Bad Timing

Abstract

In a way it is not unproductive to attempt a plot summary of Bad Timing since its reductive failure to come near to what one experiences as a spectator reveals the importance of its construction to interpretation. For this is simply the story of a love affair that follows its course from first meeting to terrible parting. The history of the relationship is unfolded as the lovers’minds turn back upon their recent past, and the police investigate the events of their last night together, suspecting a crime has been committed. However, such an account leaves out more than information about their changing relationship, its main deficiencies being that it ignores the points of view from which the lovers’history is recovered, and has nothing to say about the fracturing of time across their seemingly random recollections. It is the very dispersal of point of view across the main characters which makes the reconstruction of the events of the narrative productive since in their recollections and insights they themselves have, like the audience, to experience a replay of the relationship. The act of witnessing offers the characters the potential for self discovery — a potential which at least one of them exploits.