Original subtitles

Love is like a butterfly, soft and gentle as a fly. The

multicolored moods of love are like its satin wings.

Love makes your heart feel strange inside. It flutters like soft wings in

flight. Love is like a butterfly, a rare and gentle thing.

Date of her.

Eyes closed, lips parted.

He's cracked it.

I bet she used to take the pill with her school milk.

It was all so different when I was young.

We were not encouraged to display our feathers.

Everything was imprisoned by modesty.

Even our chest was safely housed in heavy -duty bras, pointed up beneath our

chins where our parents could keep an eye on them.

Oh, we all went around hidden, trapped inside ourselves, but secure and

untouchable as registered parcels.

Would you like to come through for your manicure?

You lucky cow.

You all right?

Yes, I'm just having a little bout of erotica.

Fine.

If necessary, I will wait forever.

This is an answering machine. Please go away.

One of your moths has gone at me over.

Hey,

did you know this is 1967?

and it's been gradually spinning faster on its axis. Yeah, but it says the

velocity should slow down again once the magnetic dynamo is reversed.

Are we going to discuss my screwdriver?

Five percent. That's a lot of equatorial rotation.

I mean, I do realize that you two have the heavy weight of the world on your

shoulders and that I'm a lesser mortal concerned with mundanities like how to

get my car fixed so I can get to my surgery and earn a living and so make it

possible for you two to do absolutely nothing.

Okay, okay. It's only a screwdriver.

Oh, how petty of me. When will I learn?

I'll go out and dismantle my engine with my fingernails.

We'll get you another.

When? When will you get me another?

Eventually. Oh, I see.

Hello, Janet.

Will you cancel my patient's appointments for this afternoon, please?

in. I haven't a car, you see. It's broken down.

I will just tell them I'll be in eventually.

Yes. Thank you.

Perhaps we'll get you one fairly soon.

Like right now.

Oh, please don't hurry. It'll be at least a week before the final demands

for all the bills.

I can always tell the house.

Your mother and I can live in a converted bus, and you two can busk your

around Europe.

Oh, boy. When he goes, he goes all the way.

Um, Dad?

Did you know, by the way, that the sun's velocity gain could be caused by its

magnetic fields being frozen to the solar plasma?

Uh, well, that really is something, yeah.

Uh, about the screwdriver.

Screwdriver?

Are we going to spend time discussing such trivia as a screwdriver?

It's, uh, just that we need some money.

To buy you one.

In my wallet, in my jacket, in the hall. I shall be deducting it from your

allowance.

Thanks, that's, uh, real nice.

Yeah, we, um... Yeah, please, don't start making appreciative speeches.

When you stand around looking flimsy and colourless, you remind me of a couple

of lightly boiled eggs.

Thanks, Dad. Bye now.

My God, this is it.

The first twinge.

The one that leads to an ache, that leads to a pain, that leads to the sign

marked exit.

I've got all the qualifications.

48, responsibility, tension, pressures, problems, Adam and Russell. Oh, yes.

I'm up in panic.

Panic.

Breathe.

I mustn't let my mind know what's happening to my

body.

I mustn't get agitated.

Even though they're taking bloody forever to answer this phone.

Dr. Riley, surgery?

Oh, could I speak to Dr. Riley, please? It's Ben Parkinson.

Hello. Oh, Gordon, sorry to bother you.

Ben.

She's fine. Just fine.

Beautiful lady.

Lucky man.

Yes. Gordon, I have this pain.

Oh, yes.

Well, it's not a pain. It's a feeling in my chest.

Well, you know me. I don't attach any importance to these matters.

One learns to detect what is real and what is imagination.

Apart from which, I can't tolerate that.

You are still there, Gordon, aren't you?

Well, that's good. I thought I'd just bring and mention it. That's all.

Silly. Really? When can I come and see you?

Be with you in a minute, Mrs. Parkinson.

Thank you.

My God, I look like the Statue of Liberty.

The thing I like about Mick Salons is a man knows exactly what he's letting

himself in for. His mornings will no longer spring heavy surprises on him.

That little rollered monster yawning beside his bed cover won't suddenly

up and cause him to black out.

I look... I look all right in the morning.

Oh, of course you do. I look quite... You are that quietly speculating,

soaring bird of prey I saw wandering into the restaurant, remember?

The osprey, the falcon.

The all -seeing, all -silent bird of prey.

Have you hunted your lunch yet?

Not yet, but on my way home, I'm going to pick up a couple of field mice.

On your way home, you say? Yes.

Look, what hold has the man got on you, apart from the fact that he's married to

you? I mean, can't he get his own lunch? Or better still, can't he go without

lunch?

Before my wife left me, I often went without lunch.

It was a generous gesture.

It was me saying to her, of course you're not owned by me, suffocated by

If you want to go off and have lunch with Peter Carlton, then by all means

have it.

