Instead of celebrating my sixtieth birthday, I thought, why not make a film about a man celebrating his sixtieth birthday. Is this how you would have wished to have spent your own birthday? No. I didn’t do anything like this; in fact, I didn’t celebrate it at all. I just went away. Did you ever want to meet up again with all the women in your life? No. However, the actors in this film are almost without exception actors who have all appeared in my earlier films. I haven’t brought together my seven women, the seven most important women in my life, but I have brought together actors from my other films to work on this film. This was a deciding factor at the casting stage. Did you consider asking Uschi Obermeier to work on this film? We didn’t think of using Uschi Obermeier. Perhaps because it would have been too difficult. She lives in Los Angeles now, and the film’s budget was very small. It wouldn’t have been easy. Irony and deeper significance Was Angelopoulos’ film a constant source of friction whilst you were writing your own screenplay? No. At least not consciously. Actually, I didn’t think about the film at all. How I write a screenplay is to go away somewhere quiet and out of the way for twenty-eight days. I spend the first ten days sitting there writing notes by hand and, on the eleventh day - no matter what I’ve thought of up to that point - I start writing the screenplay proper. During those first ten days of note-taking I thought about the Angelopoulos’ film on the first day; then came the title, and on the third day it occurred to me that here was the perfect opportunity to fulfil my dream and create an interior monologue. I’ve wanted to do this for ages. There was a wonderful interior monologue in Robert Bresson’s "Pickpocket". It’s this monologue that keeps you very close to the main character in the film, the pickpocket. The proximity to a character that an interior monologue provides would, I thought, be a good idea for this film and for this man celebrating his sixtieth birthday. Something else I wanted to do was to create a portrait of an ageing artist. A portrait must, necessarily, show what used to be. Angelopoulos uses flashbacks to achieve this. However, I don’t use flashbacks in my films and so, how was I to show this person’s past without using this device? My solution was to show people who had spent a part of their lives with him. Portraying these characters would enable me to show a different section of his biography. I also liked the idea of keeping the time span of the film as short as possible. One day would have been best of all. However, a film called "Paradiso" with a lead named ‘Adam’, a female lead named ‘Eva’ and even a snake meant that I had no alternative; these ironic elements simply had to be elaborated upon. There also had to be seven women - although it was very difficult thinking up seven stories for these women. I decided to have seven days to emphasise the fairy-tale elements but also the ironic aspects of the film’s structure. I hope that audiences will see it like that too. The Nun’s Son The appearance of the snake in your film is, I think, purely ironic, because it’s just a harmless German snake, whereas the snake in the Bible has horrific consequences, namely, the expulsion from paradise. What I wanted to do was re-use a motif from "Tiger-Stripe Woman Waits for Tarzan", but place it in a completely different context. A little part of me also wanted to provoke those who accuse me of filming the same scenes again and again in my films: people in bed together, having breakfast, walking along the waterfront, making a fire. There are indeed similar scenes in all my films, even when the screenplays have been written by different people. I am toying with the motif of the snake, certainly, but it does also have a function in the film as a whole, even if this function isn’t clearly defined. It was important that Billy is the one to catch the snake. Why Billy? Billy is the most problematic figure in the whole film. There’s a pretty heavy conflict going on between him and Adam. But you don’t really find out exactly why Billy is angry with Adam. They haven’t seen each other for thirty years ... It’s like almost everything in "Paradiso". The background stories can only be assembled indirectly, from little fragments. Nothing is explained directly or made explicit. At the beginning of the film, when Billy sends an email to Joschka Fischer - who appears to have been something of a paternal figure in his life - he writes very directly about what he feels about his father. But when he gets into the car and drives off with his wife you can see that he is furious, and rather anxious. His wife says to him: "Don’t be afraid of this old man". And he retorts: "That’s easy for you to say, he’s not your father, is he". His father is one great big unsolved problem. Because he never looked after him. Whatever might have happened, the fact is they haven’t seen each other for thirty years. Actually, it seems there wasn’t anything, really. You must remember that Adam lives apart from his family. He lives in his lakeside house, but his wife and children live in Berlin; they only come to see him in the holidays. I think most people would call that living in separation. However, in terms of the way the film portrays this ‘family’, in the narrowest sense of the word, then, yes, he does have a relationship with both his children and his wife. When we first projected the rough cut on the big screen I realised that the film’s focus wasn’t Billy and his conflict-ridden meeting with his father after an absence of so many years. It wasn’t entirely clear to me while I was writing, but I discovered that the film