Mix desire and the Internet and you get some interesting scenarios. Not to mention typos.
"What is the last naughty thign you've doen," types a flirtatious stranger in a cybersex scene from Todd Lincoln's new short film Leave Luck to Heaven.
"Find someone else," a conservative Christian housewife types back via instant message.
"Do you masturbate?" the persistent seducer asks.
"I'm married!" she shoots back.
"It's not cheating. It's just words. Call me," he writes. The camera pans to the housewife's phone, next to which sits an empty Häagen-Dazs ice-cream container, a small sign that she's not as immune to indulgence as she seems.
When she finally succumbs to the stranger's virtual advances, he abandons her.
The perils of engaging in sex talk over IM is just one way the film examines the temptation -- and the ultimate limitations -- of living out your fantasies through technology.
Leave Luck to Heaven was shown this week as part of the State of the Art shorts program at Resfest, a five-day international film festival that kicked off in San Francisco.
"This is what people are doing online across the country and around the world: instant messaging, meeting people, this cyberseduction," Lincoln said.
"And I hadn't seen that captured in any films ... in a real way," he said, adding that he made the film to hold up a "mirror to our time."
If the film is a mirror, the reflection it shows isn't very flattering. Unlike the happily-ever-after story of the Hollywood production You've Got Mail, Lincoln's film uses dark humor to lampoon courtship in the digital age.
In one segment, a woman has a "romantic" picnic with a toy robot on a highway median. In another, a video-game hero ignores cries for help from a damsel in distress. And the instant-messaging segment features a hilarious scene in which the housewife uses her computer mouse as a sex toy.
Though Leave Luck to Heaven takes a sly look at the shortcomings of technology, Lincoln's methods show he is far from technophobic.
He used a panoply of technologies to create the film, including digital video, Super 8 and Super 16 mm film, 200 Nintendo cartridges and a Nintendo 8-bit entertainment system, as well as software like Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects and Flame.
The film's title comes from the literal English translation of the Japanese word "Nintendo."
Because he worked with two Tokyo-based artists -- designer and animator Quentaro Fujimoto and composer Toshiyuki Honda -- they mostly collaborated "live online," he said.
"It was instant message ICQ directing," he said. They also sent MP3s, QuickTime movies and other files back and forth by e-mail.
"That's what I'm into is these fun, futuristic things," Lincoln said.
Honda, a composer known for his stunning score for the anime film Metropolis, was also enthusiastic about the online collaboration.
"It worked more efficiently than my usual work routine in Japan where I would spend more time making tapes and shipping them," he said. "It made me realize how technology can help."
When asked about the seeming contradiction between his film's critique of instant messaging and his success in using it as a filmmaker, Lincoln laughed.
"I'm like a walking contradiction," he said.
Or maybe it's the electronic communications medium itself that creates contradictions, alternately frustrating and fulfilling our needs.
"A technology's what you make of it," Lincoln said.
