Dangerous Pastime

Barry Adams, a boulevardier with champagne-bubble optimism, chases the elusive Celia through a labyrinth of repeated rejections; her refrain—"grow up"—hangs in the air like stale perfume. A lavender-scented letter, penned by a former lover whose obsession has fermented into something feral, yanks him from comic persistence into a shadow-mottled corridor where devotion mutates into menace. The stalker’s cat-and-mouse waltz—telephone calls that breathe like midnight fog, a white-faced mannequin placed in his apartment as if to surrogate his sleeping form—forces Barry to confront the difference between infatuation and responsibility. When the ex-girlfriend’s final gambit escalates into a near-fatal set-piece on a rain-lacquered rooftop, Barry’s reflexive courage—shielding Celia from a collapsing parapet—becomes the crucible that transmutes boyish ardor into sober commitment. Celia, witnessing the alchemy, at last recognizes the man inside the perpetual suitor; the film closes on a tremulous dawn vow, the city’s neon signs flickering like faulty synapses as two silhouettes merge into one.