Eros

Three separate stories of love, desire and/or obsession are presented. “The Hand” tells of the desire that builds in the several years long largely professional relationship (his profession) between Xiao Zhang, the apprentice to tailor Mr. Jin, and Ms. Hua, a prostitute, the two who meet when he is first sent to take her measurements for a new dress. Sexually inexperienced, that meeting awakens Zhang’s sexual desires. The story takes place during a phase of Ms. Hua’s life when she becomes ill, making her unable to work and thus live to the style to which she is accustomed. In “Equilibrium”, Nick Penrose is having his first session with Dr. Pearl, a therapist, Nick’s anxiety and thus want to see a therapist probably due to a combination of starting a new project with his colleague Hal in their job as advertising executives, and a recurring dream he is having about a woman who he doesn’t know but knows in the dream, that woman who is not his wife, Cecelia. These issues may be at play …