Crash (David Cronenberg, 1996)
EXT. CAR-WASH – NIGHT
Their car is alone in the washing bay. A voice rings out. Cigarette in hand, one of the attendants stands in the wet darkness, beckoning to James, who inserts his coins in the pay slot and closes the window. Water jets on to the car, clouding the windows and shutting the trio into the interior.
INT. VAUGHAN'S CAR – NIGHT
Within their blue grotto, Vaughan lies diagonally across the back seat. Catherine kneels across him, skirt rolled around her waist. The light refracted through the soap solution jetting across the windows covers their bodies with a luminescent glow, like two semi-metallic human beings of the future making love in a chromium bower.
The gantry engine begins to drum. The rollers pound across the hood of the Lincoln and roar forward to the windshield, driving the soap solution into a whirlwind of froth. Catherine settles over Vaughan, and as the rollers drum against the roof and doors, Vaughan drives his pelvis upwards, almost lifting his buttocks off the seat.
In the mounting roar of the rollers, she and-Vaughan rock together, Vaughan holding her breasts together with his palms as if trying to force them into a single globe. When his hands move away to her buttocks, James can see that her breasts have been bruised by Vaughan's fingers, the marks forming a pattern like crash injuries.
At just this moment, Catherine looks into James's eyes in a instant of complete lucidity. Her expression shows both irony and affection, an acceptance of a sexual logic they both recognize and have prepared themselves for.
James sits quietly in the front seat as the white soap sluices across the roof and doors like liquid lace. Catherine cries out, a gasp of pain cut off by Vaughan's strong hand across her mouth. He sits back with her legs across his hips, slapping her with his free hand. His sweaty face is clamped in an expression of anger and distress. The blows raise blunted weals on Catherine's arm and hips.