was really about the family. This film is about the creation of and the need for a family; not a family in the traditional sense, however, with grandparents, grandchildren and children, brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts, nieces and cousins and in-laws all coming together, but rather a get-together of all the important people who have accompanied you during the course of your life. This became clear to me in the scene at the end of the film, where they are all sitting having lunch on the veranda of the lakeside house. Billy starts telling his story, everything works out for the best and he says: "Somehow, we have become something of a family after all". But then, Jaqueline, who is the least happy of the entire group, suddenly reveals what a disaster her life has been, adding that what she has experienced here is something she’s always dreamed of and she’s happy to have known it, even for the space of just a few days. She also adds: "Not everyone can have a family". Past - Present - Future In your film there are a number of "big topics" that are broached in passing, such as art, religion and then what I would call the main subject of the film, time. The film brings together individuals at different stages in time. Adam says at one point, if he could just unite the past, present and future in one piece of music, that would be it, the best he could ever achieve. Perhaps this can be regarded as the quintessential statement of the whole film. It is also reflected in the narrative; I admired the way that everything is treated in a practical, everyday way, even though we’re dealing with abstract concepts. I didn’t explicitly set about making a film about time. When Adam says this in his interior monologue, I didn’t think of it as a way of interpreting the whole film. Something that concerned me more when it came to the subject of time was ... I was determined at all costs to make the film in 1999, at the turn of this century or the millennium. I wanted the film to open in the year 2000. I had to make a great deal of sacrifices to realise this goal. I might have been able to raise more money for this film if I hadn’t been so determined to make it in 1999. I wasn’t able to raise any public money because the committees would have made their decisions after the completion of the film. The only source that might have worked out was the Filmboard Berlin-Brandenburg, which was in a position to make a decision straight away, but they had no money left. Hanns Zischler and the Solar Eclipse There are several moments in the film where a reference is made to the past; for a start, there are all the women in Adam’s life. Stories from the past are always cropping up. One wonders how much of it has remained and how it has an effect on the artist now. During the scene of the solar eclipse, the subject of time is beautifully interwoven with the spoken word. Things just seemed to come together. I wanted to focus on the year 1999; this is why the war in Kosovo and the solar eclipse are mentioned. Our big problem was that we weren’t sure if we would be able to see the eclipse. It wasn’t in the script because there was no way I could have known that I would be making a film on this particular day. Once we had finished working out the shooting schedule and we knew that the solar eclipse would happen on either the fifth or sixth day of the shoot, we thought we’d put it on the call sheet: The only scene that lent itself to the eclipse was the scene which was written as a boat trip, in which Adam and his two children go fishing. I decided that if the eclipse was visible, we would film their dialogue on a landing-stage and they could all look at the eclipse through their glasses. Moreover, the story about the eclipse that Hanns Zischler describes in his interior monologue is something that Hanns actually experienced. When we came to record the interior monologue, Hanns made it up, just like that, on the spot. I should add that, when Hanns Zischler read the screenplay he saw it as a self-portrait. So much for this being a portrait of Rudolf Thome - it’s not like that at all! Hanns Zischler sees himself reflected in this film just as much as I do. It’s a great stroke of luck that Zischler the actor is playing a role with which he is able to identify. I must say I find it rather touching when he says: "When I was fourteen I saw my first solar eclipse. They told me that when I was sixty I would see my next eclipse - although for a boy of fourteen sixty is ancient and quite unimaginable." This is such a beautiful comment on the passing of time. Apart from the fact that Hanns Zischler gives such a wonderful performance, he is so perfect for the role because one remembers him in different incarnations from all your earlier films. He was twenty years younger when he appeared in "Berlin Chamissoplatz". There was a bit of a hiatus in our professional relationship because, after we made "Tarot" I said to him: Hanns, I won’t ever make another film with you. And I’ve kept my word, until now, in "Paradiso". As soon as I had the money, Hanns Zischler was the first person I rang. He agreed to play the part immediately. I just asked him if he would like to do something like this and whether he had time. He did and he said yes. Then I asked him if I should tell him the story, and his response was: "No, there’s no need to. I know you." Then we met the next day, for the first time in ten years. It was a very harmonious meeting. After he read the script he sent me an email saying how much he was looking forward to playing this role. It would, he said, be a great challenge. Bank Manager Marquard Bohm Casting Marquard Bohm was a similar case, I think. One