Interior -- BOBST LIBRARY NYU – DAY

It is a Sunday in April 2024. MJ ROBINSON, a 50-somethingish woman, slight build, shortish silver hair with a “reverse Sontag” stripe of chestnut, sits surrounded by undergraduates, as she has been her entire professional career … aka practically since she was one herself. THE STUDENTS are working, sometimes assiduously, sometimes half-assedly, on their computers. Some are texting or scrolling social media. MJ sees a reflection of a Tik Tok video in the glasses of the student who sits across from her, noting his furtive glance. “What is she doing here? She could be my mother!” MJ imagines him thinking.

MJ turns to the sheaf of papers in front of her and a notebook open and overflowing with scribbles of the past year, since she agreed to contribute to a collection about “lifelong engagements with a work of art.” The essay is overdue. She is still struggling with it. She opens the last abandoned draft on her laptop and begins to type. We hear a helicopter …

INT. -- GENERAL CINEMA THEATRE 3 MARINA DEL REY, CA – NIGHT

September 14, 1990. A fourth-year film student sits in rapt attention and expectation as the film begins.

CUT TO:

The screen—a helicopter flies into frame and deposits RAOUL, in military dress, carrying a silver briefcase. The camera tracks with him across a busy outdoor market area, then holds on the doors of a bus. MARIE JENNINGS (played by Suzanne Vale, played by Meryl Streep) steps out of the bus along with TWO FRIENDS. We follow them to passport control, where Marie is pulled out of line and brought into a small office separate from her friends.

Raoul soundlessly slaps Marie who falls to the ground, then struggles back up to confront Raoul, bleeding slightly from the slap, chewing what the informed viewer guesses is a Kryolan blood capsule.