Frenchies Edmond Valier and Marie are have a tête-à-tête, french for sucking face big time. Valier says, “What would I do without you?” and Marie tells him he’ll have to figure that out because she is getting married. If that isn’t bad enough, she is marring his publisher / employer Charles Montcour because he is rich. This couldn’t have come up a little earlier?
Whore.
She insists they can still be friends, however — just what every guy wants to hear. In fact, she was nice enough to buy him a going away present. She opens a case and hands him a crystal ball. If it’s blue, then he will have a set of three. She says, “It is a symbol of the future, and to commemorate our past.”
After Marie leaves, he looks for an appropriate place for the ball. Fortunately, just outside his door there is a stand that seems to have been designed specifically for a crystal ball. As he gazes at the ball, his uncle Andre (Boris Karloff) arrives. Andre proclaims the crystal ball to be like Marie, “Lovely, but quite useless.”
We are 7-10 splitsville.
Andre suggests that Valier get right back on the whores again and that he has just the little black book to help him. In fact Uncle Andre has a date that night, which I really don’t want to even think about. Shudder.
Somehow, Valier ends up in the humiliating position of having tea with his former girlfriend and her fiancee (i.e. his publisher) who is pressing him to produce a new book. Valier says, “If it doesn’t come, it doesn’t come” possibly explaining Marie’s switch to team-Montcour. After Montcour goes on and on about how lucky he was to take Marie from Valier, he says that he is going to London and Amsterdam for two weeks and that he would like Valier to keep Marie company.
Valier has writer’s block despite having been handed several cuck-porn scenarios, so goes out into the garden to gaze into the crystal ball. In the ball, he sees Montcour kissing Marie goodbye. He is so distracted that he is soon surrounded by crumpled up paper. This seems to be set before typewriters, so his hand must be very sore from the writing. Or maybe his hand is sore because it is tissue paper. [1]
Andre comes again to visit Valier who is exhausted and unshaven. He has brought the crystal ball into the house. He is concerned that he is going insane because he can see Marie in the crystal ball. He is so busy that he never gets around to visiting Marie before Montcour returns to town.
Montcour, the man Marie dumped Valier for, now accuses Valier of shacking up with Marie while he was out of town. Valier admits that Marie has been having an affair, but with yet another man in Paris. Every day while Montcour was gone, she went to see him.
Whore.
Charles does not believe him, but Valier says that he witnessed it. As proof, he shows Charles the crystal ball. Valier sees Marie kissing the other man, but Montcour can’t see anything. They go to Paris and find Marie with the other man.
That night, Valier smashes the crystal ball. The end.
Post-Post:
- [1] See, I mean he was masturbating. Masturbating because his girlfriend left him. Just masturbating and masturbating and masturbating all day into tissues.
- Available on YouTube.
Jan Manning has taken over her husband’s dress shop, but business is not going so well. If sales don’t improve, she might lose the shop the same way she lost her husband — to another man; in this case, a banker. OK, maybe her husband died; I was dozing off during part of this.
At the bank, the manager tells her she has too much money tied up in inventory. He advises her to advertise, “That’s the way to get people in and move your stock.” As she is already selling at 50% off, this does not seem like the solution or the problem. Mel is waiting in the lobby and takes Jan to lunch.
Mel advises her to have her accountant take the books home with him so her records are not destroyed if there happens to be a fire. If Hillary Clinton were this diligent about protecting her records, she wouldn’t be indicted. [1] Back at work after her ti martooni lunch, she tells her assistant to have the auditor take the books home, then leaves with her sister.
Or do we know what happened? Was the gadget the arsonist’s way of starting the fire? It fired up at 1 am instead of 1 pm, and Mel did have an opportunity the fiddle with the timer. Mel acts as if his plan was carried out, but the insurance man said the skylight was blown out by heat, not as a means of breaking in. I’m going with Mel in the back room with a tea maker.
I have nothing clever to say.
Carol’s first “serious” job for the international agency seems to be shooting a kid at the local zoo, although I guess she hasn’t started the new gig yet. She spots the kid — who, probably not coincidentally, looks a lot like Billy Mumy [3] — and correctly guesses his name is Kenny. They take pictures all over the zoo, and even get someone to take a picture of the the two of them. At the end of the day, Carol offers to send copies to Kenny if he will give her his address. He skateboards off into the 
She goes to Greg’s apartment and tells him that she has to take this job, but she is clearly remorseful. As they embrace, she sees Kenny down on the street looking up. When she goes home, he is in her apartment.
There is a final scene that is also a little muddled. Carol is on the phone. She promises to “get some great stuff, to tear their hearts out.” But she is wearing a snappy 80’s business suit which makes you wonder if she is going to continue working in the city. If she were going international, wouldn’t she be in jeans or camo or a beret? From her luggage and the closing narration, though, it is clear she has opted to be the jet-setting childless international photographer.
Janice Hammond rubs a magic lamp at a yard sale so gets three wishes. She wishes for $10 million, to look 10 years younger, and for her ex-husband to have erectile dysfunction . . . which I’m sure will be gratifying to enslaved people and starving kids all over the world.