remembers him as a very young man in your early works - in "Detectives" and "Red Sun". He’s thirty years older now. And it shows. There were probably other actors who would have made a better bank manager. I did take into account the fact that Marquard Bohm might not appear entirely convincing as a bank manager, but it doesn’t matter. He is Marquard Bohm. He is what he is and that’s all he needed to be. There was nothing I could do to change that. Eva and the Seven Women Adam and his wife Eva seem to have a rather special relationship. She is his current wife, his last wife ... What is it about their relationship that makes it work? She accepts him just the way he is. There’s nothing else she can do about it. I think she’s a very interesting character in the film; the way she behaves towards the other women, for instance. She is so very relaxed and tolerant - something that is by no means par for the course. Actually it’s rather complicated; she behaves differently towards each of the women. She is very unfriendly and even insulting towards the youngest woman, Marion, with whom Adam obviously had a love affair while she was pregnant with her daughter. But this changes towards the end of the film. At the end of the film the two women embrace and Eva invites Marion to stay for lunch, thus settling their particular conflict. The other woman with whom she has a problem is Berenice. After Adam exerts himself doing some rock ‘n’ roll dancing with Berenice, Eva has to patch him up again, and this is when she reveals a touch of jealousy by saying "Thank God she’s a nun". And she also says very pointedly: "You overdid it dancing." Why is Berenice a nun? Just as Jacqueline is still upset somewhere deep down inside because things didn’t work out with Adam, so too does Berenice still bear the scars of her relationship with him. She admits this openly in her prayers in her first scene when she says: "I still love him". Possibly, when she split up from Adam, she became a nun out of desperation. This begs the question of Billy. I never heard of a nun with a son before. Perhaps he was already at school. Billy cannot have lived with her once she had become a nun. That’s why he was so angry. His father didn’t look after him. And perhaps even his mother didn’t take care of him long enough. There’s one scene where Billy says: "My children mean everything to me." To which Adam replies: "I can’t say that about me." Berenice’s relationship with her son is not without its difficulties either. When the two meet again for the first time, they don’t even greet each other. Close to the mike This was the first time that you had made use of an interior monologue. I find the way it is spoken rather interesting; it seems so intimate. When I was working for the Forum during the Berlinale once, the man who was supposed to read the German translation of a Godard film didn’t turn up and so I offered to do it instead. I noticed that if the microphone was held close to the mouth and you spoke rather quietly, you had an incredible influence on the audience’s mood. I remembered this when we were recording the monologue and wanted to recreate exactly this sensation. The interior monologue is an artistic device which is actually anathema to all your earlier works. I often toyed with the idea of using it. The first film I really considered using it on was "Study of an Island". But I didn’t dare to. The older I get, the more courage I have to do certain things. An Email for Joschka Fischer In the film Billy writes an email to the Federal Republic of Germany’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, Joschka Fischer. My first reaction is to read this as an ironic gesture. Partly, yes. It’s a bit bold, too. I could have put any number of names there and it would have worked equally well. It is a good way of characterising Billy. During the bus journey, Billy explains that he used to be a real protester and that he’d faithfully attend every single demonstration. Joschka Fischer was just the same when he was younger. And he’s someone who has also evolved over the years, from a revolutionary to Germany’s Minister for Foreign Affairs. Trying to Preserve Something Why was it so important to mention the war in Kosovo in your film? In the film, the world outside is reflected by two important events: the war in Kosovo and the solar eclipse. I even risked being historically inaccurate in order to get them both in, because the war in Kosovo was from February to June and the eclipse was in August, when the war was already over. However, in retrospect, you don’t really notice these things. In fact we’ve almost forgotten this war. But as soon as you see footage of the war on television you are transported back again in time. Just the voice of the newscaster of the time - Dagmar Berghoff, who has now retired - has the same effect ... I think that’s wonderful, I just love it. I’ve done it before; in my film, "The Philosopher", there’s a scene in which one of the women reads the newspaper headlines at breakfast, saying Strauß (former CDU politician) does this and that. When the film opened, Strauß had already died and so this gave the scene a rather strange effect. In "The Secret", after the death of the man who calls himself Jesus, Adriana Altaras stands at the window and listens to Lutz Bertram’s breakfast show on the radio. Lutz Bertram was Radio Brandenburg’s "breakfast director". He was just brilliant. They fired him because of his Stasi past. I’m very fond of things like that. In "Berlin Chamissoplatz" and "Diary" you can see what Berlin looked like when the Wall was still there. That fact alone makes these films historical. Absorbing what’s happening in the