The Watch

Waiting for a bus on his way back from playing soccer, a young man realizes the guy already sitting on the curb looks familiar. He speculates they met at a soccer match their schools played against each other. Then we see the seated guy suddenly remember an embarrassing incident in a double date at the movies when his date and her friend laughed obnoxiously at the other guy, just because he discovered his watch had stopped. When the bus never comes, the watch owner takes a taxi and invites his acquaintance to share the ride, since they live in the same part of town. Arriving outside his home, he invites his acquaintance to come in and hang out, adding that his mother is out of town. Hanging out turns out to consist of a single activity: silently watching hours of a random selection of TV programs in four languages with the host's half-naked half-catatonic cousin squeezed between them. Other than offering him a soft drink, he doesn't speak to his guest until later while drying off from a shower in preparation for bed, he leans out the bathroom door and asks if he's sleeping over. The guest hesitates and then agrees, in the same terse and indifferent-sounding way he accepted the taxi ride and the invitation to come in. The two later get in bed, stripping to their briefs and lying on top of the covers, with no physical contact except their socked feet casually touching. What happens next is intriguing: literally nothing, for a long time. An intent to sleep would be signaled by turning off the lights and saying good night. Either a sleepover or a tryst would involve some kind of conversation or touching or both, with the nature of it revealing which one the initiator thinks is going on. None of those things happen. They just lie there as if waiting for something, possibly some sign that they're on the same page, sleepover/tryst-wise. The audience may catch some stolen glances that hint at one answer, but the characters have even less information than we do. After a while, the host finally leans over his guest's bare chest and picks up something from the nightstand that might tip the sleepover/tryst uncertainty scales in one direction, at least from the guest's point of view.