You Say Tomato
Wayne Wang's frank sexual drama fumbles around in the dark.

CENTER OF THE WORLD
With Peter Saarsgard, Molly Parker, Carla Gugino
Written by Wayne Wang, Miranda July, Paul Auster, Siri Hustvedt
Directed by Wayne Wang

THE TWO CHARACTERS who come together so hopelessly in Center of the World - and who pretty much end up where they started - live in a dreary quagmire of functional dysfunction: For Richard, who made a million with his internet company and then walked away from a valuable IPO, love consists of MP3 porn and naïve romantic longing; and for Florence, the full-time stripper and would-be rock drummer, it's the jaded reality of a transaction.

They meet in San Francisco where they work and live, and when Richard (Peter Sarsgaard) becomes fascinated with Flo (Molly Parker), he invites her to spend the weekend with him, all expenses paid, in Las Vegas, the metaphor where people's souls go to die. She agrees, with two rules: no kissing on the mouth, and no penetration. So off they go for precarious romance, touring the gaudy town, dining on room service, and engaging in partly choreographed, awkwardly nurturing and gradually more complicated sexual encounters.

Wayne Wang, the indie-cum-Hollywood filmmaker behind such diverse work as Smoke and Anywhere But Here, shot Center of the World on digital video, although it looks as sharp as any artsy little movie with lots of hand-held closeups and coolly expressive lighting. Wang's director of photography, Mauro Fiore, gives a Las Vegas hotel suite the shabby look of an Atlantic City Ho-Jo, and his screenplay, co-written by the novelist Paul Auster (who collaborated on Smoke), mostly steers clear of heavy didacticism (unlike the leaden Leaving Las Vegas).

But there's still something a little off about Center of the World, despite its very serious attempt to negotiate the near-impossible province of morose erotic cinema. It lacks the audacity of In the Realm of the Senses, the desolation of Crash and the quirkiness of Exotica, although it surely avoids the sterile elegance of Eyes Wide Shut. Wang attempts something difficult here, and he doesn’t quite find a way to do, perhaps because there’s a bit too much hip modern über-culture lurking about the periphery of his intimate psycho-drama.

Still, his movie has other things to recommend it, although in a specialized way. His actors - the shaggy Sarsgaard (Boys Don't Cry) and the oblong Parker (Sunshine and Wonderland) - seem comfortable in their roles and with each other: He has weary eyes and a puppy-dog face, she's a blemished beauty who, in one important solo scene, puts on her seduction makeup and shows us the process of creating a fantasy (i.e., a lie).

For the wayward Richard, who's so gentle and solicitous that he baffles Flo, the Las Vegas weekend is like romancing a stone. For Flo, whose icy facade breaks down now and then, it's a not-so-cheap trick and a respite from her job's everyday sleaze. During their weekend they also mix it up with Jerri (Carla Gugino), Flo's card-dealer friend who gets beat up by her occasional boyfriend/trick, a lonely moneybags from Scranton, Pa., who goes ballistic after her sloppy orgasm (which he thoroughly enjoyed a few years earlier).

Through all of their pain and solitude, Wang and Auster offer a few metaphors for love in the age of NASDAQ. The techno-geek Richard thinks the computer is the center of the world because it connects you with everyone. But the jaded Flo claims it’s the cunt because - well, what else would she think? If the center of our world is the thing we live by, then each of these people chooses a metaphor that represents his or her experience. The problem is we don't know why, and so we can only pursue these lost souls in a sort of isolation that ultimately lets us down.