world outside the film automatically gives a film an historical component. Since this film is about time, this is of particular importance here. I’ve been spending quite a lot of time at Potsdamer Platz lately, because that’s where the festival is and I’ve had things to do there. My bank also moved from Stresemann Strasse to Potsdamer Platz. This area has now become my stomping ground, so to speak. I must admit that I like going there and I’m looking forward to filming there one day. I’m really happy that I’m experiencing the way that something completely crazy and new to Berlin is evolving. One only has to walk a few steps to the underground and then turn around and look back at the buildings; that cityscape, that image - it’s incredible to see something like that in Berlin. If I were to film that, I’d feel right in the middle of everything that’s going on. As one gets older, one sometimes feels that there are so many innovations that one is being left behind. As long as I can still enjoy such changes then I know I’m not old enough to die yet. How did you select the footage from the war in Kosovo? They were the only extracts for which German television, ARD, held the rights. All the rights for other Tagesschau excerpts were held by Serbian television. I was first sent the footage on VHS. There was a sequence on this tape of an interview with Joschka Fischer, broadcast during a news programme. Joschka Fischer appeared as a video insert and was not sitting with the interviewer in the same room. I would have loved to have used this, but this scene wasn’t on the Super VHS tape sent to me for filming. It would have been great to have Joschka Fischer in the film in this way but, regrettably, we didn’t have the time to order the tape again. It just wasn’t possible. I wrote the screenplay between 20 April and 20 May; pre-production was from 15 June to 7 August and we shot the film from 7 August to 10 September. The whole thing happened so incredibly quickly ... A Sleepwalker in the Internet Looking back on your films, it’s possible to observe various ways of using computers. In "Closed Circuit" it was fairly primitive; computers resurface once more in "Seven Women". And in "The Philosopher", the philosopher is taught how to use a Mac. In "Seven Women" there is a message from the father which comes out of the computer, portrayed in a comparatively simple fashion. In "Paradiso" however, people are sending each other emails. This time I tried something I’d never done before: I turned the entire development phase of the film into a public event by publishing the results of the four weeks of scriptwriting on the net every day. Ever since "Tiger-Stripe Woman Waits for Tarzan" and "Just Married" were shown at the Berlinale in 1998, I’ve had a homepage, which has grown and become more and more extensive. It’s a great opportunity and I also find it a practical way of keeping all the relevant information together. Putting it all on the net seemed the simplest thing to do. Whenever I have to look something up, I simply glance at the homepage; it’s all there. In the beginning it was only written in English, then I added German and, last year, French. Then my graphic artists suggested improving the look of the homepage and making the structure a bit more logical; I said that from mid-April onwards, I could even write my new screenplay live on the net. They were really excited by the idea and so I said, let’s do it. The new design for the website was ready at the same time as I started the scriptwriting. It was a huge experiment; I didn’t know if it would be good for my writing, because you do need solitude when you write. To go public and enable everyone to read everything straight away is taking a great risk. Above all, I didn’t know whether I would be able to think of something; it really was like taking a big gamble. I could have just said, I can’t think of anything and simply stopped uploading. There was always that option. But, on the other hand, one does have a sense of professional ambition and there is a great desire to pull it off. I also realised that it was fun and it really wasn’t difficult at all. I felt just like I did when I used to write film reviews for daily newspapers. I would have to finish a review by half past eleven or midday and then take it over to the editor’s office. With the script, I had to have something ready to upload at half past five, and so that’s what I did. The reactions, or rather, the number of people who visited the site got bigger and bigger and that gave me an extra kick. It’s a bit like when a film opens and there’s a long queue of people outside the cinema. Of course you’re delighted, because you want a great many people to see the film. So I kept on doing it - even during the shoot. I propose doing it in future too, perhaps I’ll even develop the idea a bit more. With this film, I only told about eight people I knew pretty well, but many more joined them and began reading as well. I think that next time I’ll publish it properly; I may even do it in English at the same time. There are an awful lot of people visiting the site from abroad, strangely enough. Would you say that your solitude was interrupted in a positive way by this? I didn’t forfeit my solitude. It’s a very strange feeling. You are all alone, just as if you are in a monk’s cell, but because of the internet you’re slap bang in the midst of the rest of the world. I don’t allow anyone to phone me while I’m writing. I just don’t answer the phone. Even my wife and children can only contact me by fax. A fax doesn’t interrupt your daily routine or the rituals you need to be able to write. But a telephone call is just too much. When I’m writing