So she did.

Turned out to be a long lunch, didn't it? Oh.

I've got a day like this for five minutes.

Oh.

It's wonderful.

I feel like a plant that's been left in a pot while everybody went on holiday.

Now they're back and they've watered me.

I can feel my leaves getting strong.

I'm going to tumble over the pot and spread all

over the house.

I might even grow some flowers and berries.

In fact, by tonight,

your exercise is somewhere else. It's like living with one of those little

wooden birds that go on and on endlessly pecking.

Ben?

Are you a happy man?

Oh, ecstatic.

You don't laugh a lot.

I'm laughing all the time. My face just refuses to cooperate.

It's like having a television that does nothing when you switch it on.

No sound, no picture.

You just have to sit before it and guess.

What do you want me to do?

Deliver my emotions with the appropriate rapping, a giggle here and a sob there?

Yes, that's what I want you to do.

Show me how you feel.

This morning, for instance, what sort of morning did you have?

Was it a good morning or a bad morning?

Who did you talk to?

What about?

Did they make you laugh? Tell me.

I talked to Adam and Russell about my screwdriver, and no, they didn't make me

laugh.

Then what?

We were at medical school together. We're having a drink and a chat

Oh, doesn't that excite you?

A drink and a chat with an old friend.

I don't know. I haven't been yet.

Anticipation, Ben. That's the difference between us.

I anticipate things.

You mean you imagine that everything is going to be beautiful until you get

there and find out that it isn't. Whereas I knew it wasn't going to be

before I went.

What you suffer from is optimism.

Optimism? Is that what it is?

Oh, well I'm glad I've got it.

happy to be alive.

No, just amazed.

I wonder why I feel this way.

Perhaps you've fallen in love with someone new and vital.

Well, why not?

Isn't it true that to be happy, a woman has to be in a perpetual state of fever?

I've got to do 30 of these.

How do I know what happens while I'm in my surgery pleading with people's teeth

to come out?

Milkman, bread. men, gas men, insurance men. They've probably all come plodding

up my path, combing their hair and muttering the extra marital prayer.

Oh, really? Is that what they do?

Oh, I'm in constant danger of being seduced then, aren't I?

How lovely.

There'll be no rehabilitation problems for you when I've gone.

I've got to do 50 of these.

Why? Why do you have to do 50 of those?

I read it in a health and beauty book.

It'll keep me supple.

between the cooker and the fridge.

I'll be able to stand in the middle of the kitchen and swivel.

Oh, that's really funny, isn't it? Stand in the middle of the kitchen and

swivel.

When I'm gone, you said.

Oh, Ria. I heard you. You said, when I'm gone.

And your face was wearing its brave look.

Well, they were just words.

I didn't mean where I'm gone.

if I go.

You're blackmailing me again with your arteries.

And just when I'm beginning to feel fit and agile and like a... like a... A

plant turning into a tree, I know.

You could do exercises too.

It's all there in the book. Your muscles could be just as firm as mine.

Ria, I'm not going to join that army of cranks who take vitamins and do

exercises.

They go around full of iron and entombed in track suits.

My date of expiration is already marked on the celestial calendar. When that

time comes, I shall leave the world with pale, flabby dignity.

Ever since your 40th birthday, you've been threatening to drop down dead.

I'm frightened to ask you to get the lid off the marmalade.

I get feelings, that's all.

Read things, see things.

Once in a while, I get scared.

You asked me what kind of morning I'd had. Well, that's what kind of morning

I've had.

In fact, that's what kind of day I've had.

I wouldn't enjoy being alive if you weren't alive with me.

It would be a rather useless relationship.

So you will try to stay, won't you?

I will, yes.

I've got to do a hundred of these.

Onions, yes.

Vegetable oil and herbs I've already got.

This recipe is quick and easy and completely free from harmful fats.

Hello.

Hello.

Sorry, I can't talk to you now, Leonard.

And what is today's excuse?

I'm concentrating on Ben.

and stay alive.

Started losing his breath when he got up to switch channels, has he?

Leonard, you're distracting me.

It has always been my hope.

Strange eyes you've got.

When I was a boy, I had a marble neck, Pella.

Oh, I've forgotten the courgette.

Oh, my God, a culinary disaster.

She has forgotten the courgette.

so bloody silly, isn't it?

Look, you spend half your day jogging through the park to keep fit. I'm going

spend half my day cooking the right foods to keep my husband fit.

Now, what's so silly about that?

I do not jog to the exclusion of all other things, do I? I do at least stop

talk to people.

Oh, we, uh... We are all trying to stay alive.

But death is only regrettable when life is full of lost opportunities.

Well, at least that'll never be said of me.

Oh, I know I don't have much luck.

But unless you try, you have none at all.

