Things you can tell just by looking at her

It's the title of a movie Gven and I watched the other night until way past my bedtime, which I guess means it held my attention. Four or five short films rolled into one, not a single continuous narrative but a series of stories about a circle of characters going about their own business in their own private trajectories, which are linked in unexpected ways. If you've seen "La Ronde," a French film from way back, you're familiar with the genre: stories intersecting stories with n degrees of separation.

Glenn Close, for example, in her usual uptight rich professional role, is going through a difficult time caring for an aging relative and consults Calista Flockhart, in her usual flaky young waif role, for a tarot reading. Oddball Calista sees things straight-arrow Glenn is missing. Holly Hunter, a bank manager with her own complicated relationships, is confronted in a parking lot by a street person who, in exchange for cigarettes, tells her all about herself. Close is called in to help Hunter in a medical matter; Hunter's male co-worker goes out on a date with Cameron Diaz, the blind sister of cop Amy Brenneman, who is investigating the apparent suicide of Calista's neighbor. It all connects.

And in the strangest ways, a lot like real life. People generally treat each other decently if not with perfect compassion, and it comes across as a useful skill they've acquired: good manners can help in the most everyday matters of survival. You never know. As illustrated "ham-fistedly" in that other, more popular recent movie about what a small world L.A. is, "Crash."

I'm in your movie because you are reading this, just as you are in your best friend's movie and your nemesis at work's movie, and they might be in my spouse's mentor's sister's movie, which could make this the most unlikely non-French surrealist movie of all.

A couple of days later I went to the yoga factory to teach the class that no one shows up for, but my co-worker's partner was there to work out with the personal trainer, the same partner who used to work at the bakery where I had previously worked, and who goes to the church where I used to be a member, meaning we have dozens of mutual friends (and an interest in basketball) while barely knowing each other.

That same night at my men's group meeting - a bunch of guys I have no connection with other than this meeting we go to once a week - it occurred to me that all seven men sitting in a circle, telling each other a selected slice of their life for the week, each represents a narrative that intersects with other mundane, ordinary narratives that sometimes intersect with each other! Not so remarkable really, and nobody will pay to see that movie, but it's still kind of cool. Almost as cool as my street gang of imaginary friends when I was a disturbed boy of 7, but that's another story.