I live a bit like a sleepwalker - and you shouldn’t talk to a sleepwalker either. Doesn’t this increase your concentration when you write? It increases the pressure. And because of the increased pressure, the concentration increases, too. However concentration is always there, you can’t write if you’re not alert. You won’t have any ideas. And that’s why I like to write, why I love writing even; sometimes almost more than filmmaking, because it’s less tiring. And because of these moments of concentration, the one or two hours (you really don’t have more than that on any one day) in which you forget everything and the whole world outside just disappears. The only thing that exists is what you’re doing, the scenes you’re writing or creating in your mind there and then. But the rest of the time I’m also writing, too. Things are always occurring to me and, in fact, I’m always working on things. However, that pure moment of absolute concentration is very short indeed. You obviously try to avoid all form of distraction. You appear to need your isolation. I can’t work otherwise. I’ve tried to write a screenplay here in this apartment. I even re-decorated a whole room in order to do it, but it just didn’t work. I really need total isolation. A Park with Thousand-Year-Old Oaks Was it a difficult shoot? The two films I made back to back in 1997 were a piece of cake in comparison. Our problem was the number of actors, all of whom had other engagements during these five weeks. The organisation ... was a gigantic feat of logistics. I had absolutely no say in the matter any more. I just did what the production team told me. I simply filmed, mechanically, what they wrote on the call sheet. I was pretty wiped out afterwards. We had to jump backwards and forwards; one scene from the beginning of the film, another from the end, and work with different actors all the time ... it simply wasn’t possible to do it any other way. Irm Hermann was making another film in Munich and had to fly hither and thither four or five times; Guntram Brattia, who played Billy, was appearing on stage here in Berlin; Cora Frost wasn’t even here for one whole week. It was crazy. There were several things I would have liked to have done again, but it wasn’t possible. For instance, in the town where we stayed during the shoot, Stavenhagen, where the writer Fritz Reuter was born, there is a park with thousand-year-old oak trees. I went there one morning with Hanns Zischler before we started the day’s shooting and it was quite incredible. If I had known about this park then I would certainly have set a scene there and it would have been so wonderfully appropriate. My graphic artist wanted me to take a still of Hanns Zischler and Cora Frost with a tree in the middle, but I didn’t have the time or the energy. But one only has to stand in front of these trees and imagine that they were already fully grown when Charles the Great was alive. And they are still growing. The Prediction Another scene I really liked and thought was very ironic was the scene with the fortune-teller. You’re not really sure how serious it’s meant to be. She stands for the future, because she’s making a prediction. I like the use of sound in this scene, too. You get involved, but you don’t really know what to think of it. Does he take it seriously? In his interior monologue Adam calls it hocus-pocus, but there’s no need to believe him. On the one hand, it is of course a reference to "Tarot" and this is why "Tarot" is written on the sign on the caravan. I like the scene very much where the three women are waiting for him outside. I love it when Lilith places her hands on top of the painted hands - it’s something Godard might have filmed thirty years ago. The idea came from the actress, Sabine Bach. She just did it while we were setting up the lights and I said: wonderful, that’s how we’ll do it in the scene. The fortune-teller scene is very complicated; perhaps it’s not so easy to see everything that’s gone into it. Inside the caravan, the fortune-teller tells him - and we hear this - that he will meet someone and that his life will change a great deal; they may even be a new woman. When he comes out of the caravan and is asked what was said he doesn’t tell them this part, but when Eva, played by Cora Frost, looks at him he goes over to her and strokes her hair in a comforting gesture. This gesture contains what we’ve already heard inside the caravan. On the other hand, he tells them things he was told about his artistic career that we didn’t see or hear; for instance that he will be famous - albeit after his death. I’m inclined to read this prediction in terms of the end of the film, with reference to the child. Exactly! That’s exactly what I thought. The last scene of the film is very special. The film could have ended the moment all the women had left and he was alone again. But then we see him digging up something in his garden, followed by the title: three weeks later. I introduce a tangent to the narrative. But most importantly - and this happens so quickly - Eva comes to visit Adam for half an hour to conceive a child. I didn’t show the love scene this time. We see them both lying in bed and then there’s his interior monologue, which suddenly takes on a new role, because he tells us about something from the point of view of the future. This shot, with them lying in bed and the camera moving very slowly towards them is rather like a moment of timelessness, almost of eternity. Of course it also refers to the tarot sequence, where the fortune-teller reads Adam’s cards and says there may be a new woman in his life. At the end of the film, there is indeed a new woman - his daughter, Sarah. |