1-900 (1996)

Grippingly candid and charged with eroticism, Theo van Gogh's two-character film of a man and a woman who meet on a phone-sex line packs an emotional punch directly to the solar plexus. Despite the built-in defense mechanisms of electronic satisfaction, which is nearly always comfortably faceless and remote, Sara (Ariane Schluter) and Wilbert (Ad van Kempen) become helplessly attached. The crisscrossing of need, desire, and loneliness gets poignantly tangled as the two actors take us into the seldom-traveled landscape of psychosexuality. The fluid, painterly style of van Gogh, a descendant of the Dutch artist, keeps 1-900 from becoming a talking-head duet. Powerhouse stuff. A