I used to contribute here but two new little kids put an end to that for a while. After re-lurking for a while I thought I'd post. I just saw Alan Rudolph's Afterglow. I have seen most of his films. To be honest, I kept going back to see his movies in the hope that he would capture some of the magic I found in his quirky 1984 film Choose Me. For the most part, I wasn't satisfied. Anyway, after seeing Afterglow, I was struck at what I thought might be its bookend-type quality with the earlier film. Both films posit a universe in which easy sexual availabilty lurks right under the surface of life. The charm, if you will, of Choose Me came from the friction between this just-within-reach availability and the potential dangers associated with it. But in that (1984) universe, pretty much the worst thing that could happen was fisticuffs with a meanie like Patrick Bauchau--in cinematic terms not a bad thing. Nothing like the frisson of just a little violence. However, in Rudolph's 1997 universe, the mostly twenty- and thirty-something characters are all grown up (and if you want to portray grown-ups, real grown-ups, who better than Nick Nolte and Julie Christie?). Here, the consequences of sex are much, much graver. Christie's dalliance while husband Nolte was overseas leads to a daughter, to a secret between the couple, to the exposure of the secret, to the daughter's running away and to a steady deterioration in the parent's relationship and in their own personal happiness. Any sense that Rudolph is commenting on his earlier film? That it is an explicit commentary on the times and on the issue (as one of the main characters puts it) of sexual modesty? And even if so, it is interesting to compare this possibly more restrained view of the world with other new films such as Living Out Loud, which was, to me, Choose Me updated for the nineties without the regrets. Jeff Apfel ---- Online resources for film/TV studies may be found at ScreenSite http://www.tcf.ua.edu/ScreenSite