An excellent performance, sir.

Brilliant, wonderful, memorable.

Like a marrow that never grew up.

This recipe contains courgettes mainly.

Oh, good.

I'll have a bash at that.

There's nothing wrong, Ben. You've got a heart like a native's drum.

Perhaps that twinge you had was fate. It's made you aware of things.

Get some exercise.

Not just a Sunday butterfly hunt.

Every day.

Gentle at first.

Something positive.

The body's like a finely tuned engine. Stick it in a traffic jam and its plugs

get oiled up.

Get it on the open road.

father objects to reading at the table.

How many years must we devote to telling you?

Oh, I forgot.

Sorry. It's all right. It's all right.

Adam, leave the sugar alone.

Sorry. No, I don't mind. Please, carry on. I don't actually mind.

You don't mind?

What kind of a statement is that?

Of course you mind. You mind everything.

This whole house is geared around the things you mind.

All right, then.

How about that?

It's amazingly and incredibly all right.

Today, everything is all right. You can stretch and yawn if you like.

Oh, great.

Russell, you cannot stretch and yawn.

Your father has never been able to cope with the sight of your ribs.

And I, too, am now having second thoughts about them.

It is not soup, Adam.

Well, it flows like soup.

Yes, well, that's the way my cooking is, isn't it?

Things that are not soup flow like soup.

And things that are soup won't budge.

Well, don't sit there like disgruntled wine tasters.

Let your faces pucker and crumble.

Utter all the utterances. It really isn't that bad.

Not bad?

Of course it's bad. All my cooking is bad.

And this is super bad.

I should know. I've had years of practice to get it this bad.

I like the way you can't cook.

That way you don't seem like the average mum. You seem more like a... Well, like

a... What does she seem like, Adam?

A woman.

Yeah, a woman, right.

Do men's mothers seem like women?

No. No, they just seem like mothers. Oh, except guys' mothers.

Ooh, now she's something else.

I wouldn't mind being a salesman if I thought someone like that was going to

open the door.

I say again.

Yes,

well, I think three is enough.

Another sort of conversation your father can contribute to.

I don't know. I'm quite capable of emitting erotic noises should it become

absolutely necessary.

You are acting out of character.

You're being tolerant. You're eating without grimacing. You're not

Somewhere in the distance of your face, I can see a smile.

Yes, well, I've explained I rather approve of today.

Yesterday, I felt like a man trapped by the tide, standing up to my neck in

water, waiting.

But somebody pulled the plug out, and here I am.

Rather damp, but also rather relieved.

I haven't been plugged. What are you talking about? Oh, by the way, from now

I'll be giving you extra allowance. We'll forget about the screwdriver and

various other things.

You mean we're actually going to get money in our hands, not bits of paper

headed damages and breakages?

I mean just that. Yes.

There's a dress in the shop round the corner. You can have it.

I don't wish to give any explanation for this sudden attack of generosity. Let

us just say that when a man comes...

through certain moments, he is left with a clearer picture of life, a somewhat

rose -colored one, but enough to lead him actually to believe that sharing...

What did you say this was again?

It's courgettes, mainly.

Well, that sharing courgettes with two lazy scrounging doing nothing in

particular terms is, after all...

My arms around today's lunch, tomorrow's breakfast.

Something to shine the furniture, something to shine the floors.

Something to get the shirt whiter than white.

Something to cope with any problem.

Except the problem of myself.

Hello. Oh, hello.

Oh, it's you.

I remember.

Hallelujah. I never did thank you properly for trying to help me stop the

hunt.

It was all a bit aimless, really.

Not aimless, just unsuccessful.

Now, I realise you wouldn't want to share my sandwich, but I'd be glad to

whatever you have in the bag.

I see people like you just drifting.

I always think that once you must have been like me.

Sort of human train going along the endless line.

Same view, same speed, same destination.

Every day, every, every day.

The only difference is that one morning you decided not to go.

You derailed yourself. You escaped.

There's only one thing to escape from.

Love.

Love is the variation of the word hopelessness.

Love is the fire in the serpent's mouth, the sting in the scorpion's tail.

When love strikes, run like hell.

Is that why you're here? Because you didn't like being in love?

Oh, I did, I did.

It was the burden of being loved that finished me.

I had this woman.

Eternal summer it was.

I went to hurl like a bee goes to the flowerbed.

But when she started loving me back, oh, God bless us and protect us all the

saints and never again.

But there's not a lot of point being in love with someone who doesn't love you

back. Did I not begin by saying how hopeless it was?

I know someone who loves me and whom I love back.

And I know someone else who I think loves me.

And who I'm trying not to love.

Mother of God.

She might as well be trying to swim the channel in her wellies.

Leonard!

Morning. Morning.

God bless us and protect us, all the saints.